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The world famous video game developer Blizzard is to conduct a shakeup to its management team in China to deal with the “secret leakage” event.
One year after the change of the license of running the popular online game World of Warcraft (WOW), Blizzard, developer of WOW, changed its lowprofile and was under the heavy scrutiny again in China.
Recently, news came out Blizzard has already changed its chief executive in China. David Yeh, who has been Blizzard China’s general manager for two and a half years, was replaced by Alex Tai, former operation department head of Nokia China. Behind this change was the so-called “secret leakage” event, which caused the great dissatisfaction of the headquarters of Blizzard. An overall investigation is said to be started and will be followed by a shakeup to its management level.
However, this saying was denied by Blizzard China.
The overdue news about managerial change
The news about David Yeh’s quit was disclosed several months after he did it.
A source close to Blizzard China wrote in his microblog: “I feel strange. David Yeh has left Blizzard for several months. Why no news came out?”
The journalists found that David Yeh’s name began to be found nowhere in Blizzard China half a year ago. His official resignation happened in October 2010.
One supporting example is that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, visited China and met Liu Binjie, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) in September. Alex Tai was present in the meeting with the role of executive director of Blizzard’s international business department and general manager of Blizzard China. However, David Yeh didn’t show up.
According to an insider from NetEase, Alex Tai got engaged in daily management of Blizzard China in July or August. He has held several conferences to talk about running WOW with NetEase.
It is obvious that Blizzard doesn’t plan to publish this news and the reason of Yeh’s resignation remains unknown.
“David Yeh seems to be an interim role in Blizzard China,” said an expert in online game industry in China. David Yeh once worked for TrendMicro. Soon after he joined in Blizzard, the event of “changing license for running WOW” broke out, which was followed by GAPP’s postponed approval for WOW’s expansion pack.
According to some experts, Yeh’s resignation is related with the change of Blizzard’s strategy in China.
Though reports say that WOW is run by NetEase in mainland China and Blizzard only gives technological support, the US video game giant actually has greater voice than it seems to be. It is deeply engaged in some parts of operation and maintenance of the WOW servers in China.
NetEase denied the aforementioned sayings for several times, but some experts believe that Blizzard never yields the idea of independent operation and will immediately get to work if getting the legal permission. Notable is its new research & development center founded in Shanghai in 2010. According to the report, the new R&D center has recruited a certain amount of engineers.
The aforementioned expert says the new leaders’ appointment may somewhat tell Blizzard’s intention – the companies favors Alex Tai because of his market operation experience in Nokia.
However, someone attributes Yeh’s leave to his own will. “Yeh wants to go back to the IT industry and doesn’t like leading a video game company,” said a source.
It is notable that David Yeh’s resignation marked the forever end of the event of “changing the license of running WOW in China” since Li Riqing and Chen Xiaowei, senior executives of NetEase and City9 – the two companies contend for the license – already left their own companies in 2010.
“Secret leakage” event leads to inside investigation
Truth to be told, Blizzard China’s changing boss might not be under such a heavy scrutiny if there were no “secret leakage” event.
On November 29, a video about Blizzard’s plan about promoting their products in China and the global market was uploaded to the Internet and soon got a large amount of clicks. The sources said that the information came from Blizzard China.
A source close to Blizzard said that the insiders of Blizzard had already confirmed the truth of the leaked information. Blizzard doesn’t publish these materials with the fear of losing “gamers’ confidence”.
What’s more terrible is that the leaked information also includes the detailed number of game players Blizzard owns, as well as the information about its income, ads delivery, media plan etc.
These materials, if true, will bring about great loss to Blizzard. A source said that some online game developers intend to buy these materials. This event also infuriated the headquarters of Blizzard and was quite dissatisfied with its China branch, which has been ordered to investigate this case overall.
Blizzard China may go through a great change to its management team. However, no news about great shakeup is available from the inside of Blizzard China. “A lot of departments have the possibility to disclose the information, but it is hard to find which one. We can not change all the executives due to this accident, which may put us into a more desperate place,” said an insider from Blizzard.
Actually, conflicts exist among different departments of Blizzard China. Paul Sams paid a visit to Shanghai on December 13 and someone thinks that he may investigate how the departments of Blizzard China get along with each other during his visit.
One year after the change of the license of running the popular online game World of Warcraft (WOW), Blizzard, developer of WOW, changed its lowprofile and was under the heavy scrutiny again in China.
Recently, news came out Blizzard has already changed its chief executive in China. David Yeh, who has been Blizzard China’s general manager for two and a half years, was replaced by Alex Tai, former operation department head of Nokia China. Behind this change was the so-called “secret leakage” event, which caused the great dissatisfaction of the headquarters of Blizzard. An overall investigation is said to be started and will be followed by a shakeup to its management level.
However, this saying was denied by Blizzard China.
The overdue news about managerial change
The news about David Yeh’s quit was disclosed several months after he did it.
A source close to Blizzard China wrote in his microblog: “I feel strange. David Yeh has left Blizzard for several months. Why no news came out?”
The journalists found that David Yeh’s name began to be found nowhere in Blizzard China half a year ago. His official resignation happened in October 2010.
One supporting example is that Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, visited China and met Liu Binjie, head of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) in September. Alex Tai was present in the meeting with the role of executive director of Blizzard’s international business department and general manager of Blizzard China. However, David Yeh didn’t show up.
According to an insider from NetEase, Alex Tai got engaged in daily management of Blizzard China in July or August. He has held several conferences to talk about running WOW with NetEase.
It is obvious that Blizzard doesn’t plan to publish this news and the reason of Yeh’s resignation remains unknown.
“David Yeh seems to be an interim role in Blizzard China,” said an expert in online game industry in China. David Yeh once worked for TrendMicro. Soon after he joined in Blizzard, the event of “changing license for running WOW” broke out, which was followed by GAPP’s postponed approval for WOW’s expansion pack.
According to some experts, Yeh’s resignation is related with the change of Blizzard’s strategy in China.
Though reports say that WOW is run by NetEase in mainland China and Blizzard only gives technological support, the US video game giant actually has greater voice than it seems to be. It is deeply engaged in some parts of operation and maintenance of the WOW servers in China.
NetEase denied the aforementioned sayings for several times, but some experts believe that Blizzard never yields the idea of independent operation and will immediately get to work if getting the legal permission. Notable is its new research & development center founded in Shanghai in 2010. According to the report, the new R&D center has recruited a certain amount of engineers.
The aforementioned expert says the new leaders’ appointment may somewhat tell Blizzard’s intention – the companies favors Alex Tai because of his market operation experience in Nokia.
However, someone attributes Yeh’s leave to his own will. “Yeh wants to go back to the IT industry and doesn’t like leading a video game company,” said a source.
It is notable that David Yeh’s resignation marked the forever end of the event of “changing the license of running WOW in China” since Li Riqing and Chen Xiaowei, senior executives of NetEase and City9 – the two companies contend for the license – already left their own companies in 2010.
“Secret leakage” event leads to inside investigation
Truth to be told, Blizzard China’s changing boss might not be under such a heavy scrutiny if there were no “secret leakage” event.
On November 29, a video about Blizzard’s plan about promoting their products in China and the global market was uploaded to the Internet and soon got a large amount of clicks. The sources said that the information came from Blizzard China.
A source close to Blizzard said that the insiders of Blizzard had already confirmed the truth of the leaked information. Blizzard doesn’t publish these materials with the fear of losing “gamers’ confidence”.
What’s more terrible is that the leaked information also includes the detailed number of game players Blizzard owns, as well as the information about its income, ads delivery, media plan etc.
These materials, if true, will bring about great loss to Blizzard. A source said that some online game developers intend to buy these materials. This event also infuriated the headquarters of Blizzard and was quite dissatisfied with its China branch, which has been ordered to investigate this case overall.
Blizzard China may go through a great change to its management team. However, no news about great shakeup is available from the inside of Blizzard China. “A lot of departments have the possibility to disclose the information, but it is hard to find which one. We can not change all the executives due to this accident, which may put us into a more desperate place,” said an insider from Blizzard.
Actually, conflicts exist among different departments of Blizzard China. Paul Sams paid a visit to Shanghai on December 13 and someone thinks that he may investigate how the departments of Blizzard China get along with each other during his visit.