NetEase announced on Tuesday it has renewed its online game partnership with Blizzard Entertainment in China until January 2020.

 "Our partnership with Blizzard has been great these past eight years, and we are very pleased to continue our close collaboration," William Ding, NetEase CEO, said.

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"We both pride ourselves with a commitment to high quality and value for our players, and that has served as a foundation for our strong alliance and positions us well for continued success."

This implies that NetEase will continue distributing and operating several titles from Blizzard, which is a division of Activision Blizzard, including World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and Hearthstone.

The partnership between NetEase and Blizzard is entering its ninth year. The two companies initially teamed up in 2008 with a license agreement to bring Blizzard's StarCraft II and Battle.net platform, which is soon to be rebranded, into the Chinese arena, according to the Venture Beat.

In the recent years, both companies achieved their long-term goal of simultaneously launching Blizzard games in the East and the West, Gamasutra noted.

Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, commended NetEase for its hard work and dedication to provide Chinese players the best gaming experience.

"We look forward to continuing to work closely with them on delivering even more great content in the years ahead."

Meanwhile, in a report last month, NetEase and Tencent accounted for about 70 percent of the mobile game market in China. Their combined China online game market share increased to 59.3 percent in the first half of the year, Seeking Alpha reported. NetEase saw a 36.4 percent jump that of Tencent in the same period from 26.5 percent in 2015.

Tagsnetease, blizzard, online games, china, Warcraft, NetEase Games