It’s been out in the rest of the world for several months, but Chinese gamers have yet to see The Burning Crusade expansion pack for WoW – but The9, the Chinese operator for the game, has finally announced it will be arriving 10 September. Chinese gamers haven’t gotten any new content since October of last year, and their patience is running thin – not a good position for a currently beleaguered company to be in (lawsuits, pissed off gamers, and possible early licence termination – oh my!):
Just because a lot of Chinese companies don’t respect intellectual property rights doesn’t mean they don’t want you respecting theirs – Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co. is suing Blizzard for copyright infringement. Claiming that “it lost more than one billion yuan (132 million dollars) through the unauthorised use of five of its fonts” in World of Warcraft, Founder is bringing suit in Beijing Municipal Higher People’s Court against Blizzard, Chinese company The9 (who runs the game in China), and Qingwentuwen, the company who distributes WoW in Beijing.
Teddy Liu, Greater China communications director of Blizzard, told Xinhua on Thursday that he had not received any official information on the suit, and had only read media reports.