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Comment by datapunk | Hacker News Reader

How do you respond when a character from your top grossing game is turned into a political meme? This is what Blizzard has been learning this week.

How do you handle potentially thousands of attendees, at your organization's biggest annual event, turning it into a platform for political protest agaisnt your biggest growing market?

There's three possible events:

BlizzCon is canceled. Extremely unlikely but possible.

Blizzard attempts to control the narrative during the con by policing the floors to extinguish any mention of china or Hong Kong. Stripping those who do of their con membership. Leading to more negative reactions from domestic users.

Blizzard does nothing. Thousands of videos and photos flood the web of blizzcon of what looks like a sanctioned public protests by the company. China responds by blocking all Blizzard products in their country.

This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created, no real way they will win.

View on HN

How do you respond? A bit too late for that. Traditionally, reasonable companies preempted this kind of stuff by creating a clear separation between professional and personal matters, and not mixing the two.

But hey, these days many people want companies to stick their nose into everyone's business, police "bad speech", create comfortable "spaces", enforce conduct and so on. Well, you reap what you sow. Any mechanism that is created to do all this "activism" will inevitably be subverted by something like CPC to enforce their interests upon everyone else.

Perhaps not cleanly stated, but true. Blizzard quite explicitly catered to the LGBTQ+ demographic recently via an Overwatch promotion, a move that can easily be construed as political speech (and which was voluntarily censored by Blizzard in Russia and China).

They stuck their feet into this arena, and are now realizing that making political statement can affect their revenue in both directions.

The fact that they voluntarily censored it in Russia and China is essentially definitive proof that they don’t actually care about the issue, but rather think it will gain them more money in the US. If they cared, they would have required that China and Russia be the bad guy and force them, but they’d clearly prefer to take the path of least resistance.

I think it's probably a bit more nuanced than that...

Much like how tons of companies seem to jump on the LGBT logo type stuff, I suspect this kind of pro-LGBT sentiment is driven by people within the company who genuinely mean it and then it's up to the company to: (a) embrace their suggestions in the name of boosting employee morale and involvement (b) say no to sidestep potential political implications and potentially unsettle workplace morale

The company fundamentally does not give a flying f*ck about the issue at hand, but it manages to work its way up along a chain of individuals who either do believe in the motives or are unwilling to be the one to say no until it actually gets put out officially. If there ever was a "there's big money in this stuff" thought, I seriously doubt it was a significant motivator as the person thinking that cynically would doubtless be aware of international considerations too.

I'm not trying to defend companies here at all, to be clear. I struggle to believe any company that isn't taking extremely proactive steps at the risk of their bottom line don't actually care about anything on an ethical level.

They can care about the issue and still be greedy and care about money way more. The issue with letting governments "force" things like that is that they might just ban the game entirely and forever.

See the documentary "The Corporation". The basic premise of this doc is that corporations are sociopaths / psychopaths. Corporations do not "care" about anything - only people can do that.

Companies do not have ethics, morals, etc. Only individual people have those. The film also talks about how any group of people tend to lose their humanity because in any group, it is easy to fall back on "someone else made the decision", "it's someone else's problem", "I didn't have the final say-so on this", etc.

IMO we too often have given companies attributes and rights of individuals that they don't deserve because they don't behave like individuals, and are incapable of having things like morals.

I don't understand the line of reasoning here. If Blizzard wants to (appear to, if we doubt their sincerity) support a political cause, that's a decision by the company. I agree that they should expect a potential fallout for that.

But how is that related to Blizzard sponsoring (paying for casters, production and using their branding) content where random individuals make their own political statements (imho: presented in questionable ways)?

Is "not supporting individuals to hijack your platform for their own agenda" now immediately the same as "explicitly aligning yourself with the opposite political position"?

That feels like the "If you're against censorship you support child porn" argument? "If you don't want any random political statements then you are explicitly against the specific political point that a random guy chanted" does seem weird.

Context is important.

Context #1: there has been a years-long trend for Western entertainment media (movies, games) to cater to the Chinese market. This ranges from voluntary censorship that seems odd in the West (no skeletons?) to more sensitive topics like sexuality.

Specifically, last year Blizzard disappointed fans by announcing a mobile Diablo game that no one really asked for and that many felt is squarely aimed at the Chinese market.

Context #2: the trade war and Hong Kong protests have brought a lot of attention to China in general. The Hong Kong protests seem to be particularly popular with younger people online.

Context #3: Blizzard's reaction seemed particularly swift and heavy-handed, giving the impression that it was more about not offending China than about discouraging political statements on streams. Blizzard's announcement on Chinese social media supported this impression, and their delayed and lukewarm non-apology statement in the US didn't do much to change that perception.

Further, Blizzard's support for LGBTQ suggests that it's not just about political statements on the stream, but the content of the statements is important. Put another way: would Blizzard's response be the same if the unauthorized statement was pro-LGBTQ rather than pro-HK? There is no way to know for sure, but if the answer is "no" that means Blizzard is indirectly picking sides.

Combine all that and Blizzard put themselves in an impossible situation with no good way forward.

My personal opinion: it probably was about China, it probably was a decision made locally further down the corporate ladder, and US HQ is now stuck with something they can't fix.

> Context #1: there has been a years-long trend for Western entertainment media (movies, games) to cater to the Chinese market. This ranges from voluntary censorship that seems odd in the West (no skeletons?) to more sensitive topics like sexuality.

I .. take your word for it. I'm not sure what the "no skeletons?" references and I'd argue that sexuality is already a pretty weird thing if you - say - take the US and Europe (during the 2006 soccer championship US visitors got an "informational leaflet" that - among other things - said something along the lines of "On tv back home? Gore is fine, sex is bad. Here? Expect less gore, more nudity"). But again, without said context and without catching your references I .. can't really disagree.

> Context #2: the trade war and Hong Kong protests have brought a lot of attention to China in general. The Hong Kong protests seem to be particularly popular with younger people online.

Not sure how that's related to HK per se, but I agree that this was on the news a lot (I'm.. using a Huawei phone myself).

> Context #3: Blizzard's reaction seemed particularly swift and heavy-handed

Fair enough, that's true.

> Further, Blizzard's support for LGBTQ suggests that it's not just about political statements on the stream

I .. don't get this. What does LGBTQ have to do with .. anything? How does the fact that BLIZZARD can make public statements one way or another on BLIZZARD streams or elsewhere have anything to do with private unrelated individuals making their own loaded statements on BLIZZARD streams?

> Combine all that and Blizzard put themselves in an impossible situation with no good way forward.

I guess there's no debating this: They're in a bad spot and I don't know what they could/should do.

> My personal opinion: it probably was about China

I don't even disagree with this, I'm not thaaat naive. I assume it was mostly about China. My problem is that I still think that the guy was out of line and should be banned/punished for hijacking the event.

Pro-gamers often lament the fact that they aren't considered "athletes" in the general public, that people like to say things like "eSports aren't real sports" etc.

But in this case I feel this professional Hearthstone gamer got treated like an athlete - just not in the way he probably would've liked: If you're representing your sport, if you're on camera/in public, then you're not a private person and keep your private agenda to yourself. Otherwise there will be consequences for your career and your club/league/whatever association is relevant might remind you of that in fines/bans.

I agree with you, and I think most people do, that disrupting a tournament with political speech deserves some kind of punishment, perhaps up to a ban, though ideally not for the first offense. The punishment should be made clear in the rules and enforced objectively rather than selectively.

But note that what actually happened is much worse than a minor punishment: full ban for a year, confiscation of prize money that had previously been won, firing both the (Taiwanese!) interviewers for a crime that was extremely close to just being unavoidably in the wrong place at the wrong time, having the company representing Blizzard in China issuing an apology about defending China's "national pride".. it feels like a set of consequences that were likely dictated by China, or at least planned explicitly to try to please them.

You can object to a specific punishment without objecting to the idea of giving a punishment, and I think that's what's been happening here.

I think you gave me the most pause in this argument so far.

I do think punishing the player itself, even in the original 12 months / 10k way before they relented, was .. acceptable? Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly. Which I think was the case here, completely ignoring what he was advocating.

You're bringing up good points about the rest of the disaster though. Unless they were secretly in on this (and all coverage I saw makes that highly unlikely), the casters are complete bystanders and not responsible in the slightest¹.

I won't weasel around and say "It wasn't _Blizzard_ directly who apologized" or stuff like that. The apology is - in my opinion - the worst part in all of this and the single part I find a little disgusting.

Ban/Fine the guy? Yup. Fire casters: That's stupid. Apologize to China: Ewww..

I guess what made me burn my karma in this thread is that so far I've seen a lot of discussions focus on "Freedom of Speech" (not applicable on a private platform, not a global/unified concept anyway) and actually .. supporting the gamer.

Player vs Blizzard: Both fucked this up. The former intentionally², the latter incompetently. I don't see why Blizzard alone gets the hate and is painted as the bad guy.

① One might mayyyybe wonder if the production team could've cut to a commercial, but again.. no use blaming other people.

② I've never watched that player myself, but I extend him the courtesy to believe that he knew he was doing something stupid/risky way in advance

I agree with most of this, yeah.

> Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly.

This wasn't improper behavior that affected the result of the athletic event, though. Is it true that people are getting year long bans from their sport just for behaving improperly? Like, isn't Nick Kyrgios' on-court tennis behavior worse than this and yet he's still at events? I think as an athlete you have to be doping -- actually affecting event results -- to get this severe a punishment.

Another reason to be more lenient is that while Blitzchung knew some trouble would come, this was an unprecedented situation and the amount of trouble wasn't predictable by him.

Blizzard absolutely has the right to punish Blitzchung for his statement, and I am sure he expected and accepted there would be consequences. The issue is, was the punishment:

1) Strictly because Blizzard did not want unauthorized political statements on its video game stream - perfectly understandable, or

2) Partly because Blizzard feared retaliation from China, and acted more harshly than it normally would.

We can't know for sure from the outside, but context suggests 2 is more likely.

This is where the LGBTQ thing comes in. It's not central to the controversy but it is one small piece of the puzzle. It's an instance, in the past, where Blizzard has calculated it is worth it to take a public stance on a non-gaming related topic.

Now we would not normally expect Blizzard, out of nowhere, to take a public stance on the HK protests. But Blitzchung has forced them to consider the issue internally at least. We now know they have calculated, unlike LGBTQ, that it is not worth it to take any public stance on HK even though it might be the only way to disprove 2) and repair PR damage at home. Their silence doesn't prove anything but it is one more clue.

Also, regarding skeletons:

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-deal-with-skeletons-being-ba...

It's a silly example, and I don't have a big issue with localized versions of games or movies customized for local norms. But it becomes interesting when US content starts to self-censor at home to avoid losing money in the Chinese market. For years American entertainment has been some of the most effective propaganda globally, now American citizens are indirectly starting to be exposed to Chinese propaganda (by avoiding content or topics) in American entertainment. It's only tangential to the Blizzard situation but I think it's part of why it struck such a nerve.

This is why I find this mess so fascinating - it goes far beyond just the statement on the stream and it ties together so many different threads into a perfect storm for Blizzard.

> We can't know for sure from the outside, but context suggests 2 is more likely.

Can't it be .. both? And if we at least somewhat agree that this had to have consequences, why .. does it matter?

> For years American entertainment has been some of the most effective propaganda globally, now American citizens are indirectly starting to be exposed to Chinese propaganda (by avoiding content or topics) in American entertainment.

I'm not trying to be infuriating, but that seems something very American to worry about. As you write, American propaganda is huge worldwide (personally I cringe at - random examples - Independence Day speeches or Captain America). In addition, I don't quite understand how that is "propaganda" in the first place. Video games already tried to "censor" themselves before, to get around various gore acceptance level before for example. That's .. hardly propaganda. And if you build some erotic novel game that purposely avoids showing pubes and genitals to reach the Japanese market .. then I don't see censorship here either.

Now, I obviously don't deny that there IS censorship in general and around HK/TW specifically - I just feel the examples/comparisons aren't applicable?

> This is why I find this mess so fascinating

It certainly is interesting to observe, I agree.

>And if we at least somewhat agree that this had to have consequences, why .. does it matter?

This might be where our views diverge. If you don’t think it matters whether a US company punished a Hong Kong national, in Taiwan, for political speech in support of democracy out of fear of potentially offending China, then I don’t think we’ll find much common ground.

>that seems very American to worry about

It is, and that’s the whole point. If this were a French company punishing a Romanian caster for potentially offending the Bulgarian government, no one would care (other than mild confusion, probably).

This is one very small battle in a global struggle between the US, where democracy and political speech are supposed to be sacred, and China, where they are supposed to be taboo. Blizzard brilliantly got themselves caught right in the middle.

By the way - I’m not American either, I’m watching this from the sidelines just like you.

> I'm not sure what the "no skeletons?" references

https://www.techinasia.com/china-doesnt-censor-skeletons-the...

In the US, if a player won the tournament and went political during the post match interview the likely response would be to switch to a commentator and that would be the end of it. Instead they went nuclear on him, banning him, clawing back winnings, going silent on the issue until finally responding on a Friday night.

There is a big difference between "not supporting" a political rant, which could be accomplished by turning off his mic and what Blizzard chose to do.

So, what, as an LGBTQ+ person, I'm not allowed to be represented in media? Because my existence is "political"?

I think the problem is like this:

Blizzard creates art/items/events specifically catering to LGBTQ, with the concept that in modern western countries this is not a controversial stance but the only decent stance.

Then, at an event, a tournament winner is given a chance to speak and calls for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong.

Blizzard's response to this is ban him, take his prize away, ban the tournament casters for some reason (who did nothing at all, AFAIK).

The takeaway people get from these actions is "Blizzard projects the image that they care about social issues, but in reality they will shut you down hard if those issues cost them a penny."

When forming opinions on things like this, I think its important to see what happened in context.

This [1] is the entire, in context, video of the controversy in question. Unfortunately I've yet to find a complete translated transcript so I am left on relying on potentially unreliable online translations. From what I've read the casters say 'Go ahead and say those 8 words and we'll wrap up here. There's nothing else to talk about. Let's lower our heads.' He then screams 'Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.' Guess that's 8 words in [presumably?] Cantonese. This was done while wearing a gas mask. The tournament casters then laugh and clap.

This is actually the thing that most frustrates me about so many issues. How can people justify forming opinions on these things without seeing everything in context? Why isn't this entire video, alongside a professional translation, a part of every story on the topic? Of course providing in context video gets downvoted, because it makes the issues look less black and white. But that to me is the clearest example of idiocracy. We should not seek to create Hollywood villains and heroes in nuanced issues. We should consider these issues as they are, which invariably tend to be a million shades of gray as opposed to black and white.

[1] - https://youtu.be/KyxO0Ea1_kM?t=2152

Nothing in that video should change anyone's mind on the issue on anything except whether or not the casters were also involved. I don't see how any of it changes anything important about the issue - Blizzard is censoring political speech for their own financial gain.

Why would it matter if three people were involved in the political speech rather than just one?

There's no guarantee in life that everything is shades of gray. Sometimes people really are evil. They're not Hollywood villains - Hollywood can't sell the level of evil some people actually are. Go read about the Falun Gong and organ harvesting.

Add Blizzard's weibo account response to their list of actions "....We will always respect and defend the pride of our country."

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfkmp1/blizzards_...

Ehh... I think in common usage the "LGBTQ+" designation is fairly politically loaded. It really is intertwined with specific strains of political activism (mostly progressive left). And because of that, all sorts of policy views and prescriptions on ancillary matters have coalesced under the "LGBTQ+" umbrella. It may even say more about one's political identity/grouping at this point, than it does about sexual preferences or gender identity, etc.

It’s almost as if non-majority sexual identity was a political statement of left-wingers?

Seriously: that cis, straight, unkinky people actually use the term LGBTQ+, are alive to the challenges that this group of people face every.single.day and are prepared to stand up and be counted is somehow a “progressive left” hobby or “political identity” rather than genuine human empathy and expression of civic values shows how little some people can even conceptualize the inner lives of others.

When Blizzard says "this character is gay in America but in other countries he is straight", it seems like inauthentic pandering instead of actual representation.

When did they say that?

The first time was in 2016.

Blizzard has released a series of comics delving into the backstories of the characters in the game. Feel free to play spot the difference with which comics got released in various locales:

America: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/media/#comics-section

Russia: https://playoverwatch.com/ru-ru/media#comics-section

China: https://ow.blizzard.cn/media/ (there's some weird javascript stuff that prevents me from linking directly, click the speech bubble on the right side of the page to see the list of comics)

Taiwan: https://playoverwatch.com/zh-tw/media#comics-section

Edit: The tl;dr is that one of the comics doesn't exist in Russia or mainland China. Funnily enough, it looks like their CDN actually has a zh-cn version of the missing comic which is distinct from the zh-tw one (I don't know much about the chinese language but I'm assuming it's Simplified vs Traditional characters? Some of the onomatopoeia are translated differently too) https://static.playoverwatch.com/media/comics/10/zh-cn/comic...

> zh-tw

This is just the ISO language code for "Chinese as used in Taiwan".

That's what a bunch of people have been saying in Reddit comments about Blizzard allowing "political speech" for acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/dgodfz/we_wont_al...

Sadly in many places it still is political isn't it? Like Russia, China, Utah... Since homophobic bigots run the places and think it's ok to oppress things they aren't comfortable with...

You name two countries and then an obscure state. What's the deal with Utah?

Well, it might be that it is effectively a theocracy because a church with a strongly enforced normative code of "morality" controls access to political levers (practically requiring membership for anyone who wants to effect political change of any kind), and that church exerts a 10-15% tax on its members?

Which it then uses (in parallel to the "official" state government) to invest in projects and consolidate its own economic and political power?

Just spitballing though. It's certainly not as bad as Russia or China, but it's not an entirely unfounded inclusion on that list.

The LDS church (Mormons) are much more accepting of LGBTQ+ members than other Christian sects from what I’ve seen. And that “tax” is called a tithe. And it’s optional.

It's only optional if you don't want to go inside the temples and don't mind being burned during the Second Coming.

The LDS church downgraded same sex marriage from apostasy to a serious transgression this year.[1] The Episcopal church ordained an openly gay bishop in 2003.[2]

[1] https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-presi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Robinson

I didn’t say it was the best. I said it’s better than a lot of other churches.

You said it's much better than others. Not that it's better than a lot of others. I think neither is true by American standards. Not even the Catholic church withheld baptism from the children of same sex parents.

Just wanted to point out that it's just not far-away places that have backwards politicians.

Do you think that there are groups of people that should not be allowed to be represented in the media?

this is a really illogical take that sounds extremely biased. I do not believe for a second that if American companies did not do anything you claim they do, that would somehow make Blizzard not be threatened by the Chinese government in this situation.

like I have no clue how you can relate these two. we aren't just talking about public backlash, we are talking about the threat that a government can harm your operations in their country for speech. this is so different.

> This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created, no real way they will win.

I don't think they created it per-say. I think they, and probably most of the executives in the industry, missed just how much a powder-keg chinese censorship is, and how political doing live international (or even national) sporting events can get. Everyone in the west is pissed at blizzard for cowing to China. China is obviously in the wrong here, because they're the ones threatening to kick Blizzard out of China unless Blizzard does what they say.

This is a risk that no matter how Blizzard execs managed it, if China pushes that lever all of their profits turn to zero. I think now any company should start to think twice about the risks of operating in China. I think ultimately this will fizzle out, unless the players don't stop protesting, at which point they'll have to stop broadcasting to China, and probably stop operating there.

Per se.

Per kay!

I wonder if the initial decision was made by Chinese Executives and Event staff without consulting corporate HQ, then corporate backed them since they have no obvious strategy for backpedaling.

But you just described the obvious strategy: say that corp should be involved in punishments that transcend a particular event (I'm sure they were already) and that corp has decided on punishment X instead.

Extremely unlikely, especially given the response afterwards. Blizzard runs things, despite the corporate setup as it is force to be in China.

They'll either avoid talking about China or attempt to "address" attendees concerns. If they do "address" attendees concerns it'll be something superficial to try and tide people over while they ride out their spate of bad PR. Like they're doing right now with Blitzchung and reducing his ban to six months which is still outrageous.

They would have to announce Diablo 5 to distract anyone.

It’s only a “no win” if you consider losing business with an autocratic nation responsible for mass violation of human rights to be “losing”.

In the US, public companies "have an obligation to their shareholders to be profitable", and China is a gigantic market.

The rules that govern the economy aren't optimized to create equity or equality. They're optimized to push companies to maximize profit and minimize scarcity.

Without proper regulation, the companies that optimize for profit will scale much faster than the companies that optimize for ethics or equality. Consumer pressure is somewhat effective in the short term, but it never lasts.

>In the US, public companies "have an obligation to their shareholders to be profitable", and China is a gigantic market.

This simply isn't true and I wish people would stop repeating it.

https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...

> "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so."

I put quotes around the phrase ("have an obligation to their shareholders to be profitable") because even though it's not technically true, it has become a self-reinforcing platitude. Investors enforce that "rule", regardless of the actual law. If Blizzard-Activision said "we are willing to forgo the massive Chinese market and also we want Tencent to immediately divest from their 5% ownership stake", institutional investors would run, and the owners of capital would squeeze hard (as we have seen with Blizzard-Activision, which, to date, hasn't backed down).

That's the system we have.

> no real way they will win

They could win everywhere but China, by explicitly choosing to withdraw their products from China.

Most countries, and even many in the West, don’t actually care. I think HN and Reddit are a echo chamber in this regard. None of my friends have stopped playing and they are now talking about the “next outrage” like Catalonia or the Extinction Protests in London.

I care. I’m not going to buy anything from blizzard going forward.

And the subgroup of politically charged western customers will due to this spend more than the entire Chinese market in the long term.

I'm pretty sure Blizzard calculated this.

And kill their profit margin.

> They could win everywhere but China, by explicitly choosing to withdraw their products from China.

Westerner here. No, I don't want ANY political agenda in game streams. If Blizzard hosts people shouting "Free HK", "Liberate Tibet", "Support Palestine" then I'm going to tune out and don't buy their shit. If the next Dota2 stream I'm watching randomly is interrupted by one team reenacting a school shooting to then shout "restrict gun laws, down with the NRA" then I'll close the window and buy less Blizzard stuff.

This just Does Not Belong There. YMMV, but I really, really don't want to see this kind of content in gaming streams and would be turned OFF by it. China is unrelated at this point.

But in the West it is expected that token political statements are to be allowed and protected. "Free HK" isn't a particularly complex political statement, and it is over a topic which Westerners think is unfairly suppressed.

A similar comparison would be if Saudi Arabia had Blizzard ban someone for saying "Don't execute rape victims."

> But in the West it is expected that token political statements are to be allowed and protected.

Is that so? I could imagine a huuuge amount of political statements that are illegal in my home country, Germany. Since I was raised there these rules are ingrained in me: "Free Speech" is not a thing (if we compare it to the US) and - that's the important part - I don't DISAGREE with that.

> "Free HK" isn't a particularly complex political statement

Is it not? I truly, honestly, don't know how complex that is in the end, compared to - say - supporting Texas leving the US, Bavaria leaving Germany, Basque leaving Spain (note I'm not comparing these countries with China at all, I'm just wondering if a separation argument can be simple)

> and it is over a topic which Westerners think is unfairly suppressed.

I wasn't aware of that

> A similar comparison would be if Saudi Arabia had Blizzard ban someone for saying "Don't execute rape victims."

No.

>Is it not? I truly, honestly, don't know how complex that is in the end, compared to - say - supporting Texas leving the US, Bavaria leaving Germany, Basque leaving Spain

The HK protestors aren't attempting to secede in any real quantity. It is not on their list of demands. They want a free Hong Kong, but it being part of China is perfectly acceptable as long as they have that freedom.

>Westerner here. No, I don't want ANY political agenda in game streams.

Perhaps you should, so you can be more informed on a position before posting opinions such as this. As evidenced by the above, you don't actually know what this protest is about, yet are trying to create comparisons that will mislead others that are uninformed.

>No. I was going to write out a lengthier response about what the similarities actually are between the two, but you provided a zero effort response, so I guess I can too:

Yes.

> Perhaps you should, so you can be more informed on a position before posting opinions such as this. As evidenced by the above, you don't actually know what this protest is about, yet are trying to create comparisons that will mislead others that are uninformed.

Nonsense. I live in Singapore, have friends and coworkers in HK. This subject comes up on a near daily basis. On my Twitter feed I especially follow @Pinboard for a perspective on this, every day.

Basically you failed to read my sentence, THEN became condescending. I am aware of what lead to the protests, how the protests look like, I'm exposed to pro and contra opinions every day. Am I an expert? Certainly not. But I care and do think I'm largely aware of the events. I just effing don't want - you even quoted it, although you missed the point - ANY political agenda in game streams. Note the word "game" in there?

At no point have I shown any sort of disinterest in the situation in HK (or political situations anywhere), I merely expressed my strong preference to not cram them forcefully and unsupported into any game stream.

(I don't believe that there's any way to make a comparison about Saudi/Rape victims, but my "No" was certainly low effort. So was your reply above, honestly)

(Addendum while rereading before hitting reply: It seems you also believe that I think HK wants to leave China. While there is a minority that argues for that, I am aware that this isn't part of their demands. My comparisons were made based on the GPs "Free HK" - which my English parser equals with "Liberate HK" not "For a (more) free HK". Even if we only talk about giving regions substantially more authority/liberties, my argument still stands: It was that "Free HK" is actually quite a complex thing as far as I'm concerned)

> I could imagine a huuuge amount of political statements that are illegal in my home country, Germany. Since I was raised there these rules are ingrained in me: "Free Speech" is not a thing (if we compare it to the US)

Well I am sorry for the people who live in that country.

> compared to - say - supporting Texas leaving the US

I don't think many people would care if someone playing a video game said "Free Texas!". I certainly wouldn't. Go ahead and do that.

> Well I am sorry for the people who live in that country.

And this, Hacker News, is why it's hard to argue on English platforms / on mostly American sites.

This poster, in a single reply, just showed extreme arrogance, perceived superiority and complete unawareness of cultural differences - because obviously anything other than what the US constitution says is inferior and needs to be pitied.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm sure there would be some outrage if Spain got a player banned over "Free elections in Catalonia".

Fortunately many dictatorships are foreign and don't understand the subtleties of Western society. (ironic since the Chinese do hire white people for appearances)

I agree with you. I don't play video games, but at this point in my life, I don't even want normal politics, why would I want politics in my entertainment?

Probably also why I'm seriously turned off by musicians with political agenda, like Roger Waters.

I suspect what they're trying to do is to carve out some sort of minimal response that doesn't anger anyone too much and hope that people forget about the whole thing soon. That's generally what always happened. I don't think I've seen a boycott that lasted long enough to hurt any of these companies too much. Maybe this one's different? I don't know. I do know that there are movements that are now consciously trying to drag them into the middle of the political issue to actively get them banned.

They were at the wrong place in the wrong time, managing to fan some pretty bad flames and accidentally became a symbol people on the non-extreme ends of both political isles can agree with: the disingenuous corporation putting money above your freedom / others' human rights.

All I suspect is, with each atrocity during the protests, Blizzard's name is going to come up in peoples' minds, even more so than other brands that messed up. It'll be interesting to follow this.

I love that in reddit people are just taking all blizzard characters and using them in Hong Kong protests memes.

If they blocked Winnie the poo, imagine what they gonna do with Blizzard chars. Soon they will have no more original characters to release on China.

I'd say that video games will be the next social media (if they aren't already). When they created Twitters and Facebooks, they've never imagined that one day their platform will be a highly politicized. Similarly, people haven't imagined that video games are used for politics, but in the end every platform is going to be political. I wouldn't say it's something they have "created" (as others pointed out already), but rather they've only noticed its nature now.

And that is totally stupid, why does every platform has to be political? Or rather, being forced by a subset of people with political agenda?

Currently r/AskReddit is still relatively free, HN is also mostly free.

It's a lot easier to deal with the existence of political speech when the Great Firewall blocks you altogether.

Both Reddit and HN are blocked in China.

>And that is totally stupid, why does every platform has to be political? Or rather, being forced by a subset of people with political agenda?

Being able to be apolitical is a luxury and a privilege. Some people are not afforded this, and have to be political to attempt to protect their way of life. That there is nothing in your life that forces you to try and affect a change means that you are lucky.

The same cries of "Subject X shouldn't be political!" have been around since the days of slavery, civil rights, and suffrage. I expect they go back even further. Transgender people are murdered at appalling rates today - should a transgender person not talk about the fact that they are in significantly more danger than a non-trans individual purely so that someone else doesn't have to read or hear about it?

When you're dealing with real human beings, that entails a lot of baggage. Asking for all of that to be dropped at the door for your benefit is unreasonable.

Every communications platform provides a means of exchange and every exchange is mediated by politics big and small.

This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created

How do you figure they created it?

All these companies should refuse to self-censor for China. China does want western media and products. The fact that companies capitulate makes that the standard practice, and means China feels safe demanding it (or doesn't even need to because of the chilling effect). They can make a spectacle of any one company that refuses. I'm not saying that China wouldn't just ban them all, but it would at least mean there is a cost to China in doing it.

Yeah, that's putting profit at risk, 100%. That's precisely why it's so important that western audiences tell these companies that they'll loose western business if they capitulate—it has to be made the economic least-bad option to stand up to China for it to be common.

They created the situation by capitulating. Yeah, it turns out morals are at odds with profits. Who'd have guessed.

> China does want western media and products.

Does it? It seems like China replicates products that are inconvenient to get otherwise.

Quite a few Hollywood movies have made billions in China. This year alone, 3 US movies are in the top 10 grossing movies there, and they made about 7B

And those are very heavily self-censored.

Why should they refuse to self censor in Chine while they are happy self-censoring elsewhere?

China has shown they will steal the source code and create a ‘home grown’...

You can't totally blame Blizzard. It's a Nash equilibrium, right?

They banned a player and stripped their prize-money for speaking out in favor of HK.

They did this in order to try and maintain access to Chinese markets, probably assuming that the US market wouldn't care.

And everyone else in the room at the time was terminated. Which was the amazing part that totally destroyed any attempt at high ground.

Wrong, the casters were fired because they knew what was going to transpire and actively let it happen.

I don't think that's true, I believe the casters have said Blitzchung showed up on the live interview stream (it was remote) wearing the gas mask unexpectedly.

If someone is to cut him off and not let it happen, it's the job of the production crew. The job of the casters is to try to keep things entertaining and on the rails when the camera's live on them. It's not fair to punish casters for improvising a response.

>I believe the casters have said Blitzchung showed up on the live interview stream (it was remote) wearing the gas mask unexpectedly.

Nah that's wrong. Have you watched the live feed video?

Here's a translation of what was said by the casters.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/dfs7a...

So many mistruths being spread and believed as facts, it's sad really.

Your interpretation is not in contradiction to mine, and I had watched the video.

I'm saying that the casters didn't know before the interview started that Blitzchung would wear a gas mask to it.

You're saying that during the interview they encouraged him. That's true. But a caster doesn't have many other options at that point, their main job is to keep things genial and entertaining. They are not the production team, who could have cut away from the interview at any time -- even before the casters started responding. The blame goes to production.

Original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYCUVBKjddE

They banned him because he spoken about politics which have nothing with video games. I don't think that they tried to censor exactly HK speech. I guess they would have banned him if he would talk about Putin as well.

One one hand, sure he broke the rules. If they had said "don't do that any more", or given him a slap on the wrist it would be understandable. But they banned him for a year and revoked the winnings he had already received in tournament play—

Blitzchung got a worse punishment than people who got caught cheating at Blizzard games. I think that says a lot about where their priorities are.

Based on past events (even Blizzard's own presentations at Blizzcon) it's already clear that the rule against offending people is being selectively enforced.

Edit: And I'm presuming it's being selectively enforced based on who is offended by a statement.

> One one hand, sure he broke the rules.

This is a very generous (towards Blizzard) interpretation. The rules weren't "no politics". The rules were a generic "don't piss us off or do anything we may find objectionable", basically.

Per the Verge, 'The rule in question forbids players from doing anything that “brings [them] into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages [Blizzard’s] image.”'

It's designed to be arbitrary, because if you were to strictly enforce it anyone would violate it simply by existing nowadays.

The Chinese version of the Blizzard statement was different: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/10/verified-chinese-bli...

It included we will defend the honor of the nation, making it clear exactly what he did wrong.

Posted not by Blizzard but by Net-Ease, a Chinese company that isn't owned by Blizzard.

At the same time posted by a company officially representing Blizzard, unchallenged by Blizzard, and thus attributed to their brand.

> NetEase also partners with Blizzard Entertainment to operate local versions of Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Overwatch in China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetEase

They aren't owned by Blizzard.

I'd imagine a licensee, hosting nearly all their games, has much more responsibility in their public statements compared to Blitzchung

I don't own the law firm I use to defend myself in court, but I do pay them to act on my behalf. Blizzard has also not done anything to backpedal on that statement. Honestly, how many mental hoops did you have to jump through to convince yourself that Blizzard doesn't endorse what NetEase said?

They officially represent blizzard.

If blizzard thinks that they said something wrong, then the burden is on blizzard to correct the matter.

If belltacos lawyer makes a statement “belltaco supports child rape”, should we assume that belltaco is a nice guy just because he outsourced the vile statement?

You reckon they'd have banned him if he'd worn a Elizabeth Warren campaign badge?

Really? Like...that's a thing you honestly can imagine?

I believe they would have banned him if he said “Free Palestine.”

Yes, because if unpunished, in the next game that will cause another player to wear a MAGA hat. And another to wear a shirt saying "ICE is just doing it's job". They cannot punish those guys because it will make them look biased. And it's all downhill from there.

Make Azeroth Great Again [0]? You could by them at https://shop.esfand.tv/ before, but it’s currently under construction (the website’s <title></title> still has it in the name). I posted this in the original post of the story too [1].

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=494dkjXL3p4

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21190549

I believe that you believe that, but I'm here to tell you that your counterfactual is not realistic.

The same pro player had expressed his HK independence support on his social media in the past, yet was allowed to play.

No one said anything about Putin, so we can't really argue that. I could pose another hypothetical and say I guess they wouldn't have banned him if he said he believes LGTBQ+ people deserve equal rights. We don't know because those didn't happen, making them not particularly useful statements.

What we can say is that the operator of Blizzard games in China, Net Ease, while posting about this incident under a Blizzard branded account, said that they would protect and defend the pride of China. Blizzard has not distanced themselves from this statement, "clarified" it, or done anything whatsoever to indicate that this stance is not the truth.

When someone you have authorized to represent you is making a statement in your name, it will be taken as being endorsed, unless you state otherwise.

If they had just not done anything when blitzchung made his statement in support of Hong Kong, it likely would have gotten essentially zero media play.

I haven't followed the situation closely, but we never get to A/B test such decisions. We make a decision and see the outcome for which one we chose.

Saying they created this situation is a little like blaming a casualty of war for living in the country they were born in. China exists and it's a large country with growing power that has fundamental cultural differences with the West and always has.

There may be better and worse ways to respond, but we have to recognize that everyone is, to some extent, just a bit player on a world stage where many other forces are in play. Not everything that happens in our lives is a thing we directly caused.

It's common to take it for granted when the existing world stage benefits us and wonder where we went wrong when it shafts us. Both views are only partial explanations at best.

This isn't a fundamental cultural difference. This is a tyranny that brokes no dissent and murders its people to stay in power.

I took History of The Far East in college decades ago. The cultural friction between China and the West substantially precedes the current government of the country.

Regardless of what is going on there politically currently, they are a growing economic power. That makes them the proverbial 800 pound gorilla that people are increasingly afraid of pissing off for fear of financial consequences. They have one seventh of the world's population. It's a huge market that simply cannot be ignored.

>It's a huge market that simply cannot be ignored.

True, if your motive is profit above all else.

Otherwise, it is quite simple to ignore China's demands. Create the products, services, etc. that you want to create. If people in China buy them, fine. If China says they'll buy them if only you do Thing X, if you do not morally agree with Thing X, simply do not do it.

There are near limitless numbers of businesses that are economically viable without catering to China's demands.

Well, I don't know where communication went wrong, but I'm not talking about catering to China's demands. My original point was that this whole thing could have negatively impacted the company regardless of how they chose to act. I stated as clearly as I know how that it's probably a case of "caught in the crossfire" and blamed for being shot when the only way to escape the crossfire entirely would be "you shouldn't have been born in that time and place as it wasn't safe."

You can be a peacenik conscientious objector who refuses to take sides in the war and still get caught in the crossfire while minding your own business and trying your hardest to stay out of the fray.

People that try to pin this as a cultural difference only need to look at Taiwan, which is a functioning democracy, and equally as Chinese.

wait what? why make it so complicated... the simple fact is that people are pissed because one of their own got a treatment they didn't like. i am not involved or following but i get enough in the news to figure what's happening. a simple google search will give you plenty.

also, this is not the first time the gaming community went against a company. and tbh i am not sure some young ones don't know or care much about politics of what's happening in the east. one of their own got sacked. that's all that matters.

so yes, they probably shouldn't have banned that player.

Or just not went as overboard with it. Doing something might have been a good idea to still send a message (both to China and to players to please not repeat it), the tricky bit is not looking unreasonable while doing so. (e.g. certainly not rescind the price money)

But Blizzard would likely have lost access to the Chinese market.

Wrong, it would have got huge media play in China as Blizzard not enforcing its rules in opposition to China. Just like the NBA issue.

Highly debatable. It's by no means clear the rules should have been applied to this case; they were very vague "we can ban anyone for anything that makes us look bad", but what has made Blizzard look bad here has primarily been the enforcement of the rules.

If they had just played it off as the players speech, and nothing to do with them at all, it is by no means clear any significant blowback would have stuck to Blizzard.

The NBA issue is very different because the original tweet was from the general manager of a team with close Chinese ties. It's like if a Blizzard exec had expressed pro-human rights sentiments in an interview.

Obviously we'll never know now, but Blizzard did so much to increase the perceived importance of the event beyond where it would naturally have been (eg, their statement on an official account saying they would always "resolutely safeguard [China's] national dignity"). Once you've framed it in those terns, it's hard to back down. Were there really no alternatives though?

Only if China decided to do so. They can pick a fight about anything they want to, so there is really no avoiding that.

For further evidence of that, look at what happened to Lotte, a Korean conglomerate that was essentially banned from China for the crime of having previously owned land that the Korean government used for a military purpose that China did not like.

They chose to be involved with China, who has been infamous for demands like this.

The only way for Blizzard to get back any PR is to clean house or offer a “blood sacrifice.” Fire all ELT and upper management that approved the heinous decision to ban this Hearthstone player.

It seems obvious to me: C, Blizzard does nothing.

Is Blizzcon streamed in China? I agree - nothing will happen. They'll likely heavily filter what they broadcast in China if they do stream there, and that's about all they can possibly do.

Blizzcon contains live finals for the Overwatch World Cup, StarCraft 2 WCS finals, etc, and they will likely be streamed from the venue and watched by somewhere around (?) 100k people in China, I'm not sure of an exact estimate.

Blizzard could remove all Blizzard signs and advertising. Make the conference look unofficial.

I can’t tell if you’re serious.

But it’s Blizzcon

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