J. Allen Brack: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

[TwoMana]

No, they don't, I don't want to see that shit when I tune in to watch owl, or hearthstone, or football, I watch these things to get AWAY from real world bullshit

You can't anymore. Sorry, the world has moved on.

[KronoFett]

My ''edited post'' only added things to say I didn't cut anything out as an excuse you just can't read properly I guess, or you can't refute my logic so you must retort to ''whatever im outa here" lol. You obviously have a very simplistically-based mindset about ''blizzdrones'', which in of itself is a very weird and cringey thing to be so obsessed over, that cannot be overcome by facts or critical thinking so I can only cheer at the notion that you are done with your little visit.

Coming up with no valid reasoning isn't using critical thinking. You merely pointed out the obvious known to everyone. Don't give yourself a pat on the back, now that is pathetic. Like I said I came here to find people like you and be amused by it. I only came to post on mmo champion today to see what level of blizz sucking was happening. I don't actually come here for discussion often as the moderators like to ban all criticism of Blizzard in the past, especially on the release of an expansion.

[Calenzo]

Blizzard is a business, and as such their goal is not to spread propaganda, one way or the other, but to earn money. Capitalism and all that...

My point is, they were trying to stay neutral(by not allowing political message during one of their events), but by doing so, got on the wrong side of a huge part of their customers FOR POLITICAL REASONS. See where I'm going with this? People are mad, because they mistook Blizzard's actions for BEING POLITICAL while they were actually trying to do the OPPOSITE.

Your argument falls completely flat because they didn't reprimand the American team that also held up a sign and supported Hong Kong. Can't have it both ways.

[KronoFett]

Do what now? Do tell what people I am insulting. I will wait.

Use your "critical thinking" you claim to have lmao.

P.S.- you don't

[MoanaLisa]

My concern in this case stems from some members of the community's desire to forcefully politicize scenes that desire to remain neutral. Imagine chants and rallies sprouting up at places like Gamescon, Comic Con, etc. Could you imagine what would happen if someone spouted crap you did not believe in when winning? Or worse, these places turning violent due to clashes of two oppositions?

I think Blizzard mishandled this, primarily with the initial harshness of the punishment, but they are not wrong to worry and be cautious about allowing precedents to be set for this type of thing. As for community response it's pretty much par for the course: Attack / defense / & the perennial favorite, let's fight about it.

Any sort of thoughtful discussion is going to have to be had elsewhere.

[Darththeo]

Sorry, but a literal half-apology is not enough.

100% bullshit that they're claiming this had nothing to do with their ties to China.

There is absolutely no way to defend China's violation of basic human rights. They don't deserve to have people bending over backwards to appease them.

If Blizzard was a real company, they'd be using their success and reputation to fight for human rights, not to ignore them because its more financially beneficial.

Companies have a moral responsibility to use their success to fight to improve the world, not just to fight for the biggest profit margins.

You can't "Bring the world together through epic entertainment" until the world is actually on the same page when it comes to human rights, and you can't choose to just ignore the violations while claiming that.

*Note: I am not agreeing with Blizzard or anything with China.*

No, businesses don't have any moral responsibility to do anything. I am sorry, I hate the "moral responsibility" argument. You are basically saying they have to act in a manner in accordance with your morals. Morals are subjective.

If Blizzard was a real company, they'd be using their successes and reputations to act in their financial benefit. They aren't a charity, they are a business. Businesses exist for one reason: TO MAKE MONEY. That's it, the idea a business has to do anything to make the "world better" is naive. The people of the business should work to make the world "better" but that is subjective.

Hell, we may all agree here that morally it is a violation of basic human rights to own a slave ... but if you look historically, there were people who were slaves that wanted to remain slaves for their own moral reasons. The world will never be on the "same page" when it comes to human rights because that would require all cultures to become homogeneous and that means we would have effectively only one world culture. Could it happen? Yes, but there would be a lot less culturally differences.

[Spiral]

I live in the middle of nowhere in the deep South, not many opportunities to do that, I just prefer to stick to local issues, in country where people still die of starvation even though we're first world

Lol what. Poor people are literally gorging themselves into an early grave.

[KronoFett]

Use your "critical thinking" you claim to have lmao.

P.S.- you don't

Good god, stop editing your post after every fuck up. It's getting really pathetic. Use "critical thinking" first before posting to stop the edits. You completely change your post constantly.

[Calenzo]

Blizzard is a business, and as such their goal is not to spread propaganda, one way or the other, but to earn money. Capitalism and all that...

My point is, they were trying to stay neutral(by not allowing political message during one of their events), but by doing so, got on the wrong side of a huge part of their customers FOR POLITICAL REASONS. See where I'm going with this? People are mad, because they mistook Blizzard's actions for BEING POLITICAL while they were actually trying to do the OPPOSITE.

This argument falls flat because they didn't reprimand an American team for doing the exact same thing, supporting Hong Kong. Can't have it both ways. And while we're talking about this, Blizzard puts political stuff in their games like creating LGBT back stories for characters like Tracer and Soldier 76. They don't have that same back story in other countries though, countries where homosexuality is heavily discriminated upon. They are clearly being both political and playing all sides to try and make the most amount of money possible.

[stresskiller]

more and more people decide to uninstall blizzard games because of this

[KronoFett]

I don't have a point, but if I type words I can act like I do

The last 3-4 posts from you in a nutshell

I'm amused at how angry you legit seem to be about this.

Use your critical thinking to figure out the only person that could be mad is you. I even told you why I am here.

[Gaidax]

In my opinion, half a year suspension and paying out prize money is a fair solution... one that should have been implemented to begin with, not after this shitstorm.

There is no doubt that rules need to be enforced - I do want to keep politics out of sports-like events that are meant to be above that, but they certainly need to be smarter about this whole thing.

[KronoFett]

In my opinion, half a year suspension and paying out prize money is a fair solution... one that should have been implemented to begin with, not after this shitstorm.

There is no doubt that rules need to be enforced - I do want to keep politics out of sports-like events that are meant to be above that, but they certainly need to be smarter about this whole thing.

Justify the casters getting fired? "keeping on topic" can't always be controlled. The other person can yell whatever they want and there is nothing you can do about it.

[MoanaLisa]

more and more people decide to uninstall blizzard games because of this

They say they have or will. No one knows if they are really doing that or if they will reinstall stuff after a couple of weeks. That sort of thing is always overblown both in importance and actual effect.

[GenericDragon]

Justify the casters getting fired? "keeping on topic" can't always be controlled. The other person can yell whatever they want and there is nothing you can do about it.

After watching the replay of the scene, it looked like they were at least as complicit in the thing as Blitzchung was. They certainly didn't act like surprised commentators that lost control of the situation, anyways. More like giggly children that were happy to allow it to happen.

[Ishayu]

The expediency and the poor process and lack of thought was done straight out of fear from retaliation by the communist party of China.

Enough is enough. It's time for corporations to take the threat of crony capitalism coming out of that communist country a little bit more seriously.

And if corporations won't do it, legislatures will have to do it. It's already happening really, but it needs to escalate further.

[dunhildas]

They started to hide before he even said a thing, they already knew what was coming, they never tried to interrupt or end the stream, when you see any streamer, Porno or even certain words enter their screen, they quickly react to that to get rid of it, the caster... they hid and did nothing.

[Gorsameth]

China writing a statement to be signed by the President of Blizzard Entertainment. Yeah that totally doesn't look like a problem in the context of this issue.

Also the fact it was dated the 12th while published on the 11th in the US (12th in China...)

[draynay]

They say they have or will. No one knows if they are really doing that or if they will reinstall stuff after a couple of weeks. That sort of thing is always overblown both in importance and actual effect.

I cancelled my sub so I could give a nice "FU" message on their cancellation questionnaire and figured they would release a statement to appease us and I'd be right back subbed, but this statement was pretty terrible, not sure what I'll do now.

[McNeil]

"our relationships in China had no influence on our decision"

I'm surprised they can even look at themselves in the mirror with lies like these. They said the same thing that when they censored Hearthstone art like Jaina's boobs, that it wasn't because of the Chinese, but rather that ''ThEsE CaRd ArT wErE nOt uP tO OuR StAnDaRtS''...

J Allen Brack is a clown. He is only CEO in his job description, but he's actually just Activisions handpuppet. Nothing good has come out of him yet and I very much doubt that we will something out of him.