History Repeats, WOW Must be Killed in China

Do you remember the news which we reported in July? Blizzard Being Suspected of Illegal Joint Venture, WOW Facing Suspension Forever in China. Yes, as an foreign MMORPG, WOW got a stretch of hard road in China. Now the tragedy is not all over that time. After WOW(CN) started P2P phase for months, today China's General Administration of Press and Publication of PRC (GAPP) has issued a circular to terminate the approval of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and reject NetEase's application for introducing and publishing World of Warcraft in China.

Last Friday, MMOsite also received a notice from China's GAPP, saying that GAPP will further strengthen the regulation on imported online games. (Previous Notice here)

According to the circular, NetEase is forced to stop illegal act, correct its violations and stop accepting new subscribers immediately. Furthermore, GAPP will impose administrative punishment on NetEase in accordance with relevant regulations and rules. The potential punishment may include calling off its right to provide internet services.

Relevant official from GAPP told us that, during the approval process of World of Warcraft applied by NetEase, considering that NetEase may need more time to transfer large sum of user data as the operating right of WoW had been handed over in China and aiming at protecting the legal interests of players, GAPP allowed NetEase to make necessary modifications to some unhealthy content and commerce internal test from July 30. The original purpose of GAPP was hoping that NetEase could make use of the internal test to recover the players' data, and it has clearly stated that NetEase wasn't allowed to charge money from players and accept new subscribers and characters creation during the internal test. NetEase also expressed full agreement on GAPP's requirement at that time.

However, NetEase began to charge money from players and allow players to create new characters on Sep. 19 without the prior consent of GAPP, which has brought about a factual open operation and service. Such act has violated China's regulation on imported online games which stipulates that any imported online game shall be pre-approved by GAPP before being put into Chinese market and operated officially. For this reason, GAPP decided to terminate the approval of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and reject the application.