Chinese government cracks down on World of Warcraft

Activision Blizzard and top Chinese online gaming company NetEase continue to have problems in China as government regulators put the squeeze on the duo related to World of Warcraft. NetEase announced this week that the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has returned its application to operate the latest version of Activision World of Warcraft in the region due to “gross violations” of regulations.

The Chinese government run agency emphasized the point by posting a statement on its Web site demanding that NetEase suspend charging users to play the game, and started rejecting new account registrations. This news certainly puts into question World of Warcraft’s future in the lucrative region and also didn’t help both companies’ stock prices, which took slight hits.

Analysts familiar with the region believe that this is tantamount to a turf war, after Blizzard walked away from a contract with another Chinese online games provider The9, which the Chinse government apparently favors. While that is certainly a factor, the Chinese government has been cracking down on game content that it sees as undesirable. It especially enjoys cracking down on companies that have foreign investment; in Oct. the government banned many forms of foreign investment into the country’s online games industry.

And the news certainly isn’t hurting NetEase’s competitors; Shanda Games saw a bump of 3.1 percent, while The9 closed at 4.3 percent yesterday on the news. But it does hurt Western companies like Activision and EA, who want to crack the market and take some of the profits being generated there; the Chinese gaming market is projected to grow by 30 - 50 percent this year to $4 billion.

China Game Developers Conference 2009 speakers

The organizers of the China Game Developers Conference (CGDC) 2009 and Howell International Trade Fair Ltd. announced that 10 more speakers have been lined up for its event. These speakers will include representatives from such companies as Blizzard Entertainment, EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, THQ, NCSOFT, NEXON, Giant Network, Shanda Games, Tencent, The9, Netease, Perfect World, 9 You and Kingsoft. All CGDC speakers will be announced over the course of the next few weeks.  But you probably want more specifics, right? Here’s a partial list of speakers:

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Taewon Yun, Platform Operation Director, Blizzard Software Development (Shanghai) Company Ltd. - Case study: Balancing game data using tools

David Kristofer Fried, Senior Game Designer, Ubisoft Shanghai - Lecture: Cultural Philosophies of Game Design

Lei Zhang, Senior Audio Expert, Ubisoft Shanghai - Lecture: Mixing in the Game Audio

Ben Mowery, Director, Scaleform - Lecture: Designing Game User Interfaces with Flash Workflow

Yuxin Ren, Senior Executive Vice President, Tencent Corporate - Lecture and Panel: Innovation and development on “ComeStayPay mode”

Quan Chen, NVIDIA PhysX Tech Support Engineer - Lecture: Effectively using a physics engine application in online games

Jerry Mao, Vice President, Object software - Lecture: Effectively using a physics engine application in online games

Yongquan Li, R&D Technical Director - QWD1 Lecture: Effectively using physics engine application in online games

Xinchun Gu, Senior Development Manager, The9 Co., Ltd. - Lecture: Applications of P2P technology for online games

Shiying Wang, Director and Producer, The9 Co. Ltd - Lecture: Social Psychology in Online Games

Conference registration has started, with a 10 percent early bird discount for those who register before June 10, 2009. For more information on conference passes check out www.chinagdc.com.cn.