All is not well at the offices of Blizzard China. Last week a large
data breach occurred which saw financial data, media packages,
commercial budgets, global subscriber details, and worst of all–the
road map for future game releases all taken.
Here’s the road map that is now widely available:
As well as giving competitors a clear timetable to which to compete
against, it also reveals a new game called Titan.
The fallout from this data breach is Blizzard’s General Manager for
China, one Ye Weilun, has either left or been kicked out, but the
reports suggest a resignation. We don’t know the details of how the
leak occurred, but his departure could either be directly linked to
the breach, or because it was allowed to happen in the first place.
For the moment, Blizzard has set in motion an internal investigation
with Global COO Paul Sams arriving in Shanghai this week.
Read more at BGR, via MMOGameSite.com
Matthew’s Opinion
For gamers, this isn’t bad news at all. We get to see when Blizzard
plans to release new games and updates, plus we also see a brand new
game on the horizon called Titan.
For Blizzard, it’s a big problem. The game launch windows are an issue
as it gives competitors an advantage. But when it’s combined with the
media package information it could cause some upset in the advertising
and marketing world. If Blizzard is advertising X on date Y, then
competitors can counter that at the appropriate time.
One thing that is a little concerning is the subscriber data that was
included in the leak. Hopefully this was just usage statistics and not
credit card and login details. If it was then I think Blizzard would
have already done something to protect its millions of customers by
e-mailing with forced login changes etc.
With Paul Sams visiting China this week we could see a more public
acknowledgement from Blizzard as to what has happened and how things
are changing at the Chinese offices.
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