And the CEO remains the CEO.
Edit: While the tournament was held in Taiwan, Blitzchung is actually a native of Hong Kong.
Not that it makes much of a difference, but:
It is my understanding that he's from Hong Kong, and is not Taiwanese. It is my understanding that Taiwan comes in to the picture only because the Blizzard event that he spoke out at was in Taiwan; that he has no connection to Taiwan.
Thanks for pointing that out, you're indeed correct that he's a Hong Konger. I've edited my comment.
The competitor should be free to make his case in his own platform(s), but not on a platform he doesn't own if the owners of that platform doesn't want to affiliate themselves with the political discourse.
I too deleted my Blizzard account in the wake of the HK nonsense, but it’s not like I had bought anything from them since Diablo 3 released considering I refunded my Warcraft 3 remade, so it felt a little like virtue signalling that nobody probably noticed.
Especially because we subscribe to Disney+ (I have young children), and I still buy a lot of things that were likely made by near (or possibly) slave labour. I know it’s still better to avoid what you can, but I can’t help but feel a little hypocritical about it.
At least with Blizard it turned out to have been a very good call when their toxic culture was revealed.
No, sorry, it makes absolutely zero sense.
Not all political statements are "black" or "white", "right" or "wrong" (Manichaeism style), and there are a lot of gray areas sometimes, and everybody has something to complain about on Twitter. And if Blizzard decides "wrong" then they may suffer and repair the backslash.
So the reaction from Blizzard is like the sign you used to see in a lot of bars: "No politics, no religion".
Understand I'm not saying that the player is wrong about what he said, or justifying what happens in HK.
On the other hand, do we really want everyone able to make political statements in unrelated arenas? Literally everyone feels strongly about something. Letting all causes be elevated via unrelated venues would be untenable, which means you must draw a line somewhere.
I suppose it's not totally unreasonable to draw that line by saying, "all content must be related to the topic at hand" when it comes to, for example, a gaming competition.
I'm not sure it would be untenable. People generally intuit the social cost/risk that comes with making a statement in an unrelated venue. That is a natural force acting against people randomly bringing up strongly held opinions on unrelated platforms. Explicitly drawing and enforcing a line just doesn't seem necessary.
> I suppose it's not totally unreasonable to draw that line by saying, "all content must be related to the topic at hand"
I think this would have the effect of either completely sterilizing platform discussion or being impossible to enforce reasonably. For instance, what would happen if a competitor just mentioned something totally innocuous that would incense nobody but was off-topic? Should that be punished?
The idea is that if the platform owners don't want it, a platform user should respect that choice.
When you play in someone else's sandbox, you're going to have to deal with their rules. No one is guaranteed an audience.
You can argue that Blizzard was well within their rights in punishing Blitzchung, but then Blizzard's audience is well within their rights to be upset with said punishment.
Actually, you don’t have to accept that. That’s what moderation is for.
Is it now? Parler shows that if you rock the boat, your hosting will be pulled and your phone app removed. Google censors a certain page that was the successor to r/The_Donald on Reddit, along with another certain chan style site. Similarly Gab got payment processors and hosting pulled out.
Now I have never bothered to explore these sites, but if their public image is telling of the truth, then I deplore the political narrative within them. Yet they still paint a real clear example that companies can and will screw you over if they want to, with not a whole lot you can do about it.
"The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. ... It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely."
Freedom of speech does not protect you from harming others directly (yelling "bomb" on an airplane is not protected). But the issue with HK and China is -entirely- what the first amendment is trying to protect (albeit usually this is usually to protect Americans to complain about America).
When Americans see an American company denying someone what we perceive as an unalienable right it becomes infuriating.
This is absolutely incorrect. To Americans, Freedom of Speech is, as the person you're replying to said, an inalienable right of all human beings. It's a fundamental principal of our society. The first amendment is a legal constraint on the US government that keeps them from violating that right. It does not grant the right, the right belongs to all humans simply from the nature of being.
Think of it like this. People don't think murder is wrong because it's illegal. We have laws in place making it illegal to setup how government handles murder, and we want those laws because murdering a person is wrong at a deep and fundamental level. The laws follow from the underlying ethical beliefs. Freedom of Speech works exactly the same way.
So a company like Blizzard censoring an activist is not a violation of the First Amendment, but it is arguable a violation of Freedom of Speech.
But in reality you can't hide the fact, that limiting freedom of speech is very much in the interest of those who want full control on what we can say.
A good example is the Muhammad cartoons, which reminds us that there is a very long way to go before religions can exist peacefully.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_car...
So when we see it being limited it freaks us out.
Going with the same kind of example: society agrees that murder, thievery and lying are bad things, yet find it justifiable to kill in self-defense, to steal in order to eat, and to lie in certain situations.
I'll also say that it's very different to limit a certain type of speech than to limit speech you disagree with.
Whether you like it or not, censorship among private individuals and businesses is an exercise in free speech. It's within my right to free speech to set the terms of your speech in my home, in my businesses or anywhere else on my property.
Your right to free speech is not violated by private censorship. Although the concept of free speech can exist independently of the First Amendment, the "right" to free speech cannot.
Nonsense. Humans have inalienable rights. Businesses exist on our sufferance, they don't have an inalienable right to anything.
I do wonder if the games industry is close to wide-scale reckoning on working conditions. It really does just sound brutal and even more exploitative than Hollywood. I've personally suffered mild enterprise ERP burnout, but the kind of stuff I read about in the game industry is just next level.
Yes, and gets imitated all the way down the org chart.
I brought this up when I spoke to one of their talent sourcing folks last week. They really need to coach them on better replies because the dishonesty is a terrible look.
Blizzard games don’t hold a candle to the money CoD, Madden, or Skylanders bring in. If Blizzard lets him go, someone else will snatch up his genius immediately.
What makes you say that? Every piece of info I encountered on the case suggests the opposite [1][2] In addition to that Kotick himself has been involved in such cases before and is no stranger to getting rid of victims [3]
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-videogames-bobby-kot...
[2]: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-11-16-activision-bos...
[3]: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/kotick-a-flight-attendant...
I am not trying to defend Kotick, and am not saying his behavior then or now was alright. But the article you linked did not say he was accused of sexual harassment. And he did not lose a sexual harassment case either.
Instead the article says that a guy named Berg, with whom Kotick co-owned a private jet, was accused of sexual harassment by a former stewardess. Kotick was named in the suit because he co-owned the company that owned the jet and he was the one who eventually fired the stewardess, and that was alleged to have been wrongful termination out of retribution for reporting Berg's alleged misconduct. Kotick himself, unlike Berg, was not accused of sexual harassment in this case. (It seems the entire thing was settled out of court eventually).
The suit that was actually lost as per the article was a case brought by a former attorney for him and Berg, who sued them for non-payment of legal fees relating to the original sexual harassment case.
You might be right that Blizzard game don't make as much pure profit. However, COD and Madden are prime examples of the bastardization of the video games industry, where companies are putting profits far ahead of making actual enjoyable games. Kotick is a pioneer in this respect, being the best in the biz at making games unfun reskinned garbage and making a mint while doing it.
IMO keeping someone like Kotick around for his money making prowess is extremely short sighted. One of these days people are going to pick up on the ruse. You can already see it with Blizzard's waning fanbase for games like Overwatch and WoW.
For a gaming company? Even the best-run gaming companies struggle to last a decade financially. If you’re a shareholder, you’re looking at these returns and realizing that this man is a unicorn.