The deadline for the partnership betweenBlizzardand NetEase has come and gone, meaning Chinese players can no longer access games likeWorld of Warcraft,Hearthstone, orOverwatch 2. With no new contracts on the horizon, Chinese players don’t know if they will ever be able to play theseBlizzardgames again, leading them to reminisce and mourn the time they had.Last year, Blizzard announced its 14-year partnership with NetEase, a major Chinese tech company and game distributor, was coming to an end. The corporations could not reach an agreement on a renewed contract, leading to avitriolic fallout between NetEase and Blizzard. As Chinese law prevents foreign games from being published without a liaison, the end of this contract also means the end of service for Blizzard games in China.RELATED:Hearthstone Scales Back 2023 Esports Program, Fans Fear for Game’s FutureMidnight on January 24–the contract deadline–recently came and went in China, meaningHearthstone,World of Warcraft, and all other Blizzard games except forDiablo Immortal, which has a special agreement allowing it to continue, are now unavailable.Blizzard has been unable to find a new partnershipwith another Chinese tech company, meaning players have no timeframe on when or if they might be able to play again.

Considering Tencent, another Chinese tech giant and competitor of NetEase, is currently working onTarisland, anMMORPG with clear inspiration fromWorld of Warcraft, it is hard to imagine Blizzard will be making a deal with it. It may be months or even years before Blizzard can bring its games back to the Chinese market–and if it can, there is no telling what data may be lost in the process.

Players spent their last moments in their favorite games surrounded by the friends they had made memories with. Peter Yu,World of Warcraftplayer and developer of the famous Narcissus add-on forWoW, chronicled his final moments on the Chinese servers. His 16 years of making friends and clearingdungeons inWorld of Warcraftmay now be less than 200 KB of data, but the memories he made were priceless. Though Yu himself will luckily be able to re-roll on North American servers, many of his fellow players, many of whom spent their last in-game moments at the Lion’s Rest memorial in Stormwind, won’t be able to do so.

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This tragic event has driven home the transient nature of live-service games. Many online games have vanished in similar fashions in recent history,such as Proletariat’sSpellbreak. Chinese players can only hopeBlizzardcan make another deal quickly so they can keep making memories with their fellow gamers.

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