Blizzard and Chinese gaming giant NetEase have reportedly canceled an (unannounced) World of Warcraft mobile game following a financial dispute.
The information comes straight from Bloomberg, according to them the Blizzard game in question was going to be an online MMO (massively multiplayer therefore) taking place in the same universe as World of Warcraft. The title was even codenamed “Neptune” and it was to be a spin-off of the PC MMORPG World of Warcraft set in a different period of history.
A long preparation for this Warcraft project
The news that hurts is the Warcraft game had been in the works for three years, with a team of over 100 NetEase developers. Blizzard and NetEase, which publishes World of Warcraft in China and is also co-creator of Diablo Immortal, have canceled the mobile game following a dispute over the financial terms of the title.
Bloomberg says a NetEase spokesperson declined to comment. And that an Activision Blizzard spokesperson also had no comment. NetEase shares fell 3.1% in Hong Kong following the announcement. Mobile and Blizzard is a pretty complicated story right now (Diablo Immortal).
This is not the first mobile game canceled by Blizzard since we remember that another project based on Warcraft, an augmented reality game similar to Pokémon Go, named Orbis, had been in development for more than four years. It was also Bloomberg who had the information on this subject.
For the record, the next and new World of Warcraft expansion, Dragonflight, will be released later this year.