World of Warcraft is returning to China after more than a year of silence due to a dispute with NetEase, the company that publishes Blizzard games in China. However, they have patched things up and will be bringing back the main MMO on August 1 and providing a pre-patch for the upcoming expansion, The War Within.

But as WoWHead discovered, NetEase is eager to completely delegitimize its player base, aiming to nip in the bud an influx of cheaters, hackers, and completely unscrupulous types. alongside World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic returns to NetEase's library, players are asked to "clean up the environment of Azeroth," according to a machine-translated news posting.

Here are some bounties to pursue: at the end of each week in July, NetEase will record the most prodigious narcs through its weekly leaderboards, and at the end of each month, the top ranking players will receive rewards in their Battle.net accounts. For example, the first-place player will receive 1,288 points to spend in-game.

But NetEase is taking it a step further." In addition to fighting in-game cheating, it will also crack down on the manufacture, sale, and distribution of hacks."

NetEase further promises a reward of up to 100,000 yuan (about $14,000) for players who help "the Japanese national team build a case with the police." Not bad.

This may sound farfetched, but it should be noted that in China the distribution, creation, and use of hacking is often punishable by imprisonment. For example, as Vice reports in 2021, a group of five hackers who developed a cheat used in the Chinese PUBG mobile version of Peacekeeper Elite in 2020 received prison sentences ranging from six to nine months.

A year later, Operation "Chicken Drumstick" resulted in 17 websites, 10 resellers, and asset seizures worth approximately $46 million. That same year, a cheating empire worth an estimated $77 million was also shut down by Chinese authorities; the idea that NetEase would treat this as serious business, and that any payment would likely be ex-gratia, is not at all surprising. In the age of Internet piracy, it is only natural that there will be privateers.