It sounds like the game isn't actually sold in China from what I read from deftangel's research. If I'm getting the argument, people go to a net cafe and just play the game that's pre-installed on the machine. They buy a time card with this service to get time to play on the machine. This isn't anything like a digital copy being sold over Steam or Blizzard. 10 people buying time to take turns to play on a single copy in a net cafe would not be 10 copies sold. It's not simply sales through digital distribution like Steam or iTunes at all. It sounds more like rentals.
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It sounds like the game isn't actually sold in China from what I read from deftangel's research. If I'm getting the argument, people go to a net cafe and just play the game that's pre-installed on the machine. They buy a time card with this service to get time to play on the machine. This isn't anything like a digital copy being sold over Steam or Blizzard. 10 people buying time to take turns to play on a single copy in a net cafe would not be 10 copies sold. It's not simply sales through digital distribution like Steam or iTunes at all. It sounds more like rentals.