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

[Onikaroshi]

I'm ok with there being a punishment, Blitzchung did break the rules, and he knew this. The sacrifice adds to the power of his statement.

Blizzard has every right to say that this is not the forum for these types of statements, but that being said ANY followup other than offering the support and best wishes to the people fighting for basic human rights is unacceptable.

J. Allen Brack you are a coward. YOU have the power to speak up. This would not be without consequence, but nothing in comparison to the consequences the protesters in Hong Kong face.

I have initiated a deletion of my account which I have had since wow beta. This includes all blizzard games, multiple collectors editions including vanilla wow-mop and d3. My friends have begged me not to, and even offered to pay for my subscriptions. But this ins't just about denying Blizzard my 15 dollars for a few months, its about sending a message that I am done with a company who blatantly chooses money over basic human rights.

I have had major issues with the development direction of Blizzard games for the better part of the last 5 years but I was looking forward to D4, guess Path of Exile season 87 will suffice.

And how do you expect that to do anything besides get another unrelated employee fired? All boycotting a company is going to do is make them shave down employees. if you really wanted to do something about the situation you'd look into things that could actually help.

[Relapses]

j allen brack SHOULD BE FIRED FOR THIS

Man, you even brought out the capslock key. Got a good reason for this?

[nyc81991]

It's not divise to you or me , it is divisive in china, which is the entire point - which is btw why they protest in the first place, how exactly is that hard to grasp.

Obviously you're the one having a hard time grasping things. You responded to my comment saying he didn't say something, I provided the quote and now you changed your stance as if I was saying something else. Good job.

[Kayze]

Considering Blizzard apologized to the Chinese government and failed to enforce this rule with a American University college team that held up a "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz" sign (they cut the footage and didn't punish the team), this excuse is really quite terrible. I mean, not only were they not punished, they were offered another match.

Wake up Blizzard shills...

[Relapses]

Considering Blizzard apologized to the Chinese government and failed to enforce this rule with a American University college team that held up a "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz" sign (they cut the footage and didn't punish the team), this excuse is really quite terrible. I mean, not only where they not punished, they were offered another match.

Wake up Blizzard shrills...

Yeah, you figured everything out. Hey, did you know that Blizzard likes money? Pools of money.

[Corroc]

Don't know how many times it needs to be said but. it's not a political opinion, unless you're willing to say you're actually against freedom and democracy. Someone stood up for civil rights, NOT political opinion-spreading. Civil rights and he defense of them should not be met with punishment, and definitely not while hiding behind some bogus excuse calling it "political opinion". Last time a country in the west did that we got Nazi Germany.

If you are trying to say what is happening in HK is not political then you are wrong. its dispute between the two governments and citizens. None of that "its about freedom so its not political" makes sense. Please try to educate yourself for the sake of the people who are actually trying to fix something in HK.

[Kayze]

Yeah, you figured everything out. Hey, did you know that Blizzard likes money? Pools of money.

Hey, did you know that in this market economy, you can choose who you do business with? Seems like their money-motivated decisions shouldn't be so shortsighted. I guess they can have fun with Diablo Immortals in their China home instead now.

[Onikaroshi]

If you are trying to say what is happening in HK is not political then you are wrong. its dispute between the two governments and citizens. None of that "its about freedom so its not political" makes sense. Please try to educate yourself for the sake of the people who are actually trying to fix something in HK.

I've said it about 100 times now, and I'll keep saying it, most of the people who are up in arms over this don't even know what started the Honk Kong protests and what continues feeding it, they're just outraged for the sake of outrage.

[Muajin76]

Considering Blizzard apologized to the Chinese government and failed to enforce this rule with a American University college team that held up a "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz" sign (they cut the footage and didn't punish the team), this excuse is really quite terrible. I mean, not only where they not punished, they were offered another match.

Wake up Blizzard shrills...

It's pretty clear why though. Said American team doesn't make Blizzard money. :P
The apology/punishment was meant to keep financial business ties with China duh.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, did you know that in this market economy, you can choose who you do business with? Seems like their money-motivated decisions shouldn't be so shortsighted. I guess they can have fun with Diablo Immortals in their China home instead now.

Sounds like their *every voice counts* motto needs to be altered in light of this recent situation. :P

- - - Updated - - -

If you are trying to say what is happening in HK is not political then you are wrong. its dispute between the two governments and citizens. None of that "its about freedom so its not political" makes sense. Please try to educate yourself for the sake of the people who are actually trying to fix something in HK.

You do realize it's the same government, HK and mainland. One country-two systems. I do find it funny how they claim HK to be part of China, yet are unable to do anything about the situation due to the 2 system crap brought about when UK gave HK back to China.

[Relapses]

Hey, did you know that in this market economy, you can choose who you do business with? Seems like their money-motivated decisions shouldn't be so shortsighted. I guess they can have fun with Diablo Immortals in their China home instead now.

Way to show it to the evil corporate overlords! Capitalism is, after all, the root of all evil and lord knows a fucking video game where people slay internet dragons for imaginary loot... well, the internet justice crusade has to start somewhere, right? The safety of your happy little keyboard must be nice. Why actually do something that'll make a difference when you can use mean words on the internet to make the faceless corporation feel like it made a boo-boo?



inb4 somebody accuses me of supporting China's regime because I dare to have a dissenting opinion about bullshit outrage culture

[Polarthief]

My $0.02 on the matter: It sucks, but literally every other large for-profit company would do the same thing because they all do business with China, and if you don't, you get banned in China (such as South Park just did). You can't have your cake and eat it too.

By no means am I supporting their decision. I'm firmly planted with my #FuckChinaCensorship thoughts, but I at least understand why they did it and other large companies are doing the same. Do I like it? Fuck no, but again, I understand.

Seriously though, fuck China's gov.

[Muajin76]

My $0.02 on the matter: It sucks, but literally every other large for-profit company would do the same thing because they all do business with China, and if you don't, you get banned in China (such as South Park just did). You can't have your cake and eat it too.

By no means am I supporting their decision. I'm firmly planted with my #FuckChinaCensorship thoughts, but I at least understand why they did it and other large companies are doing the same. Do I like it? Fuck no, but again, I understand.

Seriously though, fuck China's gov.

I've lived in Beijing for 2.5 years now. It's been interesting. From a business standpoint, I understand their decision. They claim to be a global company, but when you get down to it, it's all about the almighty $$. It's when they clearly state that it wasn't due to their connection with China that they made their decision, that pissed people off. If they were honest about their decision and stated the real reason for the punishment, i think that would have lessened the hatred from gamers. *maybe*
Blizz would lose a ton of cash flow if they decided to go with their moral values. :P

[Relapses]

I've lived in Beijing for 2.5 years now. It's been interesting. From a business standpoint, I understand their decision. It's when they clearly state that it wasn't due to their connection with China that they made their decision. If they were honest about their decision and stated the real reason for the punishment, i think that would have lessened the hatred from gamers. *maybe*

Nah, the internet doesn't need an excuse to give itself pats on the back and empty platitudes about how they're sticking it to the man by refusing to support anything even tangentially associated with a perceived humanitarian crisis. Logic and reason are the first things to go when circlejerking each other into the stratosphere over your moral superiority is on the line.

[Muajin76]

Nah, the internet doesn't need an excuse to give itself pats on the back and empty platitudes about how they're sticking it to the man by refusing to support anything even tangentially associated with a perceived humanitarian crisis. Logic and reason are the first things to go when circlejerking each other into the stratosphere over your moral superiority is on the line.

Sadly this is very true.

[Nachturnal]

inb4 somebody accuses me of supporting China's regime because I dare to have a dissenting opinion about bullshit outrage culture

I don't understand this. Why does it have to be bullshit? Why can't someone have an opinion and choose to express it how they feel like? In a world filled with all sorts of injustices among a populace of apathy, why is it bullshit to state that you don't agree with the way a company does something. I'm not from Hong Kong, I don't know what they're going through, but I understand the general idea of what's happening and what they're hoping to achieve.

There's so much wrong in the world and we do very little to stop it, and I get it, we all have our lives to live, we're comfortable with the pleasures we enjoy when we don't have to deal with the consequences of our comforts. But at the least in my powerlessness, can I vote with my wallet to boycott and not support something I find morally reprehensible? Why does it have to be bullshit? Yeah I'm not out protesting or fighting to make things better, I want to, I do little things in my daily life to at least put some good out in the world. What's wrong with some outrage if it's for the benefit of someone else? Or at the least doing something to at least wipe yourself of some personal guilt?

[Detritivores]

It is completely bananas to me how angry the community is over this. Let me preface my statement by saying that I unequivocally support freedom and human rights in Hong Kong, blahblahblah. Let me also preface this by saying that I am, at least by the standards of this forum, an SJW snowflake libcuck, with a bottomless pit of concern in the core of my being for my fellow humans and the suffering perpetrated upon them by others, as well as a genuine desire to limit said suffering.

That being said, a person participating in an esports tournament hosted by a private company, broke said company's very clearly stated rules. I don't care that everyone wearing tin foil beanies thinks it had to do with them caring about the Chinese market. Find me a clip of a Hearthstone Grandmaster, on the official Blizzard stream, praising Chinese policy towards HK or communism generally or anything remotely similar. It doesn't exist. So enough of the virtue signaling please. I get that for some reason, a lot of you are woke with regards to Hong Kong, and only Hong Kong. But Blizz would have to be insane to sanction political speech on their esports platform.

I'm truly fascinated by this. Blizz took the most mild of steps (and then walked it back) to preserve the neutrality of their esports platform. And everyone has their pitchforks out. There are so many moral compromises that adult humans make to just walk out our doors and live each day under this glorious system of global capitalism. Most of us wear clothing made by child slaves and eat food that will destroy the planet as we know it before long. If you pay taxes in the US like I do, you support the torture of children and god only knows what other atrocities. But the last straw, the thing we just couldn't stomach, was a global manufacturer of video games preferring one of their competitors express their political beliefs outside their officially sanctioned platform. Even if it was purely to suck up to China, it is mandated by the economic system we all profess is superior. If one angry person exists who can present morally consistent views on this incident and the rest of their life and politics, I can respect that. But I have yet to see it.

[Onikaroshi]

I don't understand this. Why does it have to be bullshit? Why can't someone have an opinion and choose to express it how they feel like? In a world filled with all sorts of injustices among a populace of apathy, why is it bullshit to state that you don't agree with the way a company does something. I'm not from Hong Kong, I don't know what they're going through, but I understand the general idea of what's happening and what they're hoping to achieve.

There's so much wrong in the world and we do very little to stop it, and I get it, we all have our lives to live, we're comfortable with the pleasures we enjoy when we don't have to deal with the consequences of our comforts. But at the least in my powerlessness, can I vote with my wallet to boycott and not support something I find morally reprehensible? Why does it have to be bullshit? Yeah I'm not out protesting or fighting to make things better, I want to, I do little things in my daily life to at least put some good out in the world. What's wrong with some outrage if it's for the benefit of someone else? Or at the least doing something to at least wipe yourself of some personal guilt?

It's called bullshit outrage culture because people don't latch on to one thing and fight for it, no, it's not about giving opinions and such. It's bullshit because outrage culture is about getting super steaming mad at one thing until the next thing comes along and you completely forget about it and latch onto the next thing. Last week NBA, this week Blizzard, next week who knows, maybe Trump will make another blunder and it'll shift to him.

[Sulika]

I've said it about 100 times now, and I'll keep saying it, most of the people who are up in arms over this don't even know what started the Honk Kong protests and what continues feeding it, they're just outraged for the sake of outrage.

That's just nonsense and you know it. You don't need to be very well informed about the reasons why hundreds of thousands of civilians are protesting the actions of their government to know that the government is probably doing something wrong and express solidarity with those people. You also don't need to be very well up on the overarching issues to know handing out this severe a punishment for a pretty minor incident is very much Blizzard trying to appease a foreign government at the expense of the values they claim to hold. Nothing about this is very complicated and you can understand it completely without having a clue about why or how the protests began.

It's like seeing an adult punch a child in the face. Yeah, maybe there is a complicated story and a long series of events that led up to it happening but you can know the adults action was wrong without ever having any idea what started it all. Some actions are worthy of criticism regardless of the backstory or excuses that might be used to defend them and this is one of them.

[Onikaroshi]

That's just nonsense and you know it. You don't need to be very well informed about the reasons why hundreds of thousands of civilians are protesting the actions of their government to know that the government is probably doing something wrong and express solidarity with those people. You also don't need to be very well up on the overarching issues to know handing out this severe a punishment for a pretty minor incident is very much Blizzard trying to appease a foreign government at the expense of the values they claim to hold. Nothing about this is very complicated and you can understand it completely without having a clue about why or how the protests began.

It's like seeing an adult punch a child in the face. Yeah, maybe there is a complicated story and a long series of events that led up to it happening but you can know the adults action was wrong without ever having any idea what started it all. Some actions are worthy of criticism regardless of the backstory or excuses that might be used to defend them and this is one of them.

It's not nonsense, people in this very thread have said they have no idea why it started just that China is being inhumane, which is true. But must don't know about the murder and the bill and what it was for, or why Hong Kong citizens are worried about it, or the fact that it is currently shelved.

[W1shm4ster]

I can understand why some people would delete their Accounts and at the same time i can't.

I put a lot of time and effort into WoW and some other Blizzard games, i like them (yes, i even like BFA, the first patch azerite was bad tho), so deleting my Account to "send a message" would never be an option for me. I also met a lot of great people in that game, so this would also not sit right with me, since i also play those games with them still over all those years. Im disappointed in Blizzard, but i also see their view point. By view point i mean, that you shouldn't use their official streams as a platform for any kind of outside the game stuff (which is kinda hypocritical, since they did all the other political motivated things, but you can argue that they aren't).

People say the Hong Kong happenings are human rights and not politics, but this is wrong, this is also politics, especially for China themselves. They want to give off the image of a stable country and if you have an entire city like Hong Kong saying "no" to their entire political system and actively go against them with protests, which aren't even allowed in China, then they get a political problem. We're all aware of China, but since that Blitzchung statement and his punishment, it just shows more and more. Besides the NBA.

There were multiple problems for Blizzard here: Their own rules, the tension in Hong Kong/China and this was on a Taiwanese stream, that was for China and a player from Hong Kong said this. They obviously don't want to lose their right to sell in China, makes sense. But they're an US based international gaming company and their first values should be their values of their own country and the ones they've as a company even engraves at a statue, but from the outside and how sefer the punishment was, it all just looked like they did this for China, which i still believe is the truth.

People also call out how hypocritical they were with not punishing the university team, but come on people, they would've lost there and then no matter what they chose to do. Punish them and they will look even more like China boot lickers, but not punshing them also made them look really bad, it was a lose lose situation for them. They couldn't please the people there no matter what they did, so they decided to simply do nothing about it.

They also just recently stopped selling Mei statues in the shop now, which does make them look bad again, since now it seems like they try to please China more, sad.

Side note: Some people looked forward to a Diablo 4, but now rather want to play Path of Exile, i kinda want to remind you, while GGG hasn't done anything like that, talking politics in their chat is banned since a few weeks now and they're nearly 100% Tencent owned (they will be fully owned over the next ~6 years), which is a huge China company with part into the social credit stuff, while they only have 5% into Blizzard. So, if you do this to boycott Blizzard and try to stop giving money to China in sense too, well, you're doing it wrong with such statements.