Recently, Blizzard Corporation of the United States announced that since the license agreement with NetEase will expire on January 23, 2023, the two parties have not yet reached an agreement on the renewal of the agreement that conforms to Blizzard's operating principles and commitments to players and employees, so most of Blizzard's game services for games such as World of Warcraft in mainland China will be suspended. Let's talk about it today, including is it possible to renew the agreement? Will the game be suspended if the renewal fails? If Blizzard changes agents in China, can the user data of most players be translated?

一、 Can the license agreement between Netease and Blizzard be continued?

My personal judgment: the current differences are obviously difficult to bridge, so the possibility of renewal is very small. There are two reasons:

1. Time is tight. The two sides must have talked for a long time, but did not reach an agreement. The cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase is very complex, involving multiple games, including PC, mobile and Battle. com. Most games are developed by Blizzard and also jointly developed. It will take a long time from the technical level of various terms in the license agreement. The author was responsible for the renewal of the "Legend of Blood" when he was in Shanda as a lawyer. At that time, Shanda had a major dispute with the South Korean company Atos and Yumei. Under the circumstances of several lawsuits and arbitrations, the parties reached an agreement to renew the contract four months before the expiration of the contract. At present, Blizzard has only made a statement more than two months before the expiration date. From my experience, there is little room for recovery.

2. Big differences. If this cooperation breaks down, it will have a great impact on both parties. Therefore, if it is a small dispute, one party will certainly give in. Everyone is a listed company and a veteran enterprise, and will not make mistakes because of small losses. Tight time is only an appearance, but the core is still big differences.

二、 If the renewal fails, will World of Warcraft stop serving?

If Blizzard and NetEase cannot reach an agreement on the license agreement in the next two months, the games covered by the current agreement, including World of Warcraft, will be suspended for a long time. Online games are electronic publications. According to the Publishing Regulations, the version number is required for domestic operation, while for imported games that change operators, the version number needs to be reapplied. The General Administration of Press and Publication also issued special documents:

For online games that have been pre approved or import approved by the General Administration of Press and Publication, if the operation unit is changed, the pre approval or import approval procedures must be handled again. From the date of the change of the operation unit to the period when the approval is obtained again, all operation services of online games should be stopped. Violators shall be treated as illegal online publishing.

However, if Blizzard changes its operating agent, the version approval may take a long time. Now, the cooperation between Blizzard and the new operating agent has not been signed, so you can apply for the version number after signing the contract. According to the records on the website of the Print Office, the last time the version number of imported games was released was in June 2021. Even if the introduced game version numbers are normally distributed this month, there are many applications for the introduced game version numbers that are currently overstocked. It is possible that Blizzard will be the new operating agent and will not be approved until the next year.

三、 If Blizzard changes to an operating agent, can players' data on Netease be translated?

This problem is more complicated. First, let's conclude that if Blizzard changes agents, the user data rate of players can be transferred to the new operator, but the time is uncertain. According to Blizzard's culture, its license contract with NetEase must contain provisions that require NetEase to transfer user data to Blizzard or its designated operator after the termination of the contract. More than a decade ago, after the Ninth City terminated its cooperation with Blizzard, the Ninth City transferred all the user data of World of Warcraft to Blizzard, and then Blizzard gave it to its new operating agent Netease.

However, the current legal environment is different from that when Blizzard changed operators in 2009. In 2021, China promulgated the Personal Information Protection Law, and the player's user data contains personal information. If NetEase wants to give user data to Blizzard, it must go through the compliance procedures for data exit. The user data of players in the game is divided into login data and play data. Login data can identify individuals, such as email number, mobile phone number, ID number, ID number and other login data, which belongs to personal information, while play data is the user data generated by playing in the game, which does not belong to personal information because it cannot identify individuals.

According to the privacy agreement between World of Warcraft and Blizzard Battle. com, currently the login data and game data in the game are stored by Netease, but Blizzard can obtain the game data without personal information. Blizzard can only obtain login data (or part of it) when it involves account security, combating cheating, or processing and analyzing data. If the game operation is terminated, Netease will transfer all user data including login data to Blizzard. Because Blizzard is an American company, data transmission belongs to data outbound.

If NetEase wants to take the player's personal information abroad, according to the Personal Information Protection Law, it should first obtain the player's separate consent. If the player does not agree, it cannot transmit it. Even if the players agree, NetEase still has the compliance obligation of data exit.

Blizzard games have tens of millions of players in China, so personal information in user data also involves tens of millions of people. For such a large amount of personal information to leave China, it needs to be assessed by relevant departments. The basis is Article 4 of the Measures for Data Exit Security Assessment of China: Data processors who process personal information of more than 1 million people provide personal information to overseas data processors who provide personal information overseas shall report the data exit security assessment to the national network information department through the local provincial network information department. The security assessment and review of data exit is quite extensive, and it should be understandable that the time of government review is relatively long for tens of millions of people to leave the country. Of course, you can also think of the advantages. It takes a long time to approve the version number of imported games. No matter how long the data exit security assessment takes, it should not be as long as the version number. So by the time World of Warcraft, which has changed its operator, gets its version number, the data exit security assessment should have already produced results.

Of course, it does not rule out that NetEase and Blizzard suspect that data exit security assessment procedures are complex, and that NetEase will directly hand over user data to the next domestic operating agent designated by Blizzard after the termination of cooperation is agreed in the contract. In this way, the exit security assessment and review of data will be bypassed, and the time will be much faster. I hope NetEase and Blizzard have this provision in the contract.