Last year, Blizzard announced its 14-year partnership with NetEase, a major Chinese tech company and game distributor, was coming to an end. The corporations could not reach an agreement on a renewed contract, leading to a vitriolic fallout between NetEase and Blizzard. As Chinese law prevents foreign games from being published without a liaison, the end of this contract also means the end of service for Blizzard games in China.

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Midnight on January 24–the contract deadline–recently came and went in China, meaning Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and all other Blizzard games except for Diablo Immortal, which has a special agreement allowing it to continue, are now unavailable. Blizzard has been unable to find a new partnership with another Chinese tech company, meaning players have no timeframe on when or if they might be able to play again.

Considering Tencent, another Chinese tech giant and competitor of NetEase, is currently working on Tarisland, an MMORPG with clear inspiration from World of Warcraft, it is hard to imagine Blizzard will be making a deal with it. It may be months or even years before Blizzard can bring its games back to the Chinese market–and if it can, there is no telling what data may be lost in the process.

Players spent their last moments in their favorite games surrounded by the friends they had made memories with. Peter Yu, World of Warcraft player and developer of the famous Narcissus add-on for WoW, chronicled his final moments on the Chinese servers. His 16 years of making friends and clearing dungeons in World of Warcraft may now be less than 200 KB of data, but the memories he made were priceless. Though Yu himself will luckily be able to re-roll on North American servers, many of his fellow players, many of whom spent their last in-game moments at the Lion’s Rest memorial in Stormwind, won’t be able to do so.

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This tragic event has driven home the transient nature of live-service games. Many online games have vanished in similar fashions in recent history, such as Proletariat’s Spellbreak. Chinese players can only hope Blizzard can make another deal quickly so they can keep making memories with their fellow gamers.

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