Blizzard Brings Diablo 4 to China in December After Long-Awaited Approval

Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 will officially launch in mainland China on December 12th, bringing the game to a new market of millions of players. After the community found a vague mention of 12/12 in the game files in October, many speculated it could be the announcement of Diablo 4's second expansion. Instead, it now appears that the datamined files actually point towards a Chinese release.

Diablo 4 was one of the few Western games to get approval for licensing in China earlier this year. Following a strained relationship with NetEase over World of Warcraft servers, Blizzard has been rebuilding its ties with Chinese publishers to regain access to international markets. Gaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry in China, and given China's steady growth in GDP, this is only expected to grow, making it a very lucrative market for Blizzard to try and capitalize on.

According to a translation of the image, the Chinese version will launch with a free, limited-time trial. Servers will be synced to patch 2.4.2 (a version of Season 10), where players will be able to experience content up to level 25 without needing to make a purchase.

Participating in the pre-launch trial, pre-registering for the game, or returning to the new Chinese servers from international servers will also result in receiving multiple cosmetics. It is unclear at this point whether the cosmetics are exclusive to the Chinese region or re-releases of already existing models.