Gaming giant NetEase plunges nearly 7% after it delays release of Diablo Immortal in China

The NetEase Games booth at the China Joy conference in Shanghai on July 30, 2021.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

On China’s Twitter-like service Weibo, the official account of Diablo Immortal is banned from posting for “violating relevant laws and regulation.” It’s unclear which rules the account has broken.

NetEase declined to comment further on the delay of the game. Activision Blizzard was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Diablo is one of Blizzard’s most popular franchises and China is one of the world’s largest gaming markets. The delay will be a setback for NetEase which saw a slowdown in revenue growth in the first quarter of the year.

Diablo Immortal has been plagued by bad reviews by users on the website Metacritic, who have slammed the game for its microtransactions which they claim require large amounts of money to do well in the game.

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