Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest
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That's pretty close to "Blizzard can remove you from Grandmasters as soon as you open your mouth". Sad to see such a cowardice from corporations, although in the case of Blizzard it was kind of to be expected after all their visual modifications to Hearthstone in order to appeal to the chinese market.
OTOH who knows anymore, maybe big corporations do have something to do with it.... it's certainly convenient. If you have money it's rather easy to summon a mob to do your bidding and silence inconvenient people, so they must love this new trend. Also if you have money and power, it's easy to get discretionary, arbitrarily-enforced rules to not apply to you. All these new trends are so much more convenient than the old "due process" thing....
Now if they had got together with other corps, and drawn a line the story might have been different. That said, with each attempt comes learning and the next attempt wont go the same way.
The Chinese aren't immune to pressure (as the tariff wars show) and there are invisible lines in the sand, they can be pushed to step over that will unify opposition and escalate things.
Intelligent protest is about finding those lines.
I do believe we are entering in an age where reputation is going to be much more valuable to companies.
My ISP for 10 years is one that took some strong stances against censorship by doing things like mirroring wikileaks (back when it was cool) os supporting net neutrality.
I kinda put Google in a different basket for years because of their (initial? I think they changed?) refusal to censor search results in China.
And companies who submit to Chinese censorship, I want strictly nothing to do with.
He put on a gas mask and called for liberation of HK. I'm with him, but I definitely see why Blizzard has the rule in place, and it would not be right to overlook this - they would then have to be OK with others doing other protests. Blizzard should not pick a side.
Not picking a side is siding with the status quo, which is Chinese oppression in Hong Kong.
Being protesters for freedom, they ironically did not respect another (unrelated) entity's freedom to choose.
However when it conflicts with their pocketbook, they stay quiet or internally oppose them (example: Zuckerberg trashing Warren for antitrust and privacy issues).
But we have a leverage too!
If we manage to damage their brand and profit, they may decide that censorship is not to their benefit.
We need to be loud and clear - communism will not be tolerated. Otherwise, it will start to creep trough Blizzard and many other companies, and limit our freedoms too.
If you expect them to be the high water mark of social justice, you're going to be deeply disappointed.
(Meanwhile, various tech firms have been criticized for picking a side, or allegedly picking a side in social conflicts over the past few years... Damned if you do, damned if you don't, apparently.)
You cannot "not pick a side" in a situation like this. Blizzard clearly picked Chinese money over human rights.
They behave rationally as a company, but I hope they will still lose on this. The fact this is a rule changes nothing - they created that rule.
> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
The rule is not "political speech is not allowed" it's "don't make us look bad."
Choosing to ban this player is absolutely picking a side, and it's not with the good guys.
Now it is supporting HK, next time it is against nazi's, next time maybe against Trump. Once you disallow one, you will "pick a side".
I'm not saying this ban was good or bad, I'm just saying it's more complex than picking side in that debate. Maybe they just don't want to get into the shit of any political debate.
But for the rest, all the support for HK. Maybe this ban brings it even more in the news.
And "let's not interfere with evil because it would be politics (or affect our bottom line)" is definitely political stance - it's picking the evil side.
At some point, the line of evilness becomes so thin that you will have to "pick a side" if you have done it before. Easier to just not go down that route.
But still, is Trump evil?
Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps.
There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear.
If not this guy, who would you consider evil if anyone?
In what world? ICE was created in 2003.
1) ICE is Executive branch and he's the chief of Executive branch (I guess the proper word would be accountable).
2) I'm pretty sure a lot of the way ICE is acting now (you know, the children in cages who are refused medical care and so on) is affected by the guy in charge being openly racist who considers non-white people subhuman, wants to build a wall and considers "good people on both sides" between nazis and non-nazis.
President is not just chief of the army and the executive branch, he's an ideological leader who represents the people and shows what kind of behavior is proper, and what is acceptable and so on.
At least he should be, anyway.
Such way of thinking seems really alien to me.
But sometimes like in this instance it really is black or white.
This is not automatically a political statement, but just by bringing that up they could have banned and DQ'ed him for the same reason and it would've looked just as bad if not even worse. It would still look political in that situation.
Blizzard chose money over human rights and they will have to stand for it themselves. They've already picked a side, money. Now they lost my money though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...
I wanted to believe that even despite Activision buying Blizzard, it would stay an awesome company. I should have known better.
Starcraft 1 was the first game I ever bought. I feel sad to have to boycott them now.
That way it's clear for everyone rather than having a catch-all rule that is arbitrary and does not tell players where the line is.
Like FIFA ludicrously deciding that a poppy on a Remembrance Sunday international is political. They deserved every bit of anti-FIFA vitriol the popular press and internet managed to come up with.
No because they would not allow anything.
> Like FIFA ludicrously deciding that a poppy on a Remembrance Sunday international is political
If you start allowing this sort of display to commemorate a war then you open the door to plenty of highly political displays because wars are obviously highly political and sensitive issues.
Even in the UK wearing a poppy or not is political.
Most remembrance ceremonies have veterans of both sides attending, and are used for reconcilliation - unlike e.g. WW2 anniversaries such as the now comically overblown D Day fun days.
If they start to allow one country to commemorate their war dead then they have to allow other countries to do the same, and as said these can be very political and sensitive issues. And then if they allow that why not another commemoration? Thus it is sensible not to allow anything.
Not to mark _a_ war, but all war. That point is important.
Commemorating war dead is a sensitive issue. FIFA has to take all situations across the world into account. It is sensible for them not to allow any display and to keep to it without exception even if the British think that they are special. No big deal, just keep football purely about sport.
lol. You are aware that just about the entire developed world, and a fair proportion of the rest mark the same day, right? It's called Veteran's Day in the US, also on November 11th.
Not marking it would be the political statement.
The poppy incident is an illustration of this arrogance and ignorance of the real world.
Are we so afraid of free speech that we must insist on compartmentalizing subjects in that way? Just have Blizzard make a statement saying "That person's opinion is only his own, not Blizzard's" and be done with it.
And yes, that means the next one may shout about veganism or white supremacy. So what? That will benefit or hurt the people speaking, not Blizzard.
https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-...
I am a huge starcraft 2 fan. But from now on, I'll refrain talking about it. Boycott Blizzard. They support Chinese censorship.
I am so sad. That was a company I really loved.
We've seen it from the NBA, Blizzard, Disney, and the like. The fact of the matter is that if you want to do business in China, you have to be open to censoring things that they don't like.
They are implicitly making an example of this, thereby sending a political message.
Here you have the power and the dark side of the cloud: one click and it's game over
Be a hero, a revolutionary, a pirate, feel encouraged to work hard, explore more, improve yourself, rebel, but only there in a safe artificial illusion, virtual world they built for you. In real life, do stay a passive compliant consumer, a source of money (or energy like in Matrix).
This chasm seems to keep widening with the progress in technologies like VR, and this way of organizing a society is very convenient for businesses and people in power. Welcome to Coward New World!
Ingenious next steps in this direction would be to seamlessly integrate our jobs into artificial reality, so that people can sustain themselves, make money for corporations and people in power - do all this staying totally immersed in the illusionary world. Get exclusive game currency, bonuses to your stats from your employer for a good work. Mmmm, I want to write a book about it :)
You have to kill Winnie the pool per South Park advice. You have to ... there is choice when you have to no freedom.
What’s curious is that it now pits free speech vs China with Heartstone own Kaepernick. The NFL issue, I think, was two social groups (kneeler vs people upset by kneelers) with NFL/Nike/etc in the middle.
This new situation has a social group (players/free speeches/HK) vs a state (China) with Blizzard/etc in the middle.
It’s curious how Blizzard so quickly picked their side while NFL and Nike are still not going all in on one side (NFL didn’t ban, just no one hired player).
Also Tencent owns a portion of Activision Blizzard. That would be my guess for who is pulling the strings behind this specific incident.
With respect to Twitch placement, since when Twitch is a benchmark for number of Players in a game worldwide ? HS lost momentum because of the greedy economy of the game and because other games surged.
Another source for the subject: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/10/in-post-game-interview-hea...
Meanwhile in Overwatch, they've made a point of a diverse cast and canonically made several characters gay/bi, upsetting plenty of far-conservatives. (all of which is excellent, of course) Hell, Starcraft literally features storylines about revolutionaries fighting a dictatorship.
I get that game politics are different than real-world politics, and they have to draw the line somewhere, but it's a little conspicuous where they've chosen to draw the line.
https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...
Like most things these days, that depends on which "public" you're talking about.