AION 2 Is Coming to China: NC Signs Shengqu Games as Publisher

On July 30, 2026, one day before ChinaJoy opened, NC and Chinese publisher Shengqu Games held a strategic partnership signing ceremony in Shanghai for AION 2's Chinese launch. NC co-CEO Kim Taek-jin and Shengqu Games CEO Feng Cheng attended, and under the agreement Shengqu will handle publishing and live-service operations for the game in China. The two companies have worked together since 2009, when the original Aion launched there — a 17-year relationship that also covers Aion Mobile, which received its Chinese licence on July 22, 2026.

Two concrete things came out of the ceremony. First, the Chinese service name: 永恒之塔2, rendered in English coverage as "Tower of Eternity 2" or "Eternal Tower 2" — the same naming lineage the original Aion has carried in China since 2009. Second, an official Chinese website for the game went live the same day. What did NOT come out of it is a date: NC stated that further details, including the service schedule, will be announced later, so as of August 1, 2026 there is no China launch window, no beta date, and no confirmation that the Chinese build will match the Korean or global one feature-for-feature.

One small sourcing note, since dates matter on a story like this. Inven Global (reporting on-site) and Gamemeca both put the signing on July 30. The Korea Times, publishing July 31, described the ceremony as taking place "Wednesday" — July 29. We use July 30 here, because two independent reports name that date explicitly and it matches the "day before ChinaJoy opened" framing used in NC's own materials. Treat the exact day as July 30 with a minor outlet disagreement, not as settled to the hour. NC has not published this announcement to the Western notice board it uses for global announcements, which is consistent with it being a regional business item rather than a Western-facing service notice.

For Western players the honest answer is: nothing changes. China is a separately licensed service run by a separate publisher, on separate servers, on its own schedule. The global service NC is launching itself — the one with regional servers in North America, South America, Europe and Asia — is unaffected by this deal. As of August 1, 2026 the global release timeline still reads exactly as it did before: Steam's release field says "September 2026," the Founder's Pack pre-purchase listings still carry the "Advance Access — Starts 30 Sep" label, and NC has still not named the official global launch day.

It is worth being precise about one point that trips people up: the "Asia" server region announced for the global service is not China. Mainland China requires its own licensing and its own operator, which is what the Shengqu agreement provides. A player in China will be playing 永恒之塔2 on Shengqu's servers, not the global build, and nothing announced so far suggests accounts, characters or purchases move between the two.

What the deal does signal is scale of commitment. NC is now lining up three distinct AION 2 services — the live Korea/Taiwan release, the September/October global launch, and a future Chinese release — plus Aion Classic, which Gamemeca reports is scheduled for a Chinese closed beta test in August 2026.

The partnership was timed to ChinaJoy 2026, which runs July 31 to August 3 at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. NC and Shengqu built what Gamemeca describes as the largest single-game exhibition space at the venue for AION 2, centred on PC hands-on demo zones. Visitors can play the Fire Temple dungeon — a returning name from the original Aion — in a viewing setup staged like an esports broadcast, alongside a dome-format screen, cosplayer photo zones and a DIY zone for AION 2-themed merchandise. A separate Aion Classic booth runs mobile demos of Haramel, Nochsana and Fire Temple.

A new gameplay trailer was screened at the signing event, and Shengqu began outdoor promotion by projecting AION 2 imagery across the Golden Bund building — a deliberate callback to the campaign it ran for the original Aion in 2009.

Feng Cheng also used the presentation to cite AION 2's performance since its November 19, 2025 Korea/Taiwan launch: an average of 1.5 million daily active users and revenue above ₩100 billion within 46 days. Those are the publisher's figures quoted at a partner event rather than an audited disclosure, so read them as such — but they are consistent with the pace of content NC has shipped on the Korean service, from the Chapter 1: Land of Sand and Frost update through the Season 2 combat and quality-of-life pass.