Blizzard Suspends Hearthstone Player For Hong Kong Support, Pulls Prize Money

[breadisfunny]

got it your just adopting defeatism and giving up before even trying. cause you know it's so much easier to do nothing and whine about how hard it is to develop a spine and have principles then it is to do what is right.

[Inglorion]

Cool, cool. So if my individual act won't make a difference, I should just not bother, right? Nothing matters so just stop trying, is what you're saying.

Nah, dude, nah. The real hypocrisy would be continuing to give my hard-earned money to a corporation or entity that goes against my values. I know what I believe in and I know what I think is right, and no amount of rhetoric is going to convince me to keep shelling out 15 bucks a month to a company that decided to act as a censor for a foreign dictatorship all so I can run around pretending to be an elven wizard. Cry about it.

[Daveon]

Actually that isn't true.

About half of their income comes from China, The difference is a couple million.

With that said this is going to hit blizzard hard ether way, They ether lose a lot of money from everyone else in the world or lose it from China. Honestly both happening is also a likely outcome.

Nope, you are wrong, I posted the numbers for the first 6 months of 2019 from Activision-Blizzard's quarterly report, and ALL of Asia Pacific is 12% of their income. I estimated China is 5-10%. I found an article commenting on this situation from a financial analyst who estimates ATVI's income to be 5.2% from China (and it's kind of his job to figure these things out, so I'd trust him).

People of course will say "But Blizzard's part is more/higher"... Blizzard is basically controlled by the corporation now, they are not an independent subsidiary, haven't been in many years.

[Blur4stuff]

I would agree that it's perfectly acceptable for Blizzard to enforce their rules. Punishment in this case was warranted. They went way too far.

If Blizzard doesn't at least partially walk this back I will not be spending anymore money on their products. This doesn't suddenly make me hate their games, obviously, but there are other things I can do with my time and money.

[Domcho]

Hey, quick question. If Bliztchung had voiced support for the CCP, do you still think he would have been punished or punished as severely?

I am more intrigued in a scenario where someone gets banned for supporting the CCP, if this mass hysteria about censoring freedom of speech would've occurred at all, or the huge amount of people raging at Blizzard (half of whom probably can't point where Hong Kong is on the map) would've cried for no politics in video games.

[Jshadowhunter]

[Belize]

Yep. Again, the reactions to this, all it does is hurt the poor guy on the ground level while the heads just laugh it off.

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Your on a high horse yourself, hypocrite. And your not making any real difference to this. Yeah it's a shit deal, but no amount of crying on Twitter or refusing to not buy clothes from China will stop its influence when the next 10 people behind you are buying stuff from China.

I guess we should just give up, because clearly no protest has ever worked, and no changes has ever been made to society.

[PACOX]

Cool, cool. So if my individual act won't make a difference, I should just not bother, right? Nothing matters so just stop trying, is what you're saying.

Nah, dude, nah. The real hypocrisy would be continuing to give my hard-earned money to a corporation or entity that goes against my values. I know what I believe in and I know what I think is right, and no amount of rhetoric is going to convince me to keep shelling out 15 bucks a month to a company that decided to act as a censor for a foreign dictatorship all so I can run around pretending to be an elven wizard. Cry about it.

Bro, screw you're individual values. You're just one person, just on this ship and give the money your earned to Blizzard because all of us are doing it too! Stop trying to be independent and join the herd already!

/s

I don't care if Blizzard makes money off of all of this, won't be mine.

[Vorkreist]

That doesn’t address the issue of blizzard having no power or influence over China’s government.

It just fucking over a US company because of a shit partner and foreign government.

Thats not the point. Its about Blizzard not China. Its Blizzards decision to fuck over its user base and enforce chinese censorship. Thats whats all about.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A lot of people seem to be being reactionary here and are talking about "unsubbing" or "boycotting Blizzard" as a form of protest.

There are a few problems with boycotting Blizzard. For one, you are punishing the artists who made the game because their bosses made a decision the artists had no input in whatsoever. This was a decision made by the upper crust executive management, who are beholden to shareholders who demand more profits year after year.

I don't buy EA or Ubisoft games because of their monetization policy (which is part of the reason but not the primary one), but because I'm simply not interested in their games. I find their works to be incredibly formulaic, stale, and shallow. There just isn't any meat for me to sink my teeth into there. As bad of a state Blizzard's franchises are in right now, I still find their storylines worth thinking about, their games still enjoyable to play, and I'm eager to see what the artists have to present at Blizzcon.

Second, why boycott Blizzard specifically? I hate Blizzard's corporate guts for sure - laying off employees not because Blizzard is struggling, but for maximizing profits, leading on Esports players only to unexpectedly kill off their league, milking their customers, disrespecting their customers, and so forth - but if I threw a tantrum over every corporate policy, I wouldn't be able to buy food from the grocery store. Everything in the world is owned by some company that is doing or complicit in something unethical. The shirts you buy are probably made by some sweatshop that uses what is effectively slave labor. The diamonds in your ring was mined by effectively slaves. The meat you eat - be it bought from the store or prepared in your fast food meal - was harvested from factory animals which had a desolate and painful short life. Your bank is a part of a pyramid scheme that lends out more money that only theoretically exists than it actually has, and may default on its debts if the system falls apart, leaving the people who bought into it left hanging. I could go on. That's where you have to acknowledge that you just can't NOT support everything unethical. You have to buy into some system that is culpable in some unethical business eventually, but that doesn't mean you can't call them out on it.

Yes folks, you can still enjoy Blizzard games and praise the artists who worked on them while simultaneously calling out Blizzard's executives and expressing dissatisfaction with their policies. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[breadisfunny]

This shitstorm just makes me laugh actually. Blizzard just applied one of their rules. People didn't cared about what's going on in Hong Kong, and most of them didn't even knew what was happening until this Hearthstone player got banned. Unsub, boycott. Feel free to fight like true freedom fighters ! Just don't forget what the "Made in China" inscription on almost every electrical devices, cloths or other items you own mean. This is hypocrisis at its finest.

i love how you think your some sort of mind reader and know what all these people knew about prior to this. oh wait you don't.

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Thats not the point. Its about Blizzard not China. Its Blizzards decision to fuck over its user base and enforce chinese censorship. Thats whats all about.

i would disagree slightly and say it's a little of both.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

As for the "Blizzard is preventing people from deleting their accounts/unsubbing", this claim is brought up whenever something controversial among the customerbase happens. You can't seriously believe it's on purpose. There is no conspiracy to prevent customers from leaving; it's the servers that are taking their time/buggy.

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The ban was rather heavy handed, I understand the reasoning from a business sense but they could have handled this so much better than they did.

What does piss me off though is people going to extremes to really fuck over Blizzard employees that have nothing to do with the decision. One of my wife's friends is a coder at Blizzard and we were having a discussion about it last night, poor dude got doxxed and now has to deal with recurring death threats. Criticising Blizzard and boycotting their products is fair game but you have to be a special kind of stupid to think death threats to Blizzard employees is a suitable way to fight injustices.

Absolutely this.

[PACOX]

i love how you think your some sort of mind reader and know what all these people knew about prior to this. oh wait you don't.

Or even what their issue with Blizzard. Everyone doesn't have the same motivations.

Some people care about HK, some people don't care at all.

Some people don't like the punishment that Blizzard issued but the rule is fine, some people don't like the policy at all

For some people this is one of many issues theyve had, for others it's the first time they've ever disagreed with the company.

The 'reactionay strawman' that some people are using isn't even a good one.

[Inglorion]

"You can't #boycott a company that does something you don't agree with because it will hurt the #workers!!" is some kinda hot take, woo boy.

Again, y'all are bringing up food and clothing as if they compare to a video game. Is it harder to go without eating or to abstain from playing with a toy? Like, I dunno what to tell you. It's pretty easy to cut a video game company out of your life. I can't even begin to imagine the sort of person that that would be a challenge for.

Just accept that people have rescinded monetary support from an entertainment company for moral reasons and that no amount of hand-wringing or long-winded rhetoric on your part is going to bring them back. My quality of life is not significantly lessened by cutting Warcraft out of it, my dude.

[breadisfunny]

I am more intrigued in a scenario where someone gets banned for supporting the CCP, if this mass hysteria about censoring freedom of speech would've occurred at all, or the huge amount of people raging at Blizzard (half of whom probably can't point where Hong Kong is on the map) would've cried for no politics in video games.

nice false equivalency you got there.

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Or even what their issue with Blizzard. Everyone doesn't have the same motivations.

Some people care about HK, some people don't care at all.

Some people don't like the punishment that Blizzard issued but the rule is fine, some people don't like the policy at all

For some people this is one of many issues theyve had, for others it's the first time they've ever disagreed with the company.

The 'reactionay strawman' that some people are using isn't even a good one.

personally i have huge problems with these vague blanket rules as they just allow companies to basically ban anyone they want for almost no reason at all.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Commence the jiggling!

[breadisfunny]

As for the "Blizzard is preventing people from deleting their accounts/unsubbing", this claim is brought up whenever something controversial among the customerbase happens. You can't seriously believe it's on purpose. There is no conspiracy to prevent customers from leaving; it's the servers that are taking their time/buggy.

do you have a source for this? because honestly i haven't seen it confirmed one way or the other just lots of ancedotal evidence but you seem to be presenting it as fact.

[PACOX]

As for the "Blizzard is preventing people from deleting their accounts/unsubbing", this claim is brought up whenever something controversial among the customerbase happens. You can't seriously believe it's on purpose. There is no conspiracy to prevent customers from leaving; it's the servers that are taking their time/buggy.

I don't anything on Blizzard and account deletion but there's certainly reasons for a company to make account deletions difficult. It happens less now because of international laws surrounding data privacy/transparency but its not unheard of.

I do know Blizzard has been and is criticized for the minor hoops you have to go through to unsub.

[breadisfunny]

I guess we should just give up, because clearly no protest has ever worked, and no changes has ever been made to society.

yes those russian revolutionaries someone should have told them to stop protesting the czarist (tzarist?) government that never amounted to anything! OH WAIT.... /s

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/09/t...-kong-app.html

So let's see here....A gaming company enforced a rule in a event they hosted against a player who knew he was going to break that rule for his own beliefs thus dragging the company into the current PR shitstorm and finger pointing them bend a knee and more of money over morals company, thus an online fiasco of boycotting their products...ok you do you...that's your right honestly...

NOW if we apply the same logic to Apple....which btw is pretty obvious that action is FAAAARRRR MOOOORRRREEE harmful than what Blizzard did in any way, shape or form....can I start seeing people breaking their apple produced phones, pads, macs and posting pictures of themselves doing so...

I mean a principal is a principal...right? no excuse that you need that phone/product for your work/personal use and that your life has to go on and it wont do a thing...there are people suffering and hurt over there you better stand up to an actual human right abuse enabler represented in Apple with that action they took....

....or are you just an online hypocrite keyboard warrior? as long it aligns with your online facade moral narrative but not your actual life?

i don't own any apple products. but please continue with your strawman.

[Mayhem]

yes those russian revolutionaries someone should have told them to stop protesting the czarist (tzarist?) government that never amounted to anything! OH WAIT.... /s

Probably not the best example you could've picked.