Immortality in China; stocks fall
NetEase Games booth at China Joy conference in Shanghai on July 30, 2021.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
On China’s Twitter-like service Weibo, Diablo Immortal’s official account was banned from posting for “violating relevant laws and regulations.” It’s not clear what rule the account broke.
NetEase declined to comment further on the game’s delay. Activision Blizzard was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Diablo is one of Blizzard’s most popular franchises, and China is one of the largest game markets in the world. The delay will be a setback for NetEase, which saw revenue growth slow in the first quarter of the year.
Diablo Immortal has been plagued by bad reviews from users on the site Metacriticpeople who crashed the game because of microtransactions that they thought required large amounts of money to execute the game well.