Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase-owned Thunder Fire Group announced that StarCraft II will officially return to Mainland China on Oct. 28. StarCraft II is the last Blizzard Entertainment game title to return to the Chinese market following World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch 2, and Diablo 3.
Regarding the StarCraft II esports plan, NetEase announced that it will host a StarCraft II international competition at the Hangzhou Esports Centre from Nov. 29 – 30. The prize money and more details of the competition were not disclosed, but will be announced at a later date.
This news also indicates that the “Breakup” drama between NetEase and Activision Blizzard, which occurred in 2023, has finally come to an end. Ironically, Chinese StarCraft II player Li “Oliveira” Peinan won the IEM Katowice StarCraft II event one month after the China server shut down in 2023, becoming the first and only world champion in Chinese StarCraft esports history.
Activision Blizzard and NetEase officially announced on April 9, 2024, that they had resumed their partnership to operate Blizzard Games titles in the region. As NetEase subsidiary Thunder Fire held the licensing rights with the Chinese government through its approval process, Activision Blizzard would have had to find a new partner and then re-secure approval rights to operate the games in Mainland China from the government. The process for game approvals through the government can take multiple years (anywhere from two to four years, according to sources familiar with the process), and there’s no guarantee that it will ultimately be successful.
Microsoft, which closed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2024, is a long-time partner of NetEase—which serves as the exclusive Chinese distributor of its iconic and globally popular sandbox building adventure game, Minecraft.