Blizzard Renews Netease's World of Warcraft License in China

Blizzard and Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) announced today that Netease will continue to be the China publisher and operator for Blizzard’s smash-hit World of Warcraft. The renewal gives Netease another three years and ensures that they will be around for the launch of the Mists of Pandaria expansion, which is sure to be popular in China because it’s about pandas.

This news puts an end to rumors that Netease might lose the WoW license to Tencent, and it also makes it much more likely that Netease will also be given the license to any new Blizzard games released in the next three years. This almost certainly means that it will get Diablo 3 and the next Starcraft expansion, both of which should come out this year, although mainland China releases will inevitably come later.

But Blizzard has also been working on an as-yet-unannounced new MMORPG code-named Titan. Given how slowly Blizzard works, there’s a good chance this game won’t be released in the next three years, but if it is, that could be great news for Netease, as Blizzard’s previous MMORPG (World of Warcraft) has made boatloads of money. I mean that literally, the amount of money WoW has made could fill large boats.

Of course, that’s all speculative. For now, all we know for sure is that Netease will remain the WoW publisher for the next three years, and it also has licenses to operate Starcraft 2 and Battle.net. I expect we’ll hear quite soon Netease is also the official Diablo 3 operator in China, but beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see.

Here’s the full press release, if you’re into that sort of action.