How did Blizzard fail in PR where Apple succeeded?
They both were anti Hong Kong, but few remember and care Apple's actions.
Asking in case I ever F up and need to go damage control.
They both were anti Hong Kong, but few remember and care Apple's actions.
Asking in case I ever F up and need to go damage control.
* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.
* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).
Censorship sucks and all, but in the end the actions taken by Apple didn't really harm anyone. Blizzard definitely fucked over Blitzchung.
Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.
Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.
HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.
On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.
Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.
Completely different situations.
I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.
I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)