World of Warcraft Account Signups Suspended in China

Reuters is reporting that World of Warcraft continues to run into problems with the Chinese government, as game operator NetEase has been forced to suspend any new registrations for the MMORPG due to “gross violations” of the country’s online game regulation system.

New user registrations would be halted for a week from Monday in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday, the company said in a statement posted on its WoW China website, www.warcraftchina.com on Sunday.

“We recently submitted our application to operate World of Warcraft (The Burning Crusade) to the General Administration of Press and Publication for review,” the company said.

Since last November, NetEase has been caught in the crossfire of an inter-government feud over regulation of the online game space.

The tussle resulted in China’s General Administration of Press and Publication returning NetEase’s application to operate the WoW expansion pack, ordering the company to stop charging users to play the game and disallowing new account registrations citing “gross violations” of regulations. But NetEase continued to operate the game as usual saying it was in compliance with local laws.