Blizzard Postpones World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Event in Taiwan
polygon.com
polygon.com
Instead I changed my name for "FreedomForHK". I saw another player with a similar name on Asian servers (FreeHongKong). Received several praises for the name, even got someone give me a free victory because of it. Did not receive a single criticism.
Blizzard totally alienated its player base with this decision.
That said, I requested a refund for my War3 pre-purchase (they are updating/re-releasing it) and they refunded it with no questions asked. I think they know why people are asking for refunds and don't want to make a stink about it.
There's no version of "I am gonna stick it to blizzard" that is concordant with "while continuing to enjoy their products." It's just rationalization because people want to minimize the cognitive dissonance that comes with maintaining their routines.
Blizzard does not have free-to-play titles because they are such kind people that want to help others out. They want a community that is engaged in the titles, that talk about it, watch videos, play it. Some of them will pay, and Blizzard wins. The thing that really hurts them is if you, yes, you, delete your account. Stop watching videos about their games, stop talking about them. Everything else is simply still supporting them, no matter how you twist it.
I think it does make sense to boycott a F2P game: I'm sure active players is a metric they track closely.
Do they have any way to file support tickets? Maybe you could submit one (or several) expressing your dissatisfaction with their actions. Escalate it as high as you can. If enough people do that, I bet it'll get on their executives' radar due to the noise.
> Instead I changed my name for "FreedomForHK". I saw another player with a similar name on Asian servers (FreeHongKong). Received several praises for the name, even got someone give me a free victory because of it. Did not receive a single criticism.
This might feel good, but it's a win for Blizzard. They want you to play and you keep playing.
If you feel the way that you report, the only good reason I can think of for keeping an account around is to actively use it to encourage other players to take action, not just pat each other on the back. Say something like: "I'm going to delete my account in a week because of Blizzard's pro-authoritarian stance, but in the meantime I wanted to spread a message encouraging more players to do so."
I know this, which is why any message you send to these people should be polite and empathize with their situation.
But I disagree that those people are "totally disconnected" from the decision makers. They are in fact weakly connected, and likely need to report up metrics and summaries to the decision makers. The goal is to 1) get them to report up boycott messages (e.g. we're seeing a spike in support tickets protesting the sanctions of the pro-HK player at the tournament) and 2) cost them some money by bogging down their support operations.
You move mountains one shovel at a time.
Either manpower (many tickets) or big bulldozer (high visibility opinions impossible to ignore by PR).
I DO like the game though. I feel it is becoming something like chess that is its own thing. I may end up totally boycotting it, but right now I was happy to see the sentiment in the community.
I'd like to see more names (you can change account names every season) and clan tags about it. I am not a high enough level for my game to gain any visibility through contests but I may enter some silly streamers challenges.
Blizzard isn't regulating player's political speech using it's regular game servers, it was only in regards to a professional championship broadcast from which they (way) overreacted.
I get why you're doing it but I don't think they would have had a problem with that either way. Unless you're a pro-level player planning to go into championships with that call sign.
Doesn't it seem likely that GP is also trying to support the hong kong protestors...
I believe even Blizzard understand the immediate bottom line isn’t quite as important as their brand image. Which is why they banned that guy to begin with. One who stops paying for blizzard products is one thing. One person who convinces others that blizzard is not worth supporting is way more significant than the money of one man.
I am also a gamedev and find I have a complicated standpoint when it comes to boycotting games. In recent months numerous instances of abuse in the game industry have been publicized. This has resulted in some calling for boycotts of certain games, but in many cases, targets of abuse were working on the exact same games as the abusers. Few games are made by a single person. I wonder if boycotting games becomes a form of collective punishment.
At the same time there are businesses that I do boycott because of their behaviour or due to the positions they hold. I'm not sure if the difference in my attitude towards games is because of my proximity. Perhaps it is because games are a creative work, and I never really feel that they 'belong' to the business entity that owns the legal IP.
On the one hand, my money supports blizzard staff. You know, the ones that actually make the games I love. That includes the staff who share my opinion about this HK business. I don't want to starve them, I want to impact the company's behavior.
And the only means I have is my voice really. I think players continuing the play but changing their names to <insert name>HK is great. I think protesting is great, I think refusing Blizzcon attendance also great ...but my voice. Its really the most powerful thing I have.
Wallet power in today's world might be overrated ;)
They are a bit evasive as to the democratic guarantees they would give their people. I'm ok to push back China's authoritarianism, but I don't think it is worth it doing so at the cost of making a new Iran.
I had most of their library. I had a month before bought the new hearthstone expansion, and was an almost daily hearthstone player.
I deleted my account. The statement is no more doing business with blizzard based on their behaviour, and not even allowing the possibility by deleting the account which costs me something to do.
I'm not really sure continuing to play their game with a different tag counts as anything other than you fooling yourself into continuing to deal with a reprehensible organization against your best interest, in exchange for a video game.
Sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Or do you only care about freedom when it furthers western dominance and colonialist interests?
It's a little different than the situation in Hong Kong right now. If the people of Hong Kong voted for Xi Jinping, that would be similar to where Hawaii is.
TL;DR: Hawaii doesn't need to be freed. They are free.
"When you're misinformed or not educated about something, you never know the ramifications of what can happen."
https://twitter.com/Rachel__Nichols/status/11839322750727208...
What % of Americans could even tell you the names of the last 3 dynasties?
What percent of Chinese could name the first 3 American Presidents? Who cares and how does that have anything to do with the modern political climate? The average American does not need to be aware of the country's history to disagree with the actions and posturing of the current government.
But for what it's worth, the average educated Chinese knows far more about America than vice-versa. These threads are great evidence.
Flip it around with gun control.. The rest of the world by-and-large does not agree with American gun policy. But how seriously are Americans going to take the criticism of people who don't have an understanding of American revolutionary history? If you actually care about effecting change you definitely need to understand the context.
History is meant to be studied so that we do not repeat past mistakes. It is not meant to be used an excuse to continue to make them.
Also, you absolutely do not need to be versed in Chinese history to disagree with forced organ harvesting, forced abortion, "re-education" (read internment) camps for Muslims, mass government surveillance, social credit systems, etc.
( see, this works as a nonsense dismissive remark to anyone or anything )
It hurts, and is terribly disappointing.
From his past positions people would have expected him to be pro-HK, instead he’s asking people to basically shut up. Him bringing warnings that all of this could hurt financially is the most unexpected angle to most of his followers.
Supposedly teams are planning on figuring out how to handle a highly reduced salary cap next year, potentially on the order of 10% less due to lost China revenue
IDK if that is correct or not though.
Additionally, for each company that defies the Chinese Government, there are many who are very willing to comply. In that vein, I don't understand how the west responds. As I mentioned, the more companies that comply to the sensitivities of the Chinese government, the more China dictates speech well outside of its borders.
I'm personally /very/ against the world the Chinese government is building. I worry that their leadership will gradually erode liberalism all across the world. I also feel powerless to do anything other than boycott services and products that don't align with my worldview.
If you were a U.S. citizen who believed that the U.S. government was involved in severely unethical behavior, would you continue to make income and pay taxes?
I have no problem with applying lots of pressure to Blizzard, etc. for siding with China.
I agree with grandparent that I can't say my decision as an executive would necessarily be different though.
I think you might just not realize, or take time to imagine, what these regimes are actually doing to actual human beings. Maybe imagine it's your family, said the wrong thing, gets shackled up, underground, unable to move, injected with weird drugs for a couple of months--just one personal story I heard from an Iran refugee. I asked about his background, I meant engineering or what did he study, got a bit more background than I bargained for.
If your decision as an executive would be the same, then I suppose you agree you'd deserve that "applying lots of pressure to" just as much right? Why do it then? So you just get to ignore it and do it regardless? BTW this "pressure" from the other side doesn't quite look like "pressure" but utter disgust in the moral depravity of what people will do for money. If this is your choice, then I know exactly what you are worth as a human being to me. Don't forget to tell your kids their college is paid by torture prisons.
oh and IF you were a US citizen who doesn't believe the US government is involved in severely unethical behaviour, gently go fornicate yourself. it's called the CIA Torture Reports, it was a few years ago, and you can't pretend it's optional to believe it exists, because it does. It happened and is happening. I mean seriously, "IF" ??? Are you for real?
Sounds like your solution to this ethical dilemma is basically denial.
Don't do business when you lose your soul, and don't do business with those who ask you to, you can't trust them and never could.
Simple.
Keep ... your ... mouth ... shut. Do nothing and let it all pass.
Yeah, China gonna China. But if China gets smart, they'll just be quiet and let it pass, too.
The fact that everybody has been so heavyhanded has been a wonderful gift to the Hongkongers.
The problem is that you don't get into Xi Jingping's good graces by being discreetly circumspect.
You get into his good graces by being "Decisive!" and "Fixing the problem!" This is almost exactly the wrong thing to do when you are garnering negative PR. So, unless Xi Jingping actively intervenes correctly (and he doesn't seem to understand the correct action, either), the situation is simply going to continue to deteriorate.
I've said before, once Xi Jingping took over, I don't fear China as a competitor anymore. China is no longer about "What makes China great." It's about "What make Xi Jingping happy"--those will diverge more and more with time.
The worst thing that could happen to China is he lives a long life.
The CPC explicitly exerts a lot of control over the Chinese market, and they have absolutely no qualms over doing whatever they can to reduce foreign influence and enrich local players (cf. COMAC's C919 development, namely how much of it has been the result of IP theft from foreign partners).
So yeah, you can definitely look at "competing" in China as a way to see quarterly growth, but it feels inevitable that any company that gets _real_ traction would be targeted by the CPC in favor of a domestic company that would more directly enrich them/the country.
While I can understand the financial motivations for wanting to enter this market, I think this is very different from how most other modern nation-states operate and these responses. Blizzard et al.'s responses definitely smack of corporate greed more than they do of rational action, to me.
EDIT: Ah, now that I've posted this I see your comment below where you elucidate a bit on "bounded rationality"; we probably agree, then.
I'll leave this up in case it sparks some more interesting commentary from others :)
The real pain point for me is that i stopped supporting blizzard content creators. Omnislash, Kripp, winter, serral, and others. Streaming is their livelihood and/or competing. Such is the colatteral damage.
Maybe I'm an old man, but I really feel like the best thing for the streamers would be for them to get a real job. Streaming is a fragile source of income, and many streamers 'work' 16+ hours a day trying to make enough money to support themselves - with majority of them falling short.
Very few streamers make a good living from just playing games - many of the profitable channels grew through deceptive marketing dark patterns, allowing their audience to gamble, or being porn-lite.
Streaming does have some value, but it seems like there is disproportionately large amount of wasted productivity being put towards it in the last decade.
There’s no good solution.
I think their leadership has to realize they can't have it both ways. They either need to choose their values, or China. There's no middle ground.
If you are really upset about what's happening in Hong Kong, why don't you boycott, I don't know, all of China? But that would take too much effort for most airmchair activists.
Edit: several good responses from people, including links to actual olympics protests, and links to blizzard pushing political agendas.
This applies to most business unfortunately.
At anyrate, Blizzard has done a lot for the HK movement since you can’t have civil disobedience without the disobedience. They’ve conveniently provided the context that such disobedience can exist in (and if it wasn’t them, it would be someone else).
This is the thing about the whole "free speech" or "private platform, private rules" debate. You can absolutely do whatever you want, and the entire rest of the world is able to react in whatever way they want. You're allowed to think they're entitled to have a platform they moderate. Other people are allowed to freak the fuck out about the moderation or the behaviors that lead to moderation, or whatever.
This is just a pet peeve discussion point of mine as it feels less about the topic and is often used to just dismiss the discussion outright. "They're allowed to do whatever they want, so please be quiet and sit down" type of thing (not saying you're doing that here).
TL;dr- everything is political to someone, so and common sense is almost always cultural.
Again: they can do whatever they want, but once you've made your bed you need to lie in it. You can't make everyone happy all the time, and that's fine. Some people are always going to think Blizzard is shitty because of this, and will swear off their products. Other people will be pissed for 20 minutes and come back when <dope new game/feature> launches. And other people are just going to be annoyed that corporations are pandering to vocal mobs.
Blizzard don't owe me anything, and I don't owe them anything either. Welcome to capitalism. Good fucking luck, it's terrible out there.
No, they are not entitled to that. No player broke any laws when they did that. It is fully within anyone's legal right to make political statements, and it is fully within consumers legal right to be upset about whatever they want.
Because they built their entire empire upon appealing to equality/wokeness/justice.
There is a plaque outside Blizzard HQ that reads "Every Voice Matters". That is the foundation of their success. They don't get to yank it back without blowback when the CCP throws some cash at them.
That plaque has done more damage in light of their recent actions than any directed media campaign ever could.
The reason Blizzard is up shit creek without a paddle is because they simultaneously tried to virtue-signal and pander to developed world sensitivities while selling out to CCP for views opposed to those.
With that said, I kind of agree with you in that the foundation of their success was making fantastic PC games.
This time someone on a public American stage was shut down to cater to a foreign, Big Brother-like government. It's a little less forgettable.
FTFY
If those “17 people” in the US bring more revenue than a billion in China, then Blizzard might want to be concerned.
2. The government's demands are only going to get more onerous from here.
3. The Chinese government isn't going to let an American company have open access to their markets for long. I guarantee they have a plan to replace Blizzard (and the NBA and every other foreign company) with domestic companies.
100% probability that Blizzard is making more keeping Chinese customers than angering a few angry people on the internet.
> The government's demands are only going to get more onerous from here.
Proof?
> The Chinese government isn't going to let an American company have open access to their markets for long.
I see. "They" have a "plan." Sure. These are just empty words.
There's even huge knockoff Blizzard theme park in China.
It's not some hypothetical concern, it's standard practice. The Chinese market is not a good bet for foreign companies.
Even if you're right, so what? Is profit the only thing that should motivate us?
I feel it'd be one thing if they had just asked for no politics to be brought up on their official channels, but based on events that have happened in the past week, it seems quite obvious to me that they're very cozy with the Chinese authorities.
Case in point: where were these people prior to Blizzard banning the player? They weren't up in arms about companies supporting China. And where is the boycott of Apple and their removal of an app amongst other things (giving the keys to iCloud to the Chinese).
The reality is, while some people might have quit, Blizzard isn't do as much because they probably aren't losing as much. The boycott is coming from people who aren't giving them money. Who are subscribe to their games, or playing Hearthstone. Gamers weren't playing the games before, and boycotting them now means nothing happens.
I'm not suggesting that you can't take a stance, and I'm sure someone will post here how they quit Blizzard games and they were actively playing. Great. And I know someone who started playing WoW Classic while this was going on, so whatever.
Point is, Blizzard isn't doing anything more or less than what people are already doing. If anything, we should be ashamed of ourselves first.
Most people don't spend their time researching every action and behavior every company has performed ever.
If your point is just that everyone everywhere is terrible and hypocritical, I mean I don't feel like nuking the world or killing myself so I guess I'm just going to try my best to be a good person and do good things?
I think a lot of Blizzard fans were "on edge" after the mobile Diablo game was announced at Blizzcon last year instead of Diablo 4[1][2]. It was considered to be pandering to the Chinese market at the expense of Blizzard's die-hard and long-supporting western fanbase. The "Hong Kong Incident" is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Blizzard wants money and is pandering to the Chinese government. It's not there result of actually caring about that type of rule.
I don't believe this, because their knee-jerk reaction to one party doing this was to fine them for $10,000 and ban them from competition for one year, but to another party (with an objectively worse message from Blizzard's point of view) it was "keep going, you're fine." Oh, and the tweet on the official Hearthstone account to reassure the Chinese government and citizens that they will continue to protect Chinese interests.
Fixing it after the fact doesn't change that their initial reaction was fucked up. Even the "fixed" penalty is completely out of proportion with the offense (when compared to other sporting groups that have similar rules).
> Why can't they be allowed to do so?
My personal opionin: Because they are based out of the US, and the US supports free speech enough to bake it into many of our laws. So long as Blizzard takes advantage of US resources to run their business in China, they should espouse many of the same morals as the the US.
> If you are really upset about what's happening in Hong Kong, why don't you boycott, I don't know, all of China?
Why can't someone justifiably do both? Blizzard is supporting China's policies for the opportunity to take advantage of China's mobile market, and Blizzard's support is one (of many) reasons that the US will not use the amount of force necessary to enact changes against China.
> But that would take too much effort for most airmchair activists.
Ad hominim attacks aside, doing things like talking about the protests in Hong Kong, and encouraging companies with ties to China to allow this free speech is doing something.
They also use Chinese resources to run their business (I.e, all the money they make there), it's a real melting pot of morals here.
However, the issue most people have with Blizzard is that they didn't ban someone for bringing politics up in game--they banned someone for bringing it up in a Twitch stream--specifically a post match interview[1], or the tournaments and communication channels as you put it. While I think it's fully within Blizzards rights to moderate whatever goes through its servers, I believe banning someone for the content of an in person interview is outside of their purview, and probably touches on a free speech issue or two.
A similar issue/question to this would be "Can the NFL ban kneeling during the national anthem?" The issue of NFL players kneeling before the (American) football games seems very legally similar to Blizzard players mentioning politics outside of actual games, but on a "company" stream.
I tend to err on the side of always allowing peaceful, non-disruptive protest, regardless of who owns the media channel.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/82g25i/having_tru...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/blizzard-reduces-pro-hong-ko...
No, I think there’s quite a number of people being used to the whole world doing censoring on behalf of China. Status quo is comfy. “It’s been like this for long, nobody is getting hurt, why we should do anything about it”. Heck, I’m sure execs at blizzard are saying right now “everybody has been doing this for so long and nobody cared and now everyone is against us”. But the line has to be put somewhere. “It’s good to be decent”. I wish more people started trying being decent.
And regarding your ending - that must be some kind of a fallacy. Yes, everybody knows it’s impossible to start “boycotting China”. Too much manufacturing being done there etc. But change has to start somewhere.
And the approach “it won’t work anyway so why bother” is simply despicable.
"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"
I suppose what is offensive is always up for debate, but I don't see any reason there wouldn't be consequences from folks who live in a free society when they see such a light level of speech clamped down on, presumably because on oppressive regime wanted them to.
Using a sport as a platform for protest is very common and has been a positive for the world.
The Australian runner on the podium with John Carlos and Tommie Smith in 1968:
> Norman was not selected for the 1972 Summer Olympics, and retired from the sport soon after.
Turn off the mic and switch cameras.
They responded with one year suspension and clawback of winnings.
Players have every right to protest their games because of that decision.
If Activision/Blizzard thinks they can make more money in China than they can in West, then they have absolutely no obligation to listen to what Western players want. That's just capitalism.
Is it dumb for them to do this? Maybe. But they have every right to make that mistake.
There would probably be less uproar if
a) the rule that he broke was written in a less dumb way or
b) the rule wasn't enforced in an arbitrary and selective fashion
I mentioned this elsewhere, but the guy who said "Free Hong Kong" got a harsher punishment than people who have been caught cheating at Blizzard's tournaments. To me, that says something very sad about Blizzard's priorities. I think if Blizzard had initially given him a more proportionate punishment there would have been much less of an uproar.
They are "allowed" to make whatever dumb policies that they want.
And consumers are also equally "allowed" to be upset, to engage in boycotts ,to protest their conventions, and to generally cause as much economic damage as possible.
Obviously they ARE allowed to ban people if they want to, but I assume you wonder why people are so upset about it?
The issue is simple: Blizzard has repeatedly allowed (and even endorsed) political statements in similar situations in the past yet decided to ban a player and strip their winnings instead of simply telling them "don't do that again or we will need to ban you".
Their enforcement was extremely selective and, importantly, they were allowing China to dictate what could or could not be said in a game interview that took place OUTSIDE of China.
If you allow this for Hong Kong can someone else call out support for other political activities even ones you don't agree with.
That’s the beauty of freedom of speech but also shows rightfully that it is not freedom from speech.
Except that Blizzard does make political statements when it thinks it will be profitable.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/25/swiss-xhaka...
Even then, the potential punishment was a 2-match ban. They wouldn't have stripped Switzerland of the victory,banned them for a year, and taken away all the money they earned throughout the entire season (all things that Blizzard did)
Blizzard has had plenty of people make political statements about, say, LGBT issues and has NEVER invoked this "rule" before. They even had a US-based team do exactly the same thing and failed to issue any ban until the hypocrisy was repeatedly pointed out to them.
It is the selective enforcement that is the issue, as well as the heavy-handed punishment.
>If you allow this for Hong Kong can someone else call out support for other political activities even ones you don't agree with.
And so what? I'm perfectly able to distinguish somebody's opinion from the official position of Blizzard and wouldn't hold that opinion against them.
Get out of business blizzard. The freedoms that allow you to exist are more valuable than your existence.
Directing messages at these companies is like speaking English to a Senegalese kid who only speaks Wolof and maybe a bit of French. The kid is just not even gonna make out what you're talking about. You affect their quarterly results, that's when you're speaking the language these companies understand.
Companies growing so that they can be worth more when their investors sell them is the whole point of businesses in general. It's the reason we all go to work every day.
Eww. I thought it was about trading products and labor for currency and vice versa. The investor class is just a parasite on the whole endeavor.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle" http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html
Thanks for showing your position on the side of "money first people second, if at all".
If I say that male lions kill the cubs of rival males when they take over a pride, I am stating an observation, not making a moral claim that I am "on the side" of lions killing cubs.
It's a fair observation that the structural incentives of modern investment driven capital are that growth is absolutely rewarded and morality is often not. Good citizenship only rewards a company when there are enough consumers aware of that citizenship and who care enough to change their spending habits. At the scale of many corporations, it's very hard for enough people to care enough to affect the company's actions.
That's a choice.
Companies growing so that they can be worth more when their investors sell them is the whole point of businesses
Also a choice.
Companies are accountable for their choices. Accountable to their shareholders and to their customers. When those groups aren't aligned, then you're in a tough spot. You might wind up with a new set of shareholders or a new set of customers.
They will never be your customers. You think they will, so you hand over your IP to a local partner, and then they don’t need you anymore and take those customers themselves. I am surprised any Western company still falls for this ruse.
I would argue that in America, the public is allowed to exist by corporations.
(Tongue in cheek cynicism, mixed with more truth than I'm comfortable with.)
China's political censorship abroad, enforced via sheer economic muscle, has received extremely strong bipartisan condemnation in the US during a time of unprecedented partisanship; even AOC and Ted Cruz have blasted Blizzard. What China's trying to do goes against everything Americans have been raised to believe, from the most conservative to the most liberal. Political outrage within the US about domestic US affairs is often ineffective because it's too partisan, and it tends to just energize the other side (e.g., the Chick-fil-A controversy in 2012/2013 actually increased their sales). This is different because everyone agrees and there is no "other side" to energize, not within the US.
In fact, I'd argue that they basically never react to statements made in dollars, one person can only control a small number of dollars by speaking in dollars, and can control a surprisingly large number of dollars by speaking in English.
*Two WoW subscriptions + me buying Hearthstone cards.
Unfortunately I think that pretty much limits us to TuxRacer so far as the gaming space goes
We have more than Tux Racer. There are a lot of games without DRM and with full offline single-game experience, like for example the excellent Factorio. Factorio isn't without issues either, because it isn't free software. It is only released as a x86-64 binary, so when I get rid of my x86-64 desktop and switch to then hopefully RISC-V or POWER, I won't be able to run Factorio. Still, this is much better than anything Activision Blizzard offers. There are many other games like that.
Also, for many consoles the software works in emulators and are outside of the control of any company.
Yet, we need free software. There is no way around it.
I'm giving Blizzard a chance because they have a lot of good will built up, but as time goes on it's becoming clear that they aren't going to do the right thing. Right now, it feels to me like if they could personally take the right to vote away from 8 million Hongkongers, they would. And that is not where I'm going to spend my money.
What I think is interesting about all of this is that China tried to make a power grab. Our market, our rules. But it appears that they like watching basketball more than they like every employee of the NBA to be opposed to reform in Hong Kong. And I'm guessing they like having their Chinese teams competing in the world stage in things like Hearthstone Grandmasters and Overwatch League, so they can't really tell Blizzard to take a hike. So with that in mind, I feel like Blizzard is free to do the right thing here; the last thing China wants is isolation. But it's a game of who blinks first, and corporations are pretty bad at playing that game.
> Those of us that spend money on Blizzard products are definitely making our statement with dollars. I really want to play this new Priest deck in Hearthstone, but don't have any of the cards. Instead of buying some, I'm just not playing. I really want to play Overwatch with my friends that have a Switch, but I'm not buying Overwatch for the Switch until they make clear what their values are.
You can't make much of a statement with only dollars. There are a million reasons why someone may have chosen not to buy something, so the message sent is highly ambiguous and unlikely to be interpreted correctly.
Every boycott needs to be backed up with a statement outlining its reasons, and the boycott will only be maximally effective if each participant echos these statements to the boycotted company and in the media.
The former works, the latter will sound extremely convincing (because you see the comments as being entirely one sided in favor of boycott) and achieve nothing.
Let's wait and see.
I deleted the account and I urge you to do the same. Just not spending does nothing.
Nobody is making anything up.
The pre-stated rules don't talk about politics but about offending users.
So, ok, let's say that political statements are offensive, which is a weird proposition.
This is not being enforced for other political views and statements, nor for all users, so clearly it's not applying a pre-stated rule.
I feel the backtrack blizzard did can be considered a fair excusation, and people could reasonably forgive them, but let's not lie to ourselves by treating this as "just applying the rules".
That is imposing China's rules. There is nothing illegal or even offensive about naming your gaming account "FreeHK". (Battle.net has plenty of political account names; seems like half the people in my Overwatch games are named Trump2020, and they're probably not talking about the Starcraft/Hearthstone streamer.)
Edit: I did go to actually check, and this account is currently #2 and Asia and North America, and #1 in Europe. Clearly Blizzard is aware of it, though, and has chosen to take no action.
I am not sure why everyone keeps believing this lie.
There was no rule that banned political statements.
Instead the rule was something like "we can ban anyone for doing anything that might make blizzard look bad".
It was absolutely not some specific rule about banning political statements.
Because that's totally going to happen. Countries within themselves barely function without split alliances, different parties and ambitions. Now you want 7 billion people to act as one? I'll faster reach richest guy on the planet before that happens.
Quit pretending that wishful thinking is what you should bank on for better things to happen in the world.
Clearly we have flags => different "laws".
No, get a ladder.
Because the no country, no flag idea makes people blind to finding practical solutions.
No comrade asulnatao. Since this is your first ever post with your account, they're an American company imposing Chinese censorship upon Americans and other nations. That's a hard no go. They follow whatever law they need to in their established foreign entities. But none of that spills out to anywhere else.
Oh my god, that's funny. Especially since I've been posting anti-communist since, well, forever and even today. Good try there homie. Oh, that was funny. I actually laughed out loud.
And also that's fine. Ban me. But remember, when they silence everyone else, there's no one left to speak up for you.
Which is congruous with you being a GRU operative, or even a CCP shill spreading black propaganda by making poor arguments.
> And also that's fine. Ban me. But remember, when they silence everyone else, there's no one left to speak up for you.
Stop being melodramatic. Somebody disagreed with you on HN, you're not getting sent to a death camp. Plus you weren't exactly "speaking up" for me in the first place.
A multilateral embargo and military action against China would do something useful. If you destroy the world's biggest market, foreign companies won't be tempted to do business there.
What rational scenario would involve taking direct military action against a nuclear armed superpower?
The threat of nuclear armaments is another question entirely, one that needs careful evaluation. It's still possible to have a cold war - or even a hot war- with purely conventional weapons.
What? For what? In case you didn't know "military action" means people die. A lot of countries aren't democracies. You want to bomb them all?
Of course, if we wait too long to do so, then a buildup like that would only provoke China, not contain it.
Sometimes the gamble is worth the risk.
When are you enlisting?
They destroyed the fun of the trading economy by making the auction house the most efficient way to obtain things - even allowing real-money purchases for a while to make it literally pay-to-win until they walked that back.
They entirely removed the concept of "builds" as everything about your character was changeable at whim, so you just had to max out a class and you had access to every build within that class. Made choosing builds feel unimportant.
Then, they didn't add enough interesting unique item effects, so item grinding largely just became "look for the item with a slightly bigger number"
There's something about character progression that seems very shallow. The overall feel and experience of the game is closer to an arcade action game like Gauntlet (3d version) that has repetitive levels as oppose to an ARPG with RNG content that has endless replay value like D2.
It is rarely only the "good" guys that get to censor in the end ...
It’s rarely only the good guys that start with censoring, either.
Blizzard is trying to satisfy an authoritarian regime that they have gotten financially DEPENDENT on. These are not related.
Blizzard appeases the SJW when twitter makes a shitstorm not to lose money. Blizzard appeases China when Beijing makes a sting not to lose money. Both the SJW and CCP sincerely believe that history is on their side and they are the future. Both think of due process (as in some title IX cases) as an inconvenience. Both think that ideological conformity is paramount.
I think I can see a vague overlap between the two.
> a lot of other factions seem to seized the opportunity to use the existing framework to their own gain
Blizzard is not one of those factions and I'll leave it at that.
Blizzard are just an errand boy send by grocery clerks to colletthe bills.
I think it's appropriate to have a contrarian point of view posted here from time to time, instead of the echo chamber this website usually is.
Right, I agree.
Can I ask though: do you seriously value the pleasure you get from playing WoW more than sending a (tiny) message that you support human rights?
That idea is actually pretty disgusting to me, and I'd have a hard time carrying on a conversation with someone face-to-face if we went down that road, but I am genuinely curious if you can expand on that more.
people are more than willing to support human rights so long as it does not change their own behavior or alter their lifestyle.
it is not just the corporations here we need to hold accountable, we need to hold our elected officials to the task. the corporations are going to be bend to whom cost them the most money. if the US Congress suddenly slapped legal restrictions upon these companies they would have to make a choice or make one differently.
the other reason to go the route of government to change behavior is that people in general are more comfortable having changes in their lifestyle and behavior handed down to them. Sad but that is how many operate and more so if they see other people also being required to change.
Now looking at his other comments, it does seem like this account is legitimately new and wasn't simply created for trolling.
Thing is, this comment brings nothing substantial to the conversation, nor does it try to create one. So, it might be "an honest statement" but that's all it is, which I'd think goes against the HN guidelines.
It has nothing to do with the idea behind the comment, and everything to do with how it was delivered. As delivered, it's flame bait, and unlikely to lead to a high quality discussion.
There are actually two root problems here:
1. Human rights violations in an authoritarian foreign country.
2. Successful efforts by that foreign country to export some of its domestic censorship practices using its economic might (by encouraging corporations to voluntarily enforce some of its censorship policies to avoid economic reprisals).
Actions against Blizzard will not help with problem 1, but will help with problem 2.
This is political theatre.