Blizzard suspended its cooperation with Netease Games. Where is the user data of players in World of Warcraft going？

2025年10月16日 | admin | D4

Wen Yun You Yunting (Senior Partner of Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, Intellectual Property Lawyer)

Recently, American Blizzard Company releasedannouncementIt is said that since the license agreement with Netease will expire on January 23, 2023, the two parties have not reached an agreement on the renewal of the agreement that conforms to Blizzard’s operating principles and promises to players and employees, so most Blizzard game services such as World of Warcraft will be suspended in Chinese mainland. Let’s talk about it today, including is it possible to renew the agreement? If the renewal fails, will the game stop? If Blizzard replaces the agent in China, can the user data of the majority of players be translated?

The author’s personal judgment: the current differences are obviously difficult to bridge, so the possibility of renewing the contract is very small. There are two reasons:

oneTime is tight.The two sides must have talked for a long time, but they have not reached an agreement. The cooperation between Blizzard and Netease is very complicated, involving a variety of games, including PC, mobile and Battle.net. Most of the games are developed by Blizzard and jointly developed, and the various terms in the license agreement will take a long time technically. I was in charge of the renewal of legend of mir when I was a lawyer in Shanda. At that time, Shanda had a major dispute with South Korea’s Artos and Entertainment Meide Company. In the case of several lawsuits and arbitrations, the parties reached a renewal four months before the contract expired. At present, it is only two months and more than a week before Blizzard issued a statement. From the author’s experience, there is little room for recovery.

2There are great differences.If this cooperation breaks down, it will have a great impact on both sides, so if it is a small dispute, one side will definitely make concessions. Everyone is a listed company and an established enterprise, and mistakes due to small losses will not be made. Time is tight, but the core is still divided.

If Blizzard and Netease can’t reach an agreement on the license agreement in the next two months, the games covered by the current agreement, including World of Warcraft, will stop serving, and may stop for a long time. Online games belong to electronic publications. According to the Publication Regulations, they need a version number for domestic operation, but if the imported games change operators, they need to apply for a new version number. The General Administration of Press and Publication has also issued a special document:

Online games that have been pre-approved or import-approved by the General Administration of Press and Publication must go through the pre-approval or import-approval procedures again if their operating units are changed. From the date when the operating units are changed to the time when they are re-approved, online games should stop all operational services. Offenders shall be dealt with according to illegal online publishing.

However, if Blizzard changes its operation agent, it may take a long time to approve the version number. At present, the cooperation between Blizzard and the new operation agent has not been signed, and the version number can only be applied after signing the contract. And according toRecords on the website of the edition departmentThe last time an imported game was issued, it was in June 2021. Even if the imported game version number is issued normally from this month, there are a lot of applications for the imported game version number. It is possible that it is the turn of Blizzard’s new operation agent and it will be passed the next year.

This problem is more complicated. Let’s start with the conclusion: If Blizzard changes agents, the player’s user data can be translated to the new operator with a high probability, but the time is uncertain. According to Blizzard’s culture, there must be a clause in its license contract with Netease that requires Netease to transmit user data to Blizzard or its designated operator after the contract is terminated. After the ninth city terminated its cooperation with Blizzard more than ten years ago, the ninth city passed all the user data of World of Warcraft to Blizzard, and then Blizzard gave it its new operation agent Netease.

However, the current legal environment is different from that when Blizzard changed operators in 2009. In 2021, China promulgated the Law on the Protection of Personal Information, and the user data of players contains personal information. If Netease wants to give the user data to Blizzard, it must also fulfill the compliance procedures for data leaving the country. The user data of players in the game is divided into two parts: login data and play data. Login data can identify individuals, such as email number, mobile phone number, id number and ID number, which belong to personal information, while play data is user data generated by playing in the game, which does not belong to personal information because it cannot identify individuals.

according toWorld of WarcraftandBlizzard battle. netAt present, the login data and play data in the game are stored by Netease, but Blizzard can obtain play data without personal information. Blizzard can only obtain login data (or part of it) when it involves account security, cracking down on cheating, or processing and analyzing data. If the game operation is terminated, Netease will send all user data including login data to Blizzard, because Blizzard is an American company, so data transmission belongs to data exit.

If Netease wants to take the player’s personal information out of the country, according to the Personal Information Protection Law, it should first obtain the player’s separate consent. If the player does not agree, it cannot be transmitted. Even if the player agrees, Netease still has the compliance obligation of data exit to fulfill.

There are tens of millions of players in Blizzard Games in China, so the personal information in the user data also involves tens of millions of people. For such a large amount of personal information to leave the country, it needs to be assessed by the relevant departments. The basis is Article 4 of China’s "Data Exit Safety Assessment Method": Data processors who process personal information of more than 1 million people provide personal information overseas, and data processors who provide data overseas shall report the data exit safety assessment to the national network information department through the local provincial network information department. The security assessment and review of data leaving the country is relatively wide, and it takes a long time for the government to review the personal information of tens of millions of people leaving the country. Everyone should understand. Of course, you can also look on the bright side. It takes a long time to approve the version number of imported games, and the time for data exit security assessment should not be as long as the version number. Therefore, when the World of Warcraft with a different operator gets the version number, the data exit security assessment should have already produced the results.

Of course, it does not rule out the possibility that Netease and Blizzard think that the data exit security assessment procedures are complicated, and it is stipulated in the contract that Netease will directly hand over the user data to the next domestic operation agent designated by Blizzard after the cooperation is terminated. This will bypass the data exit security assessment review, and the time will be much faster. I hope there is this provision in the contract between Netease and Blizzard.

(The article only represents the author’s point of view. Editor’s mailbox: yanguihua@jiemian.com. )

Reporting/feedback