"What should players do after the game is shut down?" This is a common topic. You must know that although many players were coaxed by the GM and even planned to be their fathers when the game was still in operation, once the game was discontinued, they immediately became abandone

"What should players do after the game is shut down?" This is a commonplace topic. You must know that although many players were coaxed by the GM and even planned to be their fathers when the game was still in operation, once the game was discontinued, they immediately became abandoned by the game company. Therefore, when the game is shut down, players are the biggest vulnerable group.

Today, the contract between Blizzard and NetEase has ended, which also means that the services of Blizzard’s national server games have been completely suspended. This has also made people pay attention to the topic of service suspension and refunds again. In the twenty years since the Internet era began, have game companies come up with a suitable charter regarding the suspension of game services?

Unfortunately, no.

Xiaochang's games are often shut down directly, or players are asked to choose other games owned by Xiaochang to settle in, and props corresponding to the recharge amount in the selected game are returned to players, and these games are often unknown in the industry. So let’s take the big manufacturers as a sample.

In 2022, Tencent announced that its mobile game "Rachel" will be shut down. Players who have purchased game tokens before April 20 and have unspent diamond tokens in their accounts can convert the game currency into one of Tencent's four games.

looks pretty kind, right? The problem is that before Tencent issued the suspension announcement, "Rachel" had just held a recharge event, which could be said to have wiped out the last value of the players.

Let’s take another look at “Yunshang Yuyi”, which can be called the “player’s victory” in 2022. Although its server suspension process was very ordinary, due to tireless complaints from players, the server suspension incident of "Yunshang Yuyi" finally came to an end with "no server suspension, no update".

Before that, Tencent also used the new activity "Nice Clothes" to complete the costumes that players had missed before, and easily earned a wave of player attention.

Although the players seem to have won, Tencent actually made it clear in the announcement of the suspension of services that once players participate in the game compensation activities, they will automatically default to recognition of the compensation plan. If they do not participate in the compensation activities, they will be deemed to have automatically given up the compensation.

The reason why there is such a clause is precisely because China actually has relevant laws and regulations that stipulate: "When terminating services, online game operating companies must return virtual currencies that users have purchased but not used yet in the form of legal currency or other methods accepted by the users."

When Tencent plays such a word game, it actually requires players to either choose to accept it or simply give up their legitimate rights.

The so-called "player's victory", from this point of view, there is no victory at all.

NetEase, which terminated its contract with Blizzard, taught game manufacturers a lesson - it happily refunded the money. And all products with gradient prices will be refunded at the highest unit price. How to understand this? For example, the unit price of the "World of Warcraft" monthly card is 2.5 yuan/day, and the half-year card is 2 yuan/day. However, regardless of whether the player's remaining unused game days are obtained from the monthly card or the half-year card, the unit price of 2.5 yuan/day will be refunded in the end. It not only refunds unused game time, but also refunds game services that players have spent money on but have not experienced. For example, switching camps, switching servers, directly upgrading levels, etc.

No more fancy game gift packages, just simply refund the money. Although the losses suffered by players during the server suspension process are inevitable, NetEase's refreshing attitude gave them some comfort. And their behavior is obviously more in line with "returning users in legal currency" as written in the regulations.

This is the true meaning of "player's victory". I wonder if after NetEase, will other major companies be able to give up some of their own interests?