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I understand your point; but I don't think Blizzard actions would had been this strong on any other similar situation (Say, Blitzchung supporting the Catalonian separatists).

All evidence seems to indicate Blizzard acted this way because China.

Blizzard could have kicked him out of the tournament and said "don't use our platform for controversy" and probably nothing would have happened. Instead they stripped him of his winnings, banned him for a year, and then release two public statements one in English that was bad enough, and another in Chinese that absolutely prostrated themselves before the Mainland government. It was pathetic.

Blizzard has since reinstated his winnings and reduced the ban to 6 months.

> Blizzard originally banned the Hong Kong-based player for a year and withheld his prize money after he said "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" in Chinese during the livestreamed event. That penalty was later reduced to a six-month suspension, and Chung's prize money was reinstated

Second paragraph in https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/us-legislators-urge-b...

Yeah, after they were raked over the coals by everyone from their own fans to the US Congress. Perhaps a bit too late.

I was not making any commentary on Blizzard, I was just pointing out that they had backtracked, to an extent from what the GP was posting.

Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's stance, but it should be noted that they partially backtracked. They're letting him keep the prize money, and down to a 6 month suspension from 12 months.

Blizzard's terms about not causing offense are so broad that one could hardly wish someone a good morning without risking offending someone.

To reiterate: I am not defending Blizzard, just pointing out they had a partial mea culpa.

> Blizzard could have kicked him out of the tournament

The tournament was over tho?

Blizzard is apparently giving out 24 hour band for talking about hk in hearthstone streams too. I don’t think anyone really doubts it’s to appease China

I think it still would have been met with backlash because Blizzard previously hopped on the sociopolitical issue bandwagon when they thought it would win them public points [1]. A lot of people see the current situation as transparent bullshit because Blizzard obviously wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

[1] https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says...

Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.

There's a large contingent of people who don't want corporations at Pride. But there's also the reasonable view that 'woke for the money' corporations are still better than not woke corporations. It's challenging to work through what's best, especially when the employees of a business might hold stronger views than their employer.

There's also "woke for the talent", which in the current skill economy is non-negligible.

If you're having a hard time finding international software developers to work for you because you're sponsoring US border militias (to use a ridiculous example), then you're materially hurting your bottom line via political speech.

And while that's an example of active speech, there are similar examples of lack-of-speech. E.g. employees at cloud companies disagreeing with neutrality regarding ICE contracts.

It's sad that only a relatively small subset of labor has this much bargaining ability, but it does seem healthy in making companies responsive to popular (for some definition) demands.

On the other hand, ICE contracts scaring away open borders job-hunters means less trouble with unionization efforts in the future.

It's also strange that devs have so much leverage and don't immediately try to unionize to lock in that leverage. I bet most software devs make a fraction of what they earn for their company. A significant fraction, but a fraction just the same. I'm surprised that given how desirable the skill set is they are willing to leave that money on the table.

It's almost like they're anti-social or something.

And, unfortunately, it has been deemed more profitable historically to subscribe cynically to the bigoted aspects of conservatism. Whether it's truly more profitable or not is up for discussion, but fear of Middle American backlash has stayed the hands of a good many companies who would have like to have been able to market to marginalized groups. I think it's good that they've shed that fear, even if only in the interest of profit. You make it sound like it's a bad thing that we opened lunch counters or run ads with openly gay or mixed couples; that we stopped letting backwards taboos throw a wrench in our markets.

No, it isn't a bad thing. But organizations shouldn't be lauded for meeting the minimum basic standards of not being terrible.

CVS stopped selling cigarettes and lost $2B revenue per year. After a few years, their stock is up. Is that seeking profit or doing what's right? Why does public good and public profit always have to be opposed? If being "woke" is profitable, we shouldn't discourage the good just because of potential profits. That would be like boycotting the Prius because Toyota is trying to make money off environmental concerns...

There are a few decent case studies around this move, and I still find it fascinating. They can say they did it for their values, but immediate revenue loss for values doesn't happen all that often. If it were truly for values, I'd expect alcohol to be removed from shelves as well.

In the early 2000's, CVS started treating patients at their MinuteClinics in the pharmacy. It became directly comparable to an actual doctors office, where cigarettes haven't been sold since the 1950's.

Anecdotally, and ironically, most of the people that are aware CVS made this move are inconvenienced smokers. I'd expect a huge continued marketing campaign around this endeavor in the US, but it hasn't been as strong as many other less impressive campaigns.

they sell alcohol at CVS?

Most pharmacies in the US sell beer/wine. I don't think that is the case for hard liquor, though.

RiteAid sells hard liquor in Washington state.

I guess it makes sense it would be legal in states where the sale of hard liquor is allowed in places outside of dedicated liquor stores (and WA is one of them), I've just never really noticed it (never been to RiteAid in WA, though, only to Bartells/CVS/Walgreens). Thanks for the correction.

Is ending the sale of tobacco really that similar as ending the sale of alcohol in terms of values? What shared values do you see in ending the sale of both of these products?

>If it were truly for values, I'd expect alcohol to be removed from shelves as well.

Not sure why everything has to be black and white. An individual or corporation can hold values that are against smoking but ok with alcohol.

Picking one and not the other does not invalidate the value.

>Anecdotally, and ironically, most of the people that are aware CVS made this move are inconvenienced smokers. I'd expect a huge continued marketing campaign around this endeavor in the US, but it hasn't been as strong as many other less impressive campaigns.

This is not surprising or ironic if the action was based more on ethics and less on PR/ virtue signaling.

Wait, how did CSV help anything? People aren't going to stop buying cigarettes. They're addictive. People will just start paying double from a gas station.

If we all waited until we could universally eliminate an unethical behavior before we stopped participating in it ourselves, the behavior would never die.

CVS has chosen to stop contributing to a problem, and the behavior of other businesses has no bearing on whether they did the right thing.

Actually there is evidence to the contrary - Cigarette sales fell in the entire state where CVS had a significant market-share, and anti-smoking patch sales increased by 4% in the months following (src: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2017/02/20/after-cv...)

Granted, it's hard to really know anything, but I'm not entirely sure what you're saying is true. There was probably at least a few people who just said screw it and stopped buying cigarettes because they wanted to quit and needed an impulse. Since their sales actually increased in the years following, and typically cigarettes have ancillary sales, I think at -least- a few people quit due to this move.

Not to diminish your point, but to add an additional possibility, I imagine the pro LGBT stance may have been singular or small groups of employees inside Blizzard sounding off inside a corporation with different values.

>Blizzard made a mistake and they are refusing to learn from it.

That's the standard Blizzard MO in everything from business decisions to gameplay patches in all their games.

> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action."

> Follow that up with a description of what that punative action would look like.

Players already sign contracts stipulating that there will be punitive action for making political statements during tournament streams. I still agree with your broader point that they handled it badly, but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left.

> but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left.

Credibility in terms of having a punitive response which demonstrates their authority or among players who would be outraged over Blizzard not being cool with political speech mixing with pro championship broadcasts?

Yes, but those contracts are vaguely worded catchalls and do not provide details on what that punitive action looks like. I don't consider that to be sufficient to justify their reaction.

You’re writing this with the assumption that they were not explicitly told what to do by the Chinese government.

No. The Chinese government is using this entire crisis as a way of testing the limits of its power. They wanted to test it in a 0-10 scale but found the needle zoomed up to the right stop, so they adjusted the scale to 0-100 by dialing up their actions to even more extreme. That’s why they’re forcing these companies to bend the knee in public rather than quietly. They didn’t want to just disable the HKLive app, they wanted to see whether they could force Apple’s CEO to write a public mea culpa for them, which he did. You can be certain that a person with a direct line of authority to Xi made it very clear that Blizzard would not be allowed to “tactfully” deal with the situation publicist-style.

What you will soon see is the Chinese outrage dialing down as the government gets a good read on the 0-100 number and retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing.

>retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing.

You could argue that China may have worked like that in the past, but they don't under Xi. Dictators are never very patient. They are too concerned with personal power to put long term interests ahead of personal gain.

Just look at the HK situation for evidence. All they had to do was keep going slowly and wait till 2047, but Xi couldn't handle looking weak.

He can handle looking weak as long as the economy keeps humming along, which maintains CCP securely in place, which lessens internal party tensions.

If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise.

I meant he couldn't personally handle looking weak, not that the Winnie The Pooh thing was actually a threat to his power base.

He overreacted to something that wasn't actually a threat because it hurt his ego.

>If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise.

But yes that is a very good point.

It was total incompetency, shown in the way they treated their casters. Generally the production staff would be held responsible in traditional media. A producer or show runner should have been able to manage the feed. This leads me to believe that there was no protocol in place to manage this situation, Blizzard should be held accountable.

Would you see newscasters held responsible for what an interviewee said on a live feed?

> incompetent

The Communist Party of China may have strongly hinted (read: threatened) Blizzard over such a thing not being permitted and if it occurred that severe consequences would happen.

So Blizzard was not quite incompetent, they were just panic hedging against financial threats and to appease the Communist Party of China.

Meh. I'd say just allow all discussion or political discourse and let the community moderate? If people think that's stupid then players that do that will lose out. The community already decides what it will tolerate and what it will not.

> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action."

How about let people say what they want and let the public judge by themselves? Is that so hard to do nowadays? You just don't endorse anything individuals say, that's all.

As seen with the Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets, and the NBA, the Chinese government will go after anyone they can when incidents like this come up. Morey's single tweet in support of HK resulted in China cutting off their relationship with the Houston Rockets and also calling for Morey to be disciplined or punished by the NBA. In this case, the NBA hasn't done anything specific to Morey. However, many people are expecting some sort of retaliation from China against the NBA in the future.

So turn all platforms into 4chan, is that what you're suggesting?

Yeah just like 4chan. Except instead of anonymous it's public and instead of a message board it's real life. But other than that exactly like 4chan.

And that you only get a 20 seconds message once you won a tournament.

When you don't publicly dissociate your company/party/whatev from statements that are made by people associated with your company/etc, people will take that as tacit acceptance or approval.

Blizzard's initial response was awful, and they've done little IMO to walk back from that. However, they do have a right (and the responsibility) to enforce their policies. Hopefully, if this same situation occurs again, they respond with something less than the nuclear option.

I don't know about you, but I don't want every entertainment platform to be consumed by political discussion. Sometimes you just want an escape and that's something video games help provide.

Those discussions are worth having but there are already plenty of platforms available to have them on.

The part I find especially frustrating is the double speak. Why do they say "We encourage players and community members to express themselves" while punishing someone for expressing himself? Just be honest. "We discouraged players expressing opinions that make it harder for us to sell in other markets." That has the benefit of being honest, plus everyone knows it's the truth anyway.

It all comes down to the platform. A mod who takes down political threads on a support forum is not "discouraging community members from expressing themselves". They're moderating a forum with a specific content focus.

I definitely think it would be wrong for Blizzard to threaten any kind of punitive action against a player who is making those kinds of statements outside of Blizzard's platform.