Nathan Lyons-Smith, executive producer of Hearthstone & vice president of Blizzard Entertainment, announced Sunday that Hearthstone will officially return to Mainland China on Sept. 25 with Chinese distributor Thunder Fire Group, a game studio owned by Chinese game publisher NetEase. Lyons-Smith announced this news at the Blizzard Entertainment & NetEase main stage at ChinaJoy, China’s top gaming and digital entertainment expo.
Regarding the Hearthstone esports plan, Lyons-Smith and executives from Thunder Fire Group also announced that the 2024 Hearthstone Masters Tour World Championship would feature 16 players, including four from the China qualifiers. In addition, Thunder Fire Group will provide ¥1M RMB ($138K USD) of the total of $500K in prize money. The previous 2023 Hearthstone World Championship featured $350K and eight players.
Hearthstone is the second Blizzard Entertainment game title to return to the Chinese market following World of WarCraft. The return dates of the other two gaming and esports titles StarCraft II and Overwatch 2 are still pending.
On April 10, Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard and Chinese game publisher announced they had resumed their partnership to provide access to the company’s line-up of games in mainland China. The two companies parted ways in January 2023.
In 2022, Hearthstone was officially selected for a medal event at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, but the title was removed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) due to the partnership termination between NetEase and Activision Blizzard in 2023. In addition, Activision Blizzard also noted in a statement of the 2023 Hearthstone World Championship that players in mainland China were not able to participate in this event.
“Unfortunately, while we’d like to invite them [Chinese players]… Due to the end of our agreements, circumstances have changed. We hope to enable Chinese players to compete globally as we find alternatives for bringing Hearthstone back.”
This announcement marks Blizzard Entertainment’s flagship turn-based card game and the esports ecosystem coming back to life in the China region after one year and eight months.