Chinese authority orders local WoW subscription partner to stop supporting popular MMORPG

A Chinese regulatory authority has ordered the country’s World of Warcraft licensing partner NetEase to immediately cease operating the game within the territory.

According to Reuters, the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) halted and returned a NetEase application to operate the game within China due to “gross violations” of regulations.

The agency also posted a statement on its website recently demanding that NetEase suspend charging users to play the game and to disallow new account registrations. This negatively affected both Activision Blizzard and NetEase share prices.

“Millions of Warcraft players will suffer the most,” said Leon Li, vice president of Chinese mobile Internet firm KongZhong told Reuters. “But if you take a long term view of the industry, many of these Warcraft gamers may migrate to other games, so for the other Chinese online game companies, it is a good thing.”

World of Warcraft currently has well over 10 million active users in its subscriber base. Eastern regions such as China, Japan and South Korea certainly account for a large number of the game’s users.