There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation).
I have a feeling blizzard just wants this problem to go away, otherwise people are going to turn blizzcon 2019 into a shitshow
> Tickets to BlizzCon, once purchased, cannot be refunded by the purchaser or exchanged;
https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agree...
I'm not sure why that should matter.
Either the company immediately disavows the "rogue" statement, or everyone (including employees) will see it as an official statement.
I'd translate it as: "We will continue to uphold respect towards countries." There's no "pride" or "our" in the original.
What Tencent has never seen before, and what all Chinese companies need a wake-up call to, is punishment for bending over backward to a dickbag government.
US companies are used to weighing what the government wants and what its consumers want and finding a decent footing (to maximally benefit shareholders). Chinese companies just do whatever the party wants. It's bad for everyone except the CCP.
Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested".
On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.
The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty. Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all!
However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s
They've given no indication they've changed their mind on this matter, so it seems kind of premature to assume someone else has taken control over their account. The Weibo statement is consistent with their public position.
If they want to show fans that their stance on this matter has changed, they should unban Blitzchung, give him back his prize money, and rehire the interviewers they fired.
An American company didn't offend them. An American company "bent their knee" (as people are saying) and ban a user who showed support of the Hong Kong protests, fired the two commentators, and rescinded the prize money the gamer won.
CCP wants people to believe they have "power" - control, and that "all" will "bend their knee" for them. We don't know if Blizzard posting an "apology for offending 'China'" for the actions of a user was from anyone in a decision chain at Blizzard - from the very top or if it was ordered or perhaps "requested" under pressure.
These stars from Taiwan who have PRs in China, their Weibo wall may have post they do not agree automatically. That's because these PRs in China work so hard to doing their damage control job before everything goes wrong. I think years before, this may worked in China.
But something changed recently. There are too many "internet red guards" in China. They want to use the same criteria to censor whole world by VPN the great wall. Once "internet red guards" target a company or star, they will dig everything they don't like(maybe 5 years ago!!) and post inside the wall. Then they encourage everyone in China boycott it. After that, government have excuse to suspend someones business. That's why Morey's twit cause NBA so much.
And I don't think situation like this that Weibo post of Blizzard will do any help once Blizzard they need to apology to people outside of china. But we don't see Blizzard have any announcement to us yet. I think this PR post or discussion inside great wall is a clever move that control Blizzard international. They want Blizzard to say nothing or it will cause them more damage in China.
for our everyday life reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-s...
I don't trust any of these reports about Chinese social media being outraged about these actions by Westerners or Western companies -- it's controlled too tightly by the Chinese government. I could see any of the following being true about any of these recent controversies:
1. The outrage is fully manufactured by the government-paid 50-cent party posters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party).
2. Normal Chinese social media users are genuinely outraged, but only because the 50-cent party got the ball rolling.
3. The outrage is genuine, widespread, and organic.
4. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread. It's just basement dwellers and the like, and most regular Chinese people don't care or don't care much.
5. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread, but is also getting amplified and promoted by the authorities through algorithmic ranking.
6. etc.
Honestly, IMHO only #3 deserves any response from Western companies and coverage in Western media as popular opinion. The rest should be either ignored or reported on as a propaganda campaign.