World of Warcraft may finally get go-ahead in China

wowWorld of Warcraft future might be getting brighter in China. A feud between regulators has left the popular massively mulitplayer online game on the sidelines since mid-September.

Blizzard Entertainment has kept the game operating in recent months despite a dispute with the Chinese agency overseeing online games. The fate of the game is a big deal, since WoW has four million users in China. China’s General Administration of Press and Publications agency and the Ministry of Culture have reportedly come to an agreement about whether NetEase, which operates the game on behalf of Activision Blizzard’s Blizzard Entertainment division in China, has been operating with a proper license or not.

The story in an online journal said that an unnamed insider claimed the two sides agreed that regulations were broken and a punishment will be announced in mid-January. Lots of rumors have surfaced alleging Chinese officials wanted bribes, but no one has verified that. GAPP told NetEase in September to stop charging for WoW accounts and stopped a review of the WoW expansion pack, the Burning Crusade.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.