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

[Ianus]

Are you actually sure or should you have started your comment with "My vague guess based on my gut feeling is.."?
If you're sure, can you show me the quarterly report from Blizzard that actually supports this? I bet you can't. Because there's no fucking correlation.

Certainly, corporations like riding the bandwagon wave for profits.. so its true

[grexly75]

Probably not.

We all know Apple Fanboys would *NEVER* give up their overpriced crap

Which shows with the crap that Apple have done for China, that those who live and breathe Apple stuff will over look it..

[Teph]

so what about all the pride overwatch garbage that they forced so hard? Business does business stuff, no one is surprised.

[Rafalga]

Lots of citizen point seekers are in this thread it seems. You guys are so easy to spot.

[GreenJesus]

If blizz would allow one person, whos opinion you share, to get away, that opens a precedent to other acts as such, and before you know, players will be shouting their political positions all over the place. I don't want gender politics in my MDI streams or let's say if someone, whos opinion you don't share did it? Let's say... India vs Pakistan or any other world conflict where people are at disagreement? Gun politics of US too? A pro gun person would start shouting some stupid stuff? Masses of people would urge to blizz to take action against someone who is a pro-gun. And there would be a bunch who loves owning guns too who would shout about their freedoms.

Except blizzard did a whole overwatch tournament about gay pride when it could be considered divisive in certain countries. They csnt have it both ways.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

"Stand up for what's good in this world, unless it costs us money!"

every corporation ever. shame on you blizzard.

bet if China had some shit to say about the gun violence in America blizzard wouldn't do shit.

[Ianus]

Which shows with the crap that Apple have done for China, that those who live and breathe Apple stuff will over look it..

I completely agree with malaky

[Bhanzai]

I don't allow political talk at my magic tournaments in my store so I don't see the big deal why this guy got banned. He knew the rules, chose to break them and got banned for it. Good.

There's many, many ways to share your views outside somebody else's platform, do it there.

[Arrashi]

Attention? Is this a joke? He was laughing, shoutcasters were laughing... This was an act of childish behaviour. If you want to bring attention you are serious about it, not laughing like a 10y old that did something funny in class...

And he was supposed to do what? Deliver 10 hour speech with all honors?

[TwoMana]

Certainly, corporations like riding the bandwagon wave for profits.. so its true

Shouldn’t be hard to find the quarterly report in that case? Go on.

[GUZ]

Why is this even news fuck off. I come here for game updates.

[Clbull]

Why is this even news fuck off. I come here for game updates.

It certainly is newsworthy, especially when Blizzard see basic human rights as a "divisive political issue"

[Aretak]

Why is this even news fuck off. I come here for game updates.

And yet you wasted your extremely valuable time clicking into the article, then posting this worthless comment. Clearly you actually have nothing better to do, so what does it matter?

[TheRagebear]

Look guys I posted the thing xDDDD

I did. I was hoping some of the posters would disappear but it seems they're just stupid rather than hostages of the CCP citizens.

[TheRagebear]

I am almost certain that him getting the prize money was predicated on him giving a neutral statement.

1.) Duh

2.) inc conspiracy theorist accusations

[THEORACLE64]

Gambit5555 and Theoracle64 are one and the same person, please remove this kinda chinese bot scum from here. thank you

What? :,) most definitely not. Also, if you'd care to read any of my previous posts regarding the matter you'd see that I've stated that China is a disgusting, inhumane country that deserves to rot and that I support Hong Kong 100%. However, like I've also said, were Blizzard wrong in punishing him for breaking the stream rules? No. Were they too harsh and went about it in the wrong way? Yes.

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It certainly is newsworthy, especially when Blizzard see basic human rights as a "divisive political issue"

Apart from they don't. It doesn't matter on what the issue was, whether than was pro or anti HK, pro or anti trump, rules were broken. People are being completely retarded about the whole thing and taking it way out of context.

[Gorsameth]

What? :,) most definitely not. Also, if you'd care to read any of my previous posts regarding the matter you'd see that I've stated that China is a disgusting, inhumane country that deserves to rot and that I support Hong Kong 100%. However, like I've also said, were Blizzard wrong in punishing him for breaking the stream rules? No. Were they too harsh and went about it in the wrong way? Yes.

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Apart from they don't. It doesn't matter on what the issue was, whether than was pro or anti HK, pro or anti trump, rules were broken. People are being completely retarded about the whole thing and taking it way out of context.

Ofc it matters what the issue was. a collegiate team making the same statement wasn't banned. Because it wasn't a broadcast shown in China.
Other political opinions are fine, like support for gays, because it was not an inconvenience for Blizzard, because it wasn't shown in China.

So the problem isn't that he made the statement, its that he made the statement where China could see it.
Which goes entirely against the statement Blizzard China made that his punishment had nothing to do with China.

Blizzards stance is proven to not be 'keep politics out of our games'. Its 'keep politics out of our games when its inconvenient for us'.

[THEORACLE64]

Ofc it matters what the issue was. a collegiate team making the same statement wasn't banned. Because it wasn't a broadcast shown in China.
Other political opinions are fine, like support for gays, because it was not an inconvenience for Blizzard, because it wasn't shown in China.

So the problem isn't that he made the statement, its that he made the statement where China could see it.
Which goes entirely against the statement Blizzard China made that his punishment had nothing to do with China.

Blizzards stance is proven to not be 'keep politics out of our games'. Its 'keep politics out of our games when its inconvenient for us'.

Apart from gay/same-sex rights are a basic human right and aren't an opinion/political opinion. Of course China is lacking those, which is why I stand with Hong Kong, but there's a time and place. He knew what he was doing was breaking the rules, which he also acknowledged, but the punishment for his actions were too harsh. Blizzard were way too hasty in their response to the situation honestly, which they've acknowledged as well and reduced his ban. 6 months is still too long in my opinion, but it's just unfortunate that they set an example with him and with HK being the political issue behind it. They had to do it though because it's a question of where does it stop? People don't want to watch streams and games and be constantly bombarded with politcal messages, whether that's backing KH, standing for or against trump, for or against brexit, whatever it may be - people (at least i for one) watch game streams because they don't involve any of that. It would be like watching Blizzcon and the presenters or guests starting to talk about Brexit or any main political issue - there's enough of it from main news sources and that's where it should stay, which is why I agree with them taking action. However, Blizzard should just come forward and say they stand with Hong Kong because I honestly think they do.

[Nefarious Tea]

Weibo is known to edit posts to be "pro-China", so there's a very good possibility that it was edited. Doesn't explain why Brack did not bring it up in the US post, though, unless the US post wasn't actually written by English native speakers. That also wouldn't surprise me, given the way it was formatted.

There was a big analysis of it by a bilingual Chinese/English speaker, pointing out how a huge amount of the English sounds wonky, and then how it makes sense if it's a direct translation from Chinese because Chinese grammar is missing a lot of things native English does.

Twitter link: https://twitter.com/SGBluebell/statu...147052544?s=20

Composite screenshot of people from 4chan pointing out how the posting date of the "apology" is Oct 12th, which is not possible because it showed up on the 11th... except by the time it was posted it was Oct 12 in China.

https://imgur.com/gallery/TlsXfzm

The evidence is certainly circumstantial, but as a native English speaker, with a linguistics background who is a teacher, I can vouch for the likelihood of the analysis (considering most of my students aren't native English speakers). Either J. Allen Brack isn't a native English speaker, or he didn't write that letter.

[THEORACLE64]

Ofc it matters what the issue was. a collegiate team making the same statement wasn't banned. Because it wasn't a broadcast shown in China.
Other political opinions are fine, like support for gays, because it was not an inconvenience for Blizzard, because it wasn't shown in China.

So the problem isn't that he made the statement, its that he made the statement where China could see it.
Which goes entirely against the statement Blizzard China made that his punishment had nothing to do with China.

Blizzards stance is proven to not be 'keep politics out of our games'. Its 'keep politics out of our games when its inconvenient for us'.

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