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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> "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.

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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.

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.

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.

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