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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments
- krige 7y agoAlso fired both casters working on the event, even though they did not know what was going to be said: https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1181443974420189185 https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1181443974420189185
- suiting 7y agoThis might not be true though. I have heard that during the broadcast they had been supporting Hong Kong. Not saying this is the wrong thing to do though but just a fact.
- fareesh 7y agoThrough the lens of appeasement it makes complete sense
- melcor 7y agoFrom what I read the casters prompted and encouraged him to say it, hence why they were so quick to drop down out of frame. This is just what I have read, as I do not speak the language.
- mwyah 7y agoSeems reasonable that they don't want to allow players to push their politics using the official Blizzard streams. They are free to do so in their spare time. What do you think Blizzard would do if some guy wore a MAGA hat in an official stream?
- glogla 7y agoInto your message is built the assumption that all "politics" is the same. That's not the case. And further, pretending that oppression and fascism and ethnic cleansing is the same as fighting against those things, because oppressing and murdering people is just another "politics" and not something special, is by itself pro-fascist and evil stance.
- maxehmookau 7y ago> Into your message is built the assumption that all "politics" is the same. Don't say things like that on HN. They don't like it...
- mwyah 7y ago>Into your message is built the assumption that all "politics" is the same. Not really: there are politics I agree with and politics I disagree with. That doesn't mean that I believe Blizzard should give a loudspeaker to those who agree with me. I think that's stupid because it could turn against me at some point. Some people seem not to think ahead.
- BigJ1211 7y agoThey interview the player/person, what they stand for is their own prerogative. It isn't up to Blizzard to dictate what people should think or are allowed to say on issues such as human rights. It is their right to ban someone for what they deem 'misconduct' though, so yes they are in their rights doing what they did here. They will also have to deal with the consequences of that decision, a lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions and deleting their blizzard accounts. This will probably not impact them much, but hopefully there will get big enough that it does.
- mwyah 7y ago"Human rights" = politics. Blizzard can choose what they broadcast using their streams. I'm sure if someone decided to wear a tshirt with a fasces in it you'd agree... but since this is on the other side of the spectrum of politics, you disagree. Honestly, very short-sighted.
- zygimantasdev 7y agoSouth Park is spot on this season. You could say they are good with predictions, but I think they just gave different perspective to something that already has been happening (episodes on China censorship)
- bdibs 7y agoWhile I agree they’re spot on, it’s not like this is a new issue.
- zygimantasdev 7y agoI guess what I meant - I looked at these issues differently, others probably too. Apple, Google "selling out" to be in China? Oh well - that seems reasonable since its a big market. South Park put it into different perspective. I guess that is what art does
- helpPeople 7y agoGoogle sold out to China how?
- ViViDboarder 7y agoCensored search engine. Project Dragonfly.
- fesoliveira 7y agoAs far as I know, they pulled the cord on that one
- kkarakk 7y agoChina has been leveraging their power "quietly" for some time now. Anything anti-China gets buried or discredited or shouted down using whataboutisms. Even here on hackernews you'll see tons of posts on negative chinese news from month old accounts fuzzing the narrative saying some variation of "it's not easy to understand if you're not chinese etc etc" The hong kong issue is just bringing the issue into the mainstream
- ReptileMan 7y agoThis is shaping to be fun tactic in the culture war. To force corporations that want to be seen as woke in the west to bow to China which will hurt their image at home. If someone manages to do it with Nike it will be fun to watch.
- dingo_bat 7y agoWhat's so special about Nike?
- atroche 7y agoHow is bowing to China woke? Not following.
- ReptileMan 7y agoYou don't get it. It is not woke. That is the fun part. To make them dance morally in the chase of profit. To put them in between the blue checkmarks and the china government and to end pissing off both sides.
- atroche 7y agoOh, okay. It seems to me like being critical of the Chinese government is popular with both sides of the American political spectrum. Maybe even more so with conservatives!
- ReptileMan 7y agoYeah, but claiming moral high ground for boycotting Georgia over transgender bathrooms is hard while simultaneously doing business with China with the Uygur and Hong Kong situations.
- atroche 7y agoAgreed! But (in the example of the Georgia boycott) who exactly is going to use the tactic you mentioned of forcing a company to bow to China? In concrete terms, how do you see that playing out?
- sword_smith 7y agoWhat was the exact quote? The article doesn't mention it. I assume it was in support of the HK protestors.
- atroche 7y ago"Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" https://twitter.com/slasher/status/1181065339230130181 https://twitter.com/slasher/status/1181065339230130181
- diveanon 7y agoWhat is happening there is literally what has led to revolutions in several western countries over the last couple centuries. The Chinese are correct to be afraid, they have spent the last half century cleansing the concept of freedom from their society and they are terrified of what comes next. People are going to start dying publicly in HK very soon, and the rest of the world will have to decide which side of history they want to stand on. The American's needed allies to succeed in their revolution against a much more powerful nation, HK will need allies too.
- kkarakk 7y agoConsidering how Trump bowed down before Turkey about the christian Kurd fighters issue(basically abandoning people who were promised aid in exchange for dismantling their border security), I don't think he's going to care about Hong Kong too much
- wei_jok 7y agoPrevious discussion (for some reason, it was removed off the front page pretty quickly, hmm): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21189491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21189491
- DictumMortuum 7y agoI saw a "dupe" tag on it.
- huhtenberg 7y agoJust read through the comments here and it's obvious why it got flagged off the front page. Grade A flamewar material.
- wei_jok 7y agoI see, thanks for the explanation. Maybe I should've rephrased the title of the post better to prevent it next time.
- Haga 7y agoCaptain capitalism execute order 66
- throwaway2048 7y agoBlizzard is 100% fine with their games having a political message when they think it gives them free brownie points (announcing various characters as being explicitly gay), but are complete total cowards when it might cost them something.
- hug 7y agoBeing gay isn’t political.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoMaking characters in a video game gay probably shouldn't be a political statement, but at least today it still is.
- ryanlol 7y agoHuman rights aren't political! (of course they are)
- throwaway2048 7y agoNo, being gay itself is not a political decision, but making a big deal about how progressive you are as a company because your game has gay characters is very much a political statement.
- hug 7y agoI am completely unaware of blizzard tooting their own horn for being progressive about having a gay character. Undoubtedly they’ve used gay and lesbian characters in marketing, but marketing towards gay and lesbian people is, again, not a political statement in and of itself.
- kkarakk 7y agoWhat exactly are you trying to say? Blizzard has indeed used pride flag in marketing materials and that is a VERY political statement
- phtrivier 7y agoMassive Streisand effect incoming.
- oh_sigh 7y agoThe only problem is China is too big to care. Streisand effect only affects those people where a spotlight from a small percent of the internet heavily affects them
- benj111 7y agoI interpreted it as in relation to Blizzard.
- zipwitch 7y agoYeah. China won't ultimately care whatever we do, but Blizzard can me made to feel it. Their own annual gaming convention is coming up in less than a month, and hopefully this will backfire on them badly.
- phtrivier 7y agoI was also mostly referring to potential bad effect on Blizzard. However, I would find it funny if the whole episode made some of your "average" Blizzard-gamer care about China and HK. (Emphasis on the "average" here: I obviously have no data, but I suspect that the average Blizzard-game player is a young teenage boy who's spending too much time playing with friends to be passionate about international Asian politics. Again, using an hyperbole here. I know you exist, DoTA-geopolitics-nerds.)
- Gustomaximus 7y agoI assume Blizzard were under pressure from China, as why else would they do this. So if this assumption is true they were cornered in they had to 'offend' someone and felt China has a longer memory than the rest of their market + China would likely ban their games whereas how many ROW people will do this? From a pure business decision it seems to make sense as the lesser of 2 evils.
- enriquto 7y agoPeople should start boycotting western companies that perform this kind of humiliating bowing to China, Saudi Arabia, etc. Yet of course, most companies are doing that...
- deadbunny 7y agoI thought Western companies had to pursue profits at all costs? China is a big juicy market.
- enriquto 7y agoWell the western world is an even juicier market for China.
- ViViDboarder 7y agoThey don’t have to. There are companies that pursue positive impact, though few large or public ones at this time. Patagonia is a great example of a semi-large one.
- alkonaut 7y agoI expect companies to do what’s morally right not merely maximize profits while doing anything that is legally acceptable. I expect leaders of companies to do what’s morally right while explaining to shareholders that if they disagree they can sell their shares or replace them. I have zero respect for a manager at Blizzard or the NBA who decides to try to pull what they did this week.
- closetohome 7y agoExcept in many cases they are legally required to maximize profits, regardless of ethics, so long as their actions are strictly legal.
- greycol 7y agoIt is part of our moral duty to punish a company for ignoring public good rather than excuse it as what a company must do. That's because if a company is punished financially (say by boycott) for making immoral decisions then they must follow a more moral course to maximize their profit. Personally I don't think this is enough especially as companies become more pervasive and the confusion of subsidiaries which make it next to impossible to boycott the largest offenders, but that is fixed in the political sphere rather than the economic one. I'd even expect the 'correct' long term 'required' choice for blizzard is to ignore any blow back and focus on the Chinese market. Still in this case shareholder focus being all about current quarter profits might help as company leadership might be more focused on keeping the shareholders happy than serving long term profit.
- diveanon 7y agoCan we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China. Really seems like a win win scenario.
- ianleeclark 7y ago> Can we please start a cultural movement that forces large corporations to choose between appeasing Chinese censors and looking like fools to the rest of the west or getting banned in China. But what about the share-holder value?
- diveanon 7y agoThat's the best part, there is no correct choice. Corporations love sitting the moral grey area on issues like this, but putting them in a position of having to choose between looking like Chinese stooges or getting banned from China will break their minds.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI don't think it will, really, because as a Chinese stooge with access to Chinese market, you have ample money to spend on PR & marketing that makes you not look like a Chinese stooge.
- HenryBemis 7y agoUSA population is close to 330m. I was reading that NBA has 500m "followers" (I will translate it to consumers). Assuming that only half the US population follows (consumes, pays) for NBA related products, then Chinese market is every NBA official's wet dream. Unless this becomes a binary choice (dictatorship Vs freedom) all the money making sharks (FIFA, NBA, etc) will pretend that they "were not aware of such events taking place in China/do not comment on internal affairs of other sovereign nations" as long as the money rolls in. I was glad to see earlier on CNN a 'super' writing "NBA Commissioner: we are no apologizing..." But the first 24h the reactions went from not existing to laughable. Good to see that freedom is more important than revenue.
- cooperadymas 7y agoIs it safe to say we're in the middle of the Software Wars? The headlines have been littered with stories like this lately. From major open source contributors taking down their projects, to Apple, Adobe, and Blizzard. It's only a matter of time until it's a critical piece of software that can cripple a nation or beleaguer it's people. If you're looking for positives, maybe this will finally force people to rethink digital ownership.
- qmmmur 7y agoIt's serendipitous all these events are happening now for me personally. I was recently burned by a piece of very useful and well crafted software (closed source). I did a fresh install on my machine and went to find their website which to my dismay had completely disappeared! I followed whatever breadcrumbs were left and found a whole thing had happened while I wasn't paying attention where the copyright for this software was now in complete limbo and noone who had recently purchased a license could redownload it. This is allegedly where the software exists now. https://audiofile.engineering/ https://audiofile.engineering/ Which contains absolutely no trace of the program Myriad Pro. This is the discussion from kvr about it. https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=525534 https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=525534 On the plus side I doubled down and learned SoX which I wrap up in some python now and it's fast, open source and others can develop on my efforts.
- Crinus 7y agoThis is why whenever i think about buying software i check if they have a DRM-free version for Windows. 99% of the time this ensures i'll be able to use the software for years to come even if the company shuts down.
- Iv 7y agoProprieatary software are shortcuts, but infrastructure requires open source. That's the only durable software out there.
- aznumeric 7y agoSame thing happened with Tridef. The company went under, didn't release a free version of the software, and now people who bought it legally have to resort to using a crack.
- _rrnv 7y agoPeople seem to be really surprised that capitalism doesn’t equal freedom. Time to wake up. Free world is in decline. Democracies of today are mostly facades to a more-less controlled societies. Sure, people can vote, but what happens after that? The accountability and controlling mechanisms have been in erosion for years now. Even the EU legislation, once a model of democracy, is now so far from the individual citizen that it’s often difficult to understand why Brussels is voting on certain laws. It used to be that free press kept close tabs on those in power. Well, thanks to the Internet it got very easy to attack the press and very hard for the press to stay profitable. We are heading towards a cliff and hopefully we will create a better system after that. But man, it will hurt to fall.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- leppr 7y agoAllow me to indulge in the slightly spammy repost of relevant comments I made yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21180714 It's important that we clarify what the word "Democracy" means in our language, and whether to accept or reject the fact that its current use is tragically removed from its original meaning: it used to describe a concept, it's now simply a label with no intrinsinc meaning.
- _rrnv 7y agoWell put!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Aozi 7y agoWhat we need is a JS developer to take down an important package from NPM in protest, thus breaking the Internet again.
- byte1918 7y agoThe NPM fiasco should no longer be possible If you want to unpublish a package after 72 hours have passed, contact npm Support. For more information about why we don’t allow users to unpublish packages after 72 hours, see our unpublish policy. https://docs.npmjs.com/unpublishing-packages-from-the-registry https://docs.npmjs.com/unpublishing-packages-from-the-regist...
- celticninja 7y agoCould you just publish garbage instead?
- yoz-y 7y agoYou could but everybody uses version pinning in production, right?
- emsy 7y agoPeople who are serious about reproducible builds host their own repos. Most people probably don’t know the difference between ^1.0.1 and ~1.0.1
- bakuninsbart 7y agoThanks for making me look that up!
- delfinom 7y agoIf only npm's version pinning actually version pinned without idiotic subrules. package-lock.json is just one massive lie.
- FDSGSG 7y agoThe obvious, necessary solution would be to respond by aggressively doxing the executives of Blizzard and their large stockholders. It's all about money until your wife and kids start getting calls at night and the cops kick in your door. There's no reason to remain civil when fighting those who'd stand against human rights.
- soapdog 7y agoSo a company does a shit move and you want to take it out on kids? Doxing is never the answer. The answer is: stop using products from shit companies.
- FDSGSG 7y agoDirect action against executives, even by tiny groups, is far more likely to have an impact than passive boycotts. Eh, I guess virtue signalling is the priority on HN and not actual change. Think of the poor executives kids! Not Falun Gong, HKers or the Uyghurs.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoMorally wrong, but technically not wrong. Many a dumb law was only changed after some politician ran afoul of it. If you're going to take "direct action" you should probably try to keep it fitting to the issue at hand. Swatting someone because they are in charge of something you don't like won't make your cause any more likeable to most observers.
- FDSGSG 7y agoSwatting someone will make them seriously consider whether or not they want to continue in that job, and will make their future replacement wonder whether or not they want to be swatted themselves. In the end this isn't about opinions, you can very much coerce people to do what you want. Even the executives of BigCos. Nobody should be able to sleep easy at night while running a company taking active measures to support the CCP.
- aaron695 7y agoI go to a JavaScript conference to learn about JavaScript. I watch sports to watch sports. I'm sick of other people thinking 'their' politics is ok to shove down my throat. They want to 'fight' for their cause, cool, but take the consequences. The NBA for whatever reason has allowed published (aka public Twitter) political comments in the past so it's different to this case.
- logicallee 7y agoI think it's fair to say this isn't clear enough (it's the ToS rule they're citing): >Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms. For example, if similar language were on Hacker News I don't think I would think it would include offending the government of China. What do others here think? EDIT: someone has now quoted what was said. It was "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" I must say, it does change my opinion. If I read and understood the original text I quoted, and was agreeing to abide by it, I probably wouldn't post something so strong. I thought it was something much milder.
- blzrdnofreespch 7y agoThis is really unfortunate. I don’t game a ton, but when I do I pretty much only play Starcraft or Overwatch. Long time fan of the GSL as well. I know it’s nothing but a drop in the bucket but I will no longer support Blizzard - time to find another game. Perhaps we should organize a day of protest across all blizzard games. I think it’s pretty telling that I don’t feel comfortable posting this on my main account.
- jplayer01 7y agoOr, you know, gamers need to grow some moral principles and stop giving companies like this money. I already didn't like where Blizzard was going, this seals it for me. I'm not giving them any more money.
- blzrdnofreespch 7y agoFortunately the games mentioned don’t require any money other than the initial upfront cost, hence the protest. Protesting could also vastly raise queue times, making the experience i enjoyable for many. But I agree, I’ll never spend another $ on anything blizzard unless they take a different stand on the issue.
- UserIsUnused 7y agoAs usual, Stallman is right about software.
- throw_xyzyz 7y agoAbout everything, which is why he must be silenced.
- cbm-vic-20 7y agoAnd yet, so wrong about people.
- aloisdg 7y agoThere are not antithetical.
- ryder9 7y agospecifically when he advocates for pedophilia
- andrepd 7y agoThis should be a new Godwin's law.
- pssflops 7y agoA Stallmate, perhaps.
- tuesdayrain 7y agoHe did not do this and it's intellectually dishonest to claim that he did.
- ryder9 7y agohe did, but whatever to make yourself feel better
- 7y ago
- rayiner 7y agoOpposing communist takeover of a free society apparently violates the following: > Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image
- jobigoud 7y ago> offends a portion or group of the public Surely their own actions just offended "a portion or group of the public".
- mbel 7y agoNot "in Blizzard’s sole discretion".
- RaleyField 7y agoThat's why it's only fair we as users uphold the same rules by immediately severing any ties, present and future, with Blizzard. The rules are perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
- m0zg 7y agoThis is just asking for a variation of Streisand effect. Now everyone will comment about Hong Kong, whether they care about it or not. And Blizzard will relent eventually, after much gnashing of teeth.
- verroq 7y agoThis is China’s soft power, restricting access to its economy to erode away the freedom of speech. How long before the chilling effect of criticising China start to affect those outside because the corporations depend too much on the Chinese economy for their survival? There needs to be a law to prevent corporations from enforcing political censorship on behalf of another nation.
- zwaps 7y agoThen we have to boycott Hearthstone. While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle. Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions. The Chinese government tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion. If that is indeed the way, then our society and the discourse therein is no longer free, and the CCP has won. We need to keep these firms in our mind. We need to keep a list of when this happens, and we need to sanction this as best as we can. Similarly, anyone standing up to censorship should have our support. I can be pro HK, or I can be pro China, and I can voice opinions because doing so either way is an equally valid form of free expression. But it can not be that one side gets pre-emptively censored to appease the CCP, or any actor with the power to DEFINE the bar of what is reasonable expression of opinions.
- hanselot 7y agoFirst they came for Linus. Then they came for Stallman. A week after Stack Exchange fell. And still nobody was willing to say it like it is. Soon the endgame will appear and censorship will be applied directly to thought, as if it isn't already...
- nickthemagicman 7y agoSo far I've noticed: 1> New Top Gun Movie removed a patch on Tom Cruises jacketdue to Chinese funding. 2> NBA issued an apology for an owner showing Hong Kong support and China stopped NBA broadcasts. 3> Blizzard 4> Apple Hides Taiwans Flag emoji Sounds trivial but they're the tip of the iceberg for censoring freedom of expression based on a DICTATOR's whim. Xi "Winnie The Poop" is an autocrat and once he sealed his grip on power and lifted term limits. The fact is, the people are fighting a restriction on their freedom, in order to benefit the powerful. This is a tale as old as humanity itself. This is also what I fear will happen to America if we're not careful. I think we need to be united in standing up against restrictions on the freedom of expression.
- tomp 7y agoChina is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship). Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253
- johnday 7y agoThis is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.
- jack1243star 7y ago>> Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West. Of course it's not, but you're missing the point. They're simply taking advantage of this incoherence in the current western value.
- tomp 7y agoWell thank God then that wasn't my argument. What I'm saying is, China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship (edit: in the West).
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> China is co-opting modern liberal censorship in the West to do it's own political censorship No, it’s using good old greater-pile-of-money diplomacy. SJWs aren’t running around rooting for Xi. This is a company with major economic exposure to China bowing to censors’ wills.
- yourbandsucks 7y agoI don't think you're disagreeing with the poster. They're saying that cancel culture has normalized private sector political censorship in the west prior to this, making it a smaller reach. The $ considerations are certainly there in all cases.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rjzzleep 7y agoHave we all forgotten when Mozilla replaced the CTO with a long history of internet freedom work to replace him with a marketing director and the disaster that followed? Are we going to keep trampling on all our freedoms in the name of ... freedom(?) and then blame it all on China? EDIT: I knew some people were going to try to spin it into something it wasn't.
- Steltek 7y agoWas that the same lover of freedom that campaigned to take away the freedom of others?
- fishtacos 7y agoPeople forget the context of the uproar and protests against Brendan. Indeed he was the lover of freedom that sent in political donations to take freedom away from others - namely, those not like him. It's interesting to see how people, especially champions of freedom of expression, can compartmentalize that mentality so easily and justify it to oneself. Those people deserve to be called out. Calling them out is also something freedom affords.
- roenxi 7y agoBy a careful examination of Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and atheism I can tell that a large number of people are spreading damaging mistruths about some of the most important aspects of life. Much more damaging than being wrong about gay marriage. We have to be able to compartmentalise what people are wrong about that affects their work and what they are wrong about that does not. It is distasteful to support someone who is obnoxiously wrong but their being excellent at what they do has to count for something. Dunno what the story is for this specific political spat at Mozilla; but compartmentalising "relevant to my work" and "irrelevant to my work" is a fundamental plank in the wobbly structure of civilised society. Even the most rabid will support some aspects of freedom and not others. Support compartmentalisation, even if in this case it meant he was the wrong man for the job and had to go.
- alimbada 7y agoIt's a shame but I feel like the majority of gamers won't care. They'll either be ignorant of this or they'll just shrug and continue playing. I boycotted Activision and by proxy Blizzard when Activision acquired them a long time ago but their continuing success shows I'm part of an extremely tiny minority.
- ehnto 7y agoWhat was it about Activision that caused you to boycott them?
- alimbada 7y agoIt was the CEOs attitude towards gamers and his derogatory comments about them as well as the way Activision treats/treated its developers. There was a lot of controversy around these issues and after reading quite an in depth article about it around 10 years ago I've avoided buying anything developed or published by Acti-Blizzard.
- Fnoord 7y agoIsn't that the guy who hates gamers? It wasn't difficult to figure out why people dislike him [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Kotick#Business_strategy_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Kotick#Business_strategy...
- propter_hoc 7y agoWell, currently the Hearthstone and Blizzard discussion forums on Reddit are up in arms. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/blizzard https://www.reddit.com/r/blizzard
- cooljacob204 7y agoYup, I'm cancelling my wow sub over this and read about it first on Reddit.
- bwang008 7y agoI don't know how to feel about the protests anymore, but I don't blame companies for trying to not get involved. I think in tough situations, self-preservation tends to take priority over ideals, so I am not surprised to see a business demonstrate double standards or inconsistencies when they're pulled into a situation that could threaten their well being. Many people make up a company and one person's actions should not put everyone else under threat because that individual's beliefs is not representative of everyone else working there. The actions of the competitor could have threatened many people's jobs, families, and lives so you can't blame blizzard for doing what they did. The underlying problem is the Chinese government and how they black list businesses for not following their draconian policies to do business within the country. Mentioning a solution like having businesses collectively boycott China just doesn't seem well thought. You can't just walk away from half of your market over personal beliefs, and another company within China would jump for joy at the chance to grab that lost market share. The point I'm making is I think we should focus on the cause for all of this which is the Chinese gov rather than blaming someone or a company who has a gun pointed at them for acting in their own best interest rather than what is right. We're not the ones being threatened so it's really easy to call people cowards.
- llacb47 7y agohttps://kotaku.com/blizzard-suspends-hearthstone-player-for-hong-kong-supp-1838864961 https://kotaku.com/blizzard-suspends-hearthstone-player-for-...
- beart 7y agoAs I recall, Blizzard decided to remove skeletons and some other things from World of Warcraft years ago in order to enter the Chinese market.
- Fnoord 7y agoNot at all the same though. If I release software specifically for a national market, I adapt to the local law of that nation. In this case, the software is WoW, and the country is China. It could have been Wolfenstein and the country being Germany. It could have been a nipple in a game, and the country being USA. We don't notice such. However, in this case, we're at an Asian (not Chinese) esports event where one should be free to express their opinion. It is not as if we don't see skeleton cosplay on esport events being banned, or that Germany demands Wolfenstein esports events (?) don't contain blood and Nazi paraphernalia. It is not as if the USA complains about a nipple on TwitchCon in Amsterdam. This is about a country applying censorship beyond their jurisdiction.
- papreclip 7y agoNothing wrong with that. You might laugh at skeletons being where they choose to draw the line, but we have rules as well about what can happen in a video game. There are no kids in Grand Theft Auto for a reason. Also, Blizzard only removed them from the game in china What would be more disturbing is if they had to rewrite some orc-politics story so it wouldn't offend chinese sensibilities, and US consumers got the rewritten version as well. The movie Red Dawn(2012) was a remake of a 1984 action film where a communist army invades the US. They updated the invader from the USSR to China, come to "repossess" the US after we defaulted on national debt. This offended the chinese, so the producers had to spend $1M editing every reference to china in the film and making it a North Korean invasion instead. This was the version US consumers were sold.
- hannasanarion 7y agoRemoving/changing artistic depictions because they have unintended meaning in a different cultural context is one thing. Cutting LGBT characters and banning people who criticize the regime is entirely different.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bayesian_horse 7y agoIt's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not. No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...
- trentnix 7y agoIt is hard to tell, that is true. And that reality is exploited to silence opposition and control others. That’s why language policing, hate speech laws, Twitter mobs, and bully-the-bully efforts are abominations. So really, the answer is easy: everyone has the right to offend, and has no right not to be offended. Your simple rule doesn’t go far enough.
- whoevercares 7y agoHumans are emotional animals and many can be dominated by feelings, your answer assume they are entirely logical
- trentnix 7y agoThey?
- Waterluvian 7y agoOooooh girl you did NOT just go there.
- drdeca 7y agoThey, as in, the aforementioned humans (humans, plural). What is the problem?
- trentnix 7y agoThe problem is that the parent didn't say We.
- HNthrow22 7y agoFIFA (The governing body for soccer) issues similar fines and bans for any political messages. ie fined they recently fined English/Scotish FA's 100k for players wearing poppies (a flower) which symbolize fallen soldiers from WW1*. In both cases while on a base human level it FEELS wrong, if you follow the $$ end of the day the broadcast is the product they're selling to advertisers. Adding any sort of political/divisive messaging could be easily kill those deals - makes sense given the finances. You're attacking their primary income stream, of course they're gonna come at you hard. The player is not owed any platform by participating in this Blizzard event. If they banned him for comments made on his own social media outside of the event it would be a different story. To be clear I'm not defending Blizzard, just explaining why most broadcast orgs will react similarly. It is what it is, until the advertising based model of entertainment changes it'll continue to be this way.
- freeflight 7y agoI really don't like how this is made out as "China clamping down on Blizzard", just like it was framed when Ubisoft tried to get a lower age-rating for Rainbow Six Siege and claimed that was what China demanded for their market. Blizzard has been suspending plenty of pro players in plenty of their games for all kinds of questionable, and not so questionable reasons. And because Blizzard is a private company, offering a service they maintain, they have the house right, they have the final say about who can partake and who can't. To that end, they don't need the Chinese government to pressure them because they will already do it themselves to make their product as uncontroversial as possible. In that context politics is just not something that Blizzard, or any of the big publishers, want to be as a part of their "e-sport scene". What they want is the least controversy possible and the lowest ages ratings possible, so they can sell their products to as many people as possible. That's their main and only motivation here, not "pleasing the CCP!".
- humanrebar 7y ago> And because Blizzard is a private company, offering a service they maintain, they have the house right, they have the final say about who can partake and who can't. Except it's not a matter of some Chinese customers taking their business elsewhere. They don't have "the house right" if they are facing consequences from the Chinese government for exercising their freedom of association.
- luckylion 7y ago"They are a private company" is quite literally always the argument for why Facebook, Twitter, Google, Cloudflare etc should be able to ban anyone, any time for any arbitrary reason. I get why people are upset at Blizzard's behavior, but the outcry looks a bit fake. It looks more like there's a lot of anger because it hit somebody they agree with. Had the player said something supporting China, and Blizzard banned him, there would be congratulatory comments and "their game, their rules" arguments.
- freeflight 7y ago> "They are a private company" is quite literally always the argument for why Facebook, Twitter, Google, Cloudflare etc should be able to ban anyone, any time for any arbitrary reason. Exactly, and usually, that's also the consensus on HN on any such issues: It's the companies infrastructure and ecosystem. There is no "human right to service", if they don't want you there then they can just kick you out and usually wouldn't even need much of a justification, that's what hundreds of pages of ToS, EULA, and whatnot are there for.
- cco 7y agoI said a similar thing yesterday but I think it has become clear that importing from China was mostly fine for our country, debatable on the lost jobs and environmental part sure, but exporting to China was a poison pill that we never should have swallowed. China has become less liberal, in the meaningful ways, since Nixon "opened up" China in the 20th century. And the flip side is that when we began exporting to them we installed pathways for China to control and de-liberalize the US. The more economically important China becomes to the US the more it will control our companies and public political sphere.
- theseadroid 7y agoHey, I wonder where did you get the less liberal part? From my experience China has become greatly more liberal during the last 30-50 years. When Nixon "opened up" China it was during the culture revolution and those were really tragic years for Chinese people. Since then average Chinese has become less poor and more liberal steadily each year.
- cco 7y agoThat's a totally fair point, I think maybe since 1980's might be more accurate? In my experience, and this is mostly for Chinese who fled to either Hong Kong or the US at some point in their lives, if they are >40 years old they dislike China and view it as an oppressive regime. That makes sense since they ran away. If they are <40 years old they're pretty blasé about China and don't really care about the regime or view it as particularly oppressive. In university is where most of these people I met came from. Does that not gel with your experience?
- theseadroid 7y agoI agree with you that >40 years old dislike China more as they never benefitted from the China's economic take-off that happened after 1990. But I think for regular Chinese, the younger they are, the more liberal their world views are. This is because the education they received are more westernized each year (You might be surprised). Younger Chinese are generally more proficient in English. And to learn English people have to expose themselves to original English materials. I still remember when I was learning English I got access to things like TED, Open courseware such as Harvard's Justice, shows like the Newsroom, movies like the 12 Angry Men. China's human right records today is not good, but it was much much worse 30 years ago. Back then rural Chinese would kill new born female babies, have no issue buying and selling women (here's a movie about the topic[1]) and toddlers. People from different provinces fought and discriminated each other. And those are not government sponsored, just people being poor and illiterate. Now average Chinese are more literate and many more attended higher education (there's no higher education during the culture revolution)[2]. To this end I need to thank Nixon and people doing business with China. The average Chinese has a better life and can think more rationally thanks to economic and educational improvements. On the other hand, internet censorship has become more strict after 2010. People do find ways to access VPN, it's just they don't discuss sensitive topics on Chinese internet. 1. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_mountain_2007 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blind_mountain_2007 2. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/cn http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/cn (notice the Tertiary education section)
- interdrift 7y agoBlizzard are a sell-out company anyway.
- johnchristopher 7y agoFrom https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-grandmasters-for-liberate-hong-kong-comments/ https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-... a description of the incident : > As Andy reported earlier today, Blitzchung did not back down after the sudden removal of the broadcast, during which he wore a gas mask and goggles before shouting "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" Following the incident he released a statement elaborating on his stance, writing "I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it's my duty to say something about the issue."
- ummonk 7y agoOkay that explains it. I thought banning for 12 months was a little harsh for someone making a political statement once, but he knew what he was doing and doubled down on it.
- luckydata 7y agoIt sounds like you agree with the measure. Is that the case?
- ummonk 7y agoI do. I don’t want sporting events, conventions, etc. to become platforms for advocacy about controversial politics. I support non-disruptive actions like kneeling at an anthem, but advocacy about a political issue during a post-match interview streamed by the event organizer certainly crosses the line.
- luckydata 7y agoCrossing lines is the point of activism, we wouldn't have any of the rights we enjoy (and soon we might lose if we're not careful) in the west if not for people that systematically crossed lines and used high visibility occasions to make a point. It might be worth checking this out: https://theundefeated.com/features/mexico-city-olympics-protest-media-john-carlos-tommie-smith/ https://theundefeated.com/features/mexico-city-olympics-prot...
- scoutt 7y agoWith the risk of being flagged I may say that Blizzard did the right thing BUT ONLY if the interview was a an official post-match interview. Otherwise they did wrong, since they cannot force people into not telling whatever they want by any other mean. I think it is the right thing to do in order to avoid future sociopolitical references in official post-match interviews: imagine someone saying 'power to the whites' or whatever in an live Blizzard interview. Like it or not, if you urge to call this move "censorship" you (and Blizzard) would have to tolerate slurs like that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alkonaut 7y agoSort of agree, but I’ll add that the constraints need to be clearer too. I’m sure pro athletes have contracts that mention what they can and cannot say in the league TV interviews when it comes to political or commercial messages for example. This just had a vague catch all formulation. Also: Blizzard should stand up for liberal democracy. It’s as simple as that. One can’t treat all political messages the same.
- scoutt 7y ago>> contracts From the blog post: "players ... must abide by the official competition rules." They have a set of rules to follow. I don't know how much clear these are. >> Blizzard should stand up for liberal democracy Blizzard sells videogames and hosts a tournament. Liberal democracy is a moral philosophy, point of view, preference that goes well with you and others, but many may not agree. It's a right to not agree to the same idea. And of course is not up to Blizzard to choose which philosophy is right or wrong. It's like the old bar rule: "no religion, no politics". Disclaimer: I am not in favor of China or dictatorships or against democracy.
- alkonaut 7y agoThese were my opinions, which extend basically to this: Hold companies to higher standards than merely "maximizing profits while following laws". I completely expect companies to take a stand either for or against the protesters in Hong Kong even though all they really want to do is sell computer games in the West, Hong Kong and China and no one asks them what they think. It's an impossible luxury to (as incidents such as this shows) to think it's possible to choose "no politics". There simply is no "no politics" option in business.
- yters 7y agoI've seen plenty of US business types on LinkedIn who are China fans and seem envious of how well China controls it's populace. In general there is a complete ignoring of the human rights issues. They seem to think that's something that irrelevant, idealistic people care about. In their mind the only people who matter are those with power, and China seems to have loads of power.
- zaphod420 7y agoFuck china's government, and fuck Blizzard for bending over for them. fucking pussies.
- tekkk 7y agoI can't understand why people bother writing this type of posts in HN. It's just childish.
- BearsAreCool 7y agoIs there a master list of companies like this?
- Fnoord 7y agoThat makes me wonder whether they'd nowadays act on the "Bolvar died for our sins" [1] meme from BlizzCon 2015 (for those who aren't familiar with the WoW universe: Bolvar is one of the heroes of a WoW expansion, as he sacrificed himself for the world ie. he is a martyr). [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTP0qTWUcAA3N_F.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTP0qTWUcAA3N_F.jpg
- loceng 7y agoFrom Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/de1ysj/china_accused_of_genocide_over_forced_abortions/f2rgef0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/de1ysj/china_acc... - "If you ever wondered how the whole world stood by and watched as the Nazis came to power and began committing atrocities here’s your answer." The whole thread has similar commentary - along with morbid humor: "The next Disney movie will feature forced abortions to appease China." Makes me think of brand names - who are still in existence today - who provided services, products, to similar regimes; Russell Brand Rips on GQ, Hugo Boss, referencing Syria War and Nazi Germany - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inB-6R1-4ng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inB-6R1-4ng Edit to add: Seems the pro-tyrants of China's leadership brigade is here: I had 2 upvotes, now at 0. Or if the people downvoting don't understand what's going on in China is akin to Nazi Germany then they're either indoctrinated in propaganda or haven't studied, analyzed, understood the situation adequately.
- ajmurmann 7y agoThe big difference is that Nazi Germany wasn’t as fundamentally important to us getting larger, cheaper TVs. Economics clearly trump everything else. It’s ok to harvest organs from countless members of ethnicMinorities as long as the system that does it helps out bottom line. If the Soviet Unions economic system has worked well, we would have supported them too /s
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- busterarm 7y agoI think you underestimate just how much of the US's immigrant population and culture was either directly German or German-influenced leading up to and in the early years of WWII. That's a bond that was not easily severed.
- busterarm 7y agoThe downvotes aren't unexpected. There's a size-able pro-socialist leaning group on here that loves everything that China is doing.
- dep_b 7y agoWell if people can get hurt because they see a nipple of course a grown up person can also get upset about some rando on the internet having an opinion on Hong Kong. Both things make equal sense to me at least.
- IanSanders 7y agoI agree 100% that we should boycott and sanction, however doubt there will be enough people who will, and enough people who care. And I don't blame most for not caring, there are more things to worry about than we have time available. Maybe 1% of hearthstone players will see your comment. Similarly, there are other entities which need to be sanctioned, which you and me won't find out about as it's outside of our areas of interest. Which makes me believe we need some kind of trusted "morality authority", which would process information similar to this and make informed decisions who to boycott, how and when. Less informed would be able to make an impact without having to do research (which not everyone would do equally well) Obviously this authority must operate with complete transparency, so that we could verify its decision process when required. Any hostile actions against it must be treated as a crime against humanity? Somehow it must be immune from corruption. Perhaps some mechanism to revoke user trust in case of wrongdoings.
- michannne 7y agoI'm concerned as to how you would justify such an institution
- IanSanders 7y agoHow were Labor Unions justified? I'm not saying they don't have issues, but the idea is similar.
- michannne 7y agoThis doesn't sound anything like a labor union
- IanSanders 7y agoHow about Consumer Union?
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoTo which authority must I justify this and why are the reasons discussed here not sufficient?
- notjustanymike 7y agoI've been boycotting Blizzard for a while now. They made it really easy by releasing nothing good.
- shrimp_emoji 7y agoThey've made it crushingly, erode-absolutely-all-of-their-good-will-and-prestige-as-a-developer-despite-monopolizing-your-childhood-imagination easy. Natural late-stage corporate life cycle, I guess. :,c But they'll keep making EZ $$$ as long as store whales keep buying mounts and pets. :D Tell them to boycott.
- wincy 7y agoI mean they became successful by making Totally Not Warhammer: The Video Game and Totally Not Warhammer 40K. And I’m pretty sure those people are long since gone away from the company. Companies are like the Ship of Theseus. When every plank has been replaced, it’s not the same ship even if it looks like it is.
- eric_cc 7y agoThey became a successful company by producing amazing games. Games like Warcraft 1, 2, & 3, Starcraft, Diablo 1 & 2 were straight-up fantastic games. The fact that they borrowed heavily from existing fantasy art and literature does not have anything to do with their gameplay merits. Fantasy is a genre that is always borrowing heavily from previous material. Did Warhammer invent Orcs and Dwarves? To your second point: I agree. They’re not at all the same company that they once were.
- FillardMillmore 7y agoSo we are at the point where American video game developers are banning people from e-sports competitions for their comments over a domestic issue in a foreign country? Because the Chinese government probably didn't like his comments, that counts as 'public disrepute'? This is just wild to me.
- taytus 7y agoIt is wild, but it's also part of their own rules: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGVTuRlXkAA0ovF?format=png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGVTuRlXkAA0ovF?format=png Honest question: Can we call this unfair if it was already laid out as part of their rules?
- wolrah 7y agoThat's a generic catch-all rule that means basically nothing. No one can determine ahead of time what is allowed and what's not under that rule. He didn't say anything "offensive" or "disreputable" to anyone other than authoritarian regimes, and if that's the standard Blizzard is going by they can fuck right off.
- ummonk 7y agoHe didn't make some off-hand comment about Hong Kong. He made a deliberate political statement complete with props and all. That very obviously falls under the rule.
- PeterisP 7y agoThere's nothing inherently offensive and disreputable in making deliberate political statements complete with props and all. The rule as written very obviously (at least to me) does NOT prohibit making public political statements in support of particular political groups and processes, actively and instensively advocating for or against certain policies or parties, using props to do so, explicitly condemning policies of certain governments, being a politician or candidate or pundit opinion-maker yourself and expressing strong political agendas to others, etc. It does seem to cover certain forms of expressing these statements (e.g. profanity and insults would fall under the prohibiting language) but not the political opinion as such. An explicit prohibition against "offending certain groups of the public" is inherently assumed to include demographic groups but exclude political opinions, governments and individual politicians; so shouting "Government of X is horrible and their leader Y is evil" does not violate such a rule in any way whaotsover; that's legitimate political opinion; it's unalienable right of everyone to believe and communicate such things if they want to. Criticizing and insulting policies and political organizations simply can't be offensive in the way that insulting individuals or groups of people can be; if someone says that a statement of "stand with Hong Kong" or "stand with united China" hurts their feelings, then that's probably their (valid) opinion but it doesn't make that statement offensive or insulting no mater if someone claims that, statements of such format simply aren't offensive no matter what political group they support. "Fight for faith, stand with ISIS" or "Fight for man-boy love rights, stand with pedophiles" are justifiably unpopular slogans which would/should raise some eyebrows but they aren't offensive or insulting.
- idlewords 7y agoSome context that I think might help the discussion. Here's the clip in question: https://twitter.com/InvenGlobal/status/1180954142396710912 https://twitter.com/InvenGlobal/status/1180954142396710912 Blitzchung is wearing a tear gas mask and laughingly says "reclaim Hong Kong, revolution of our time [光復香港 時代革命]" in Mandarin. This slogan (which is also translated 'Liberate Hong Kong' or 'restore Hong Kong') is ubiquitous in the protests; you can read more about its meaning here: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3021518/liberate-hong-kong-revolution-our-times-who-came-protest https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3021518... Blitzchung also issued this statement: "As you know there are serious protests in my country now. My call on stream was just another form of participation of the protest that I wish to grab more attention. I put so much effort in that social movement in the past few months, that I sometimes couldn't focus on preparing my Grandmaster match. I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it's my duty to say something about the issue." Source of the statement: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9242/hong-kong-player-blitzchung-calls-for-liberation-of-his-country-in-post-game-interview https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/9242/hong-kong-player-b...
- melcor 7y agoIt's a sad situation with HK and we should not accept it. But I can't help but feel that a sports competition may not be the right place for political activism. Especially seeing as the rules states it won't be accepted. If Blizzard did not suspend him they would jeopardize all of their rules, and I hope they would have done the same if he was shouting something pro-China.
- unicornmama 7y agoBlizzard clawed back winnings (earnings) and fired the commentators. This is not a measured response to alleged misbehavior. This is the response of a bully, a lunatic, or both.
- eyaswoo 7y agoI am from China. I'm happy and proud to live in China. I feel sorry for those (who thinks) being suppressed by CCP, all in this thread. I respect any ideas people expressing anywhere. It's nothing right or wrong in politics. They're basically games for adults. Not teenagers. Teenagers are always being used in these games. They just feel like heroes when they find they can play these games like adults (I believe they pretend being like adults in their day-to-day life). If they win in a quarrel, they feel a sense of accomplishment and self satisfaction. It's just black or white in their worlds. They don't tolerate other voices. (However teenagers do help at some moments. So they are being trained and used all the time in the history.) IMO these are called mature: * hear from different voices, do not trust one single voice * think by own brains, not others * seeking reasons from both side of one thing, like yin-yang * all information is suspicious unless you see and feel it by yourself * love C/C++
- ajmurmann 7y agoWhy did we have a Cold War with the Soviet Union, but are buddies with China?
- magicsmoke 7y agoThe USSR was very explicit about spreading communism and destroying the west. China has been vague about what they want, which is why you have the current culture wars over China's influence in the west and what it all means. It's a much harder to get in the mood to fight someone when they're not right up in your face with a gun.
- scumbert 7y agoBlizzard, Tiffany, NBA, what happened with South Park... we're on a roll this week, and that's only what made the headlines.
- johnwheeler 7y agoOne difference between and autocratic government and a democracy is the speed at which decisions can be made, and that’s what Blizzard, Apple, and the NBA are up against when having to choose who to appease. The Chinese government can unilaterally shut them down while people in the U.S. need to organize and lobby and fight to get change, and then when change finally happens, it’s only half-baked. I’m not saying an autocratic government is better, just making an observation.
- crazy1van 7y agoBlizzards statement about having an “investigation” into a “ rule” violation is very disingenuous. The rule is just they can ban anyone at their sole discretion that hurts their image.
- reroute1 7y agojust cancelled my WoW sub
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoAbsolutely agree, it's time for American video games to stop publishing in China. It's not worth the Chinese influence on our society.
- Shivetya 7y agoAmerican video games? What about American companies that have factories there or other presence there? Hello Apple! Hello Tesla! Hello Google. Blizzard has been bending over backwards for some time with regards to China but this is the first time I remember them taking action against someone who does not work for them. the simple matter is, you cannot pick and choose, all the companies must be shamed into not bending to China's censorship because it won't be long before such actions suddenly show in law; not that some of the speech regulations in the EU aren't close as it is with regards to what you can and cannot say with regards to religions
- missosoup 7y agoWhat factories? Everyone already has or currently is moving manufacturing operations from China to Viet Nam or India. 5 more years and the only factories China will have are going to be domestic.
- echelon 7y agoIf we're going to repeat the same cycle with Vietnam and India, we'd do well to encourage democracy this go-around. If we elevate authoritarian countries to our level, democracy may be in for a rough future. We should be learning a lot from the China situation. Modern China proves that authoritarian capitalism works and that you don't need freedom or liberty for your citizens. And that's incredibly scary. Imagine if that meme spreads to democratic countries... We need to be handling this situation with urgency. As bad and as pressing an issue as climate change is, this is much more terrifying.
- whatshisface 7y agoIndia actually has a functioning democracy. Many Indian intellectuals are unhappy with their current PM, but plenty of American intellectuals are unhappy with their president, and America will still have an election next year (the point being, the system still works even if your favorite person doesn't get elected, which is stronger evidence of systemic health than the system working when your favorite person does get elected). I have a lot of hope for their future. Vietnam is controlled by a one-party system, but even they are not as bad as China. (They may become as bad as China, but at least it's another roll of the dice, or for the people who live there another chance to act.)
- LostInTheWoods2 7y agoIf you have to check your principles at the door to do business in China, then maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be doing business in China.
- rms 7y agoAppeasement card: https://i.redd.it/n9zqxbbhfar31.png https://i.redd.it/n9zqxbbhfar31.png https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dexong/cool_new_card_from_activision_blizzards/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dexong/cool_new_car...
- C1sc0cat 7y agoAnd why does not the player sue blizzard for breach of contract - breach of human rights as well.
- theseadroid 7y agoSorry for not entirely related to the main thread, but since it seems there are many people in this thread knowledgable on what's going on in Hong Kong, I'd like to ask 2 questions. I'm not siding with CCP, but my issue is I'm not sure I can side with the protestors either. Because 1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government. 2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1] Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better. Also I'd like to suggest for whoever suggesting going to war with China first consider asking your government to grant full citizenship, permanent residency, or unconditional asylum to Hong Kong permanent residents who wants it. Edit: would like to hear some thoughts when you downvote. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906/mtr-corporation-suspends-cross-border-services-mainland https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906... (trashing trains while passengers still inside) (Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE
- cicero 7y agoCancel culture is becoming universal. Violations of political correctness can cause cancellation of TV shows, loss of jobs, and now banning from video game competitions. It is interesting that these days this is primarily a tool of the left end of the political spectrum even though in the past, book burnings, etc. were seen as a conservative tactic. However, cancel responses are becoming so common that I would not be surprised if conservatives start doing it too, if they haven't already.
- LocalH 7y agoIt's a spiral to the bottom
- ozzyman700 7y agoHappy to hear! Thanks President Xi!
- _bxg1 7y agoThis is why Trump's trade war is the only thing he's done that I support. I'm not even sure he's doing it for the right reasons, but at this point trashing the economic coziness between our nations is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. This can't continue. And in addition to chilling investment in/from China it's giving India and Vietnam an opportunity to get footholds in manufacturing, weakening the sector that was central to making China such a powerhouse to begin with.
- quotha 7y agoCheck out what is going on in Houston too! This is getting ridiculous! https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/alibaba-shopping-sites-appear-to-have-de-listed-houston-rockets-products-in-china/ar-AAIrlz6?li=BBnb2gh https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/alibaba-shopping-s...
- craftoman 7y agoI play Hearthstone and sometimes I watch Twitch. I once watched two major hearthstone GMs dissing about how tough and weird they're getting treated by Blizzard during tournaments. Every single word that comes out of mouth is carefully evaluated by supervisors and you have to be stand-by like 10 hours ago before the remote event in front of your PC without any reasons.
- Andhurati 7y agoI wonder if the heroes of their stories would side with governments like China's.
- corndoge 7y agoThe article doesn't say anything about Hong Kong or what he said
- rpmisms 7y agoI have an idea: let's cancel culture the people who are cancel culturing, and then all sing Kumbaya. In all seriousness, this is ridiculous. I hope this makes people understand how frighteningly China is intertwined with our corporations and culture.
- pcurve 7y agoThis is how China behaves when it's still far away from being #1 superpower.
- chromaton 7y agoCan we get the top leaders in tech to say something about the situation in Hong Kong? I feel like with enough public pressure, this should be doable. For instance, have Paul Graham or any of the YC partners expressed any support for democracy and freedom in HK?
- Rebelgecko 7y agoDoubt it. There's lots of money to be made: http://www.ycchina.com/ http://www.ycchina.com/
- cmsonger 7y ago> While we stand by one’s right to express individual thoughts and opinions, players and other participants that elect to participate in our esports competitions must abide by the official competition rules. Laff.
- dwoozle 7y agoChina is successfully extending their censorship regime to US companies who are gladly accepting it. All because 50 years ago pro-business deregulationism got us $50 million CEO bonuses, $100 TVs, and gladly turned China into a superpower.
- shrimp_emoji 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xfzQ7X9d0o&feature=youtu.be&t=39 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xfzQ7X9d0o&feature=youtu.be...
- williesleg 7y agoTime to boycott China.
- jrockway 7y agoWhat I find most interesting about this is their corporate mission: https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html "Every voice MATTERS Great ideas can come from anywhere. Blizzard Entertainment is what it is today because of the voices of our players" Maybe time for an update? Edit: They have a statue in front of their office: https://i.imgur.com/5PJxrZr.jpg https://i.imgur.com/5PJxrZr.jpg
- Grimm1 7y agoWell this is another good reason to distance myself from Blizzard as a company.
- a_c 7y agoInteresting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Good for the people of Hong Kong. The topic of Hong Kong didn't struck me as sensational/desperate as it deserves until a Hong Kong friend send me this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q Am moved by the clip, especially for the first 50s. It is english sub-ed. Would recommend anyone interested in the topic give it a look
- Timpy 7y agoThe Taiwan Flag Emoji topic got a lot of attention too. I think that's a fair spread. Censorship, Unicode standards, and Blizzard is kind of the expected overlap of interest topics for Hacker News.
- a_c 7y agoI realised the Emoji topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 after posting my comments. Blizzard, emoji, Hong Kong, and in part NBA too[1], once again shows how unpredictable viral-ness can be. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976
- LeoNatan25 7y agoDon’t forget the well placed South Park episode to pour more gas on the fire.
- ehsankia 7y agoRight, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.
- dwoozle 7y ago50 years ago we could have squashed China like a bug. Instead we singlehandedly turned it into a superpower. We needed Trump’s China stance in a normal person five decades ago.
- mrbonner 7y agoI see that American businesses play double standard here. In the USA, sport teams and entertainment businesses are the loudest when it comes to free speech and civil rights, LGBT rights. But they will bend over for CCP money instead of standing for the same causes. I have yet to see ANY business roll the freedom drum and make a stand about human rights when it comes to the violations in China. It’s sad that a recent South Park episode is exactly the reality here and not a satire.
- YayamiOmate 7y agoSadly it's not a double standard if you define standard as income. In US it brings money to shout with lgbt in china it brings money to squash the shouting. If you redefine your morals to money it works well. Not sure if that's good but it seems it happened.
- darepublic 7y agoAll your companies are belong to us
- wiz21c 7y agoThe rule is clear : >> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image... It says : "Blizzard is a commercial entity and it doesn't want to be involved in anything else than gaming". For me Blizzard acts in a very corporate way. There's nothing wrong with that, provided you accept the corporate way is the good way. If you think Blizzard's action is wrong, then just don't abide to their rules. Blizzard has no moral, it's a commercial entity and it makes whatever compromise needed to expand its commercial activities. Let's talk about that on the next tournament, just to see how the rules have been updated. (try to express political opinion inside Disneyworld, just for fun)
- aeturnum 7y agoNo one is saying that Blizzard has broken laws. People are expressing their displeasure about how Blizzard has chosen to exercise their rights. I encourage you to hold companies to account for their actions even if those actions do not technically violate any laws. P.s. Political opinions are on the official schedule of Disneyworld: https://dl3.pushbulletusercontent.com/UW7YGjoleObdVw7HDPeaprNVFC2h2kp2/Screen%20Shot%202019-10-08%20at%2010.49.00%20AM.png https://dl3.pushbulletusercontent.com/UW7YGjoleObdVw7HDPeapr...
- wiz21c 7y agoI don't say Blizzard has broken any law. It hasn't. I just tried to remind people that Blizzard is a private/corporate entity that will not endorse political debate because it may hurt its commercial value. I'll add that Blizzard is absolutely right in doing so. Because, it clearly can't be an open space for expressing opinions. That's because its values may be in competition with those opinions. So any opinions expressed inside Blizzard stuff would be "tainted" by Blizzard's nature/control. So Blizzard wouldn't be very good at letting opinion being expressed. So Blizzard's decision actually helps to maintain the expression of opinions in place where it is most efficient : the public places, the parliament, etc. And yes, that holds for FaceBook, Google, etc. Much of Internet is privately held => expressing public opinions over the web is tricky. Now, following you reaction, I've checked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically article 19 : "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Which basically says that Blizzard should not oppose the expression of opinion (provided one interprets "media" in a wide way : speech is a medium). I admit that the more I look into it, the harder it gets...
- geertj 7y agoThis is what you get for cosying up to bullies. It may be exhilarating while it lasts, but since the bully doesn't care about anyone but themselves, you will eventually always loose. The west has been gorging on cheap products from China and we started getting dependent. Now the bully senses power over us, and starts applying pressure. The better bullies know how to do this incrementally, slowly at first, so that it's hardly noticeable. Then, at some point you realize you're in a situation that you don't want to be in, but it's too late.
- rashkov 7y agoYep, exactly, and furthermore this is a deliberate strategy on the part of China, and a naive strategy on the part of the US. Here’s a good article on this very topic that you might enjoy: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-chinas-censorship https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-c...
- dosy 7y agoSo....it's totally okay when radical 'leftists' in the West force censorship or boycotts or content removal under fake-tolerant progressive dogma. But if you need to respect the wishes of another country, it's not okay? Maybe you're all just too scared to question your own leftists but totally okay criticizing another country that seems so far away to you? Because wouldn't worst thing to be labelled not an "ally" or anti-progressive? Seems it's not your position is based on absolute morality but rather a fear of being "lynched by the progressive mob of SJW keyboard warriors" hmm? But you all pretend it's morality to feel better? And all the better if you can hate on some other country to really up the self-righteous sense that your morality must somehow be rock solid and not double standard at all, hmm?
- caymanjim 7y agoKeep your politics out of my games. It's the only way games are tolerable. I can't even keep up with having to mute/ignore people in games for their constant political rants, trolling, or other stupidity. I play games to have fun. I don't care about your causes. I don't care about your beliefs. I don't care about any problems in the world. Gaming is escapism. Piss off with that nonsense and find another venue. Blizzard was right, hands down.
- bananatron 7y agoDemocracy is more important than Hearthstone - there are a ton of games to play and a ton of developers that have the ability to show a spine (which public companies may be mechanically missing).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jorblumesea 7y agoIt's funny how Western companies talk about diversity, inclusion, and all of these democratic values. Then the minute a rich totalitarian regime complains, all of those concerns go out the window because $$$. Hypocrites. I get it, if you don't cozy up to China, they'll just ban you and rip your product off. Seems like that's preferable to spinelessness.
- mekkkkkk 7y agoChina is clearly up to no good, but I can't shake the feeling that there would be something off about allowing political soapboxing in apolitical events like this. Should people have a set list of political ideas to propagate at the end of every interview? "My deck was not strong enough in the end-game. And also legalize assault rifles and support the Kurds". I dunno.
- lostmyoldone 7y agoIn sports it has generally been frowned upon to politicize competitions, somewhat broadly supported by both organizers and competitors. Whether this is something to strive for or not is a separate debate, but it is how it has been. Personally, I believe that support has shifted in computer gaming as compared to sports, and will continue to shift. In sports we use things like spears, shoes, bicycles, up to racing cars. But none of them relies on a narrative or story, except by the story around the sport itself. Few - if any - of the sports are part of culture the way computer games already are, and we see no stopping of this progression anytime soon. This explicit cultural relevance taken together with the fact that China, and several other countries for that matter, already has made gaming political by requiring games to not feature elements that oppose their regime, sensibilities, or culture, makes a compelling argument that competitors must be allowed a greater freedom of speech, even in the context of competitions.
- hannasanarion 7y agoNot allowing the expression of political opinions is a political act inspired by political opinion with political consequences. There is no such thing as "apolitical", it is code for "supporting the status quo and agreeing with those currently holding power".
- mekkkkkk 7y agoBut should political messaging always be allowed in all forums though? Is it not inappropriate in some cases? Would you be as supportive if the message had been "protect the second amendment, support the NRA" or something?
- tommoor 7y agoSeems like all of the other pro Hearthstone players should come together and voice their support at once. It would certainly be fun to see how Blizzard reacts then – shut it all down?
- alkonaut 7y agoThis is an excellent idea. Why limit it to one game?
- bpodgursky 7y agoI know it's long, protracted, painful for consumers and companies alike, but I think if we get one good thing out of our current China trade war and economic de-integration -- and this is a big thing -- it is corporate and media independence from PRC pressure. The PRC exerts pressure on every corporate and media entity which wants access to the Chinese market, and it's amazingly subtle and effective propaganda. In movies, this means a lot of small things that the average consumer doesn't even notice anymore: - Most blockbuster action movies have a China scene. The China scene invariably shows glistening skyscrapers, futuristic technology, and effective allies. - You want to film in China? You don't have Chinese antagonists. Use North Koreans. Use Russians. Or some other anonymous / fake country. Much less criticize the actual government? Hah, good joke. Now, if average, non-Hollywood companies are self-censoring users to stay in the Chinese market, it's time to cut the umbilical cord. It's going to hurt, but at least we'll come out of it with free expression and companies who simply have to follow the rule of law. Not the rule of subtle pressure and self-censorship to help a foreign government's propaganda campaign.
- luxuryballs 7y agoIf they ever setup an automated global power reach that allows them to censor people anywhere imagine what they could use that for if it ever came to an actual armed conflict or some orchestrated attack on another country. They could stop people from warning us or confirming afterwards that they were even involved. Hell, imagine what a government could use this for when going to war against it’s own people? Yes, hell.
- decoyworker 7y agoIs China a more profitable market than the US? It's worrying that US companies are willing to go this far for foreign profit.
- ehsankia 7y agoThey do have 5x the population. Obviously not the same purchasing power, but it is quickly growing. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a very significant chunk of their revenue.
- aidenn0 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...
- jzunit 7y agoSpeaking of forcing companies into doing whatever a national government sees as its political policy ... How about the US forcing other companies (Huawei) into not doing business with countries it doesn't like (Iran) and attempting to extradite foreign individuals (CFO of Huawei) to advance that aim. I'm not saying what CCP is doing is correct but the US has been doing the same shit for decades. Governments have always used companies as pawns for political purpose.
- kencoder 7y agoWill blizzard apply Censorship system in WOW, Hearthstone, Diablo, Overwatch? Anyway, I don't need to know because won't play it anymore.
- bArray 7y ago> Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you > into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or > otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from > Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in > addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the > Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms. This is why "cancel culture" needs to end, companies simply shouldn't be getting involved in the speech of an individual. Yes, some words are hurtful, but overall it just doesn't pay off for anybody. You can always find somebody who is offended, this is just a race to the bottom. We're also now seeing the negative effects come through onto LGBT keywords and Youtube monetization. As for worrying about China, if you even trip up once you'll find yourself kicked out. If you play their game, you'll be rewarded by having to hire state spies into your company architecture, your software back-doored, your customers censored and your source code cloned. And for your participation the CCP will take a large percentage of your profits within China. Also, seeing how much of a percentage the CCP takes from places such as the film industry, I'm surprised other Countries don't just match it - why should one Country demand so much tax and the others not? What's worse is that governments then invest tonnes of time and money trying to protect these rackets, whereas the CCP puts in very little to no effort in upholding copyrighted material (unless such copyright is Chinese held).
- erikpukinskis 7y ago> This is why "cancel culture" needs to end, companies simply shouldn't be getting involved in the speech of an individual. Wait, are you saying there’s nothing anyone could say to you that would make you not want to work with them? As long as it’s “just words” you welcome it in your workplace? There’s no level of verbal abuse that you consider grounds for dismissal?
- bArray 7y ago> Wait, are you saying there’s nothing anyone could say to > you that would make you not want to work with them? I am human, of course I can be personally offended. But if I had some fair competition and the winner happened to disagree with my political leanings, it's tough cheese. The moment your company becomes political, there is an expectation that they react to every single outrage. No sane person would link the beliefs of the rightful winner to the companies public facing ethics, but, if you continuously inject yourself in such matters, it becomes expected of you. > As long as it’s “just words” you welcome it in your > workplace? > There’s no level of verbal abuse that you consider grounds > for dismissal? The work place is something different, there is an agreed etiquette which is there to ensure productivity. Employees can typically bring their personal lives into the office up until the point it causes disruption. I've been in a high stress work place with people verbally abusing each other. It could have been grounds for firing, but it was resolved by simply taking them aside and talking with them. In other cases I've had quite interesting discussions in a coffee break about politics that I didn't agree with. None of these cases reflected on the company itself and neither of these cases I would expect the company to weigh in on.
- in_hindsight 7y agoIs upcoming Modern Warfare going to get boycotted as well? That will get Activision’s attention for sure
- avar 7y agoWe're increasingly at the mercy of private companies for what used to be considered civil liberties. I'm sure I'll get someone arguing about private v.s. public oppression, but at the end of the day being a professional video game player in someone's walled garden is no less of a specialized or acquired skill than say being an expert cabinet maker. So we're increasingly ending up in situations where people's hobbies or professions exist at the whimsical pleasure of private corporations. If this guy talked shit about a foreign government 50 years ago and liked to play football as a hobby, and was a skilled cabinet maker that government couldn't pressure a private company to ban him from all football pitches worldwide, or exile him from cabinet making. The answer isn't to boycott Blizzard, that's raging against the smallest cog in the machine. The answer is to eliminate these power relationships with a concerted effort of moving to free & open source software, and at the federated services when something needs to be hosted centrally.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoHe’s not exiled from professional gaming.
- avar 7y agoHence the analogy to cabinet making v.s. all of carpentry, he's been banned from something he's heavily specialized in. But I think that misses the point, 20 years ago nobody would have been able to ban anyone from Quake III, because running the servers was distributed, today you have major game companies like Sony, Microsoft etc. that can ban you from entire game ecosystems. In another 20 the whimsy of one company might be enough to ban you from all of gaming for all practical purposes.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoHow narrow would the exile have to be for you to be comfortable with it? Or, put another way, how big can my business get before I have to forgo my right to make my own decisions about who I collaborate with?
- swamp40 7y agoAs South Park has just demonstrated, Ridicule is a powerful and effective world-wide weapon against the CCP censors. Imagine how much work it must have been to scrub every reference of South Park characters from the entire CCP-controlled internet? And how embarrassing and petty that looks from the outside?
- actuator 7y agoIs Twitter's Worldwide Trends not just based on tweet frequency anymore? I went to Twitter to see if people are talking about this outside Reddit and HN and my trends is filled with unrelated topics. The Blizzard one was at 13th position with more tweets than the topics above it. https://imgur.com/a/Ymb9D04 https://imgur.com/a/Ymb9D04
- lovehashbrowns 7y agoI just canceled my WoW subscription because of this. I was so excited for phase 2. :( What a shitty thing for Blizzard to do.
- closetohome 7y agoMe too. I enjoyed it, but I can live without it.
- reaperducer 7y agoI don't care about video games. I don't care about Blizzard. I've never heard of Hearthstone. But I do care deeply about freedom of speech, and I'm getting tired of this crap.
- curiousgal 7y agoYou can't use someone's event as a platform to express your political views when their terms forbid it. Freedom of speech does not protect you form the consequences of your actions.
- EpicEng 7y ago>You can't use someone's event as a platform to express your political views when their terms forbid it Their terms are a generic, vague catch all yo allow them to punish you for saying anything they don't like. There's nothing "explicit" about them. And who cares really? The issue at hand is whether or not we, many of us Blizzard customers, feel that they have exercised their power in a just and defensible manner. Saying "welp they're a business and it's their platform!" is just a cop out. You're skirting the issue at hand and completely ignoring the ramifications of continual kowtowing to oppressive governments in ways which help them to further oppress. The question isn't whether or not they _can_, it's whether or not they _should_.
- gentle 7y agoWell, I definitely won't be playing any more Blizzard games until they stop pulling things like this.
- chipotle_coyote 7y agoA lot of comments here seem to take as a given that banning any offensive speech in any forum leads inexorably to situations like this, where the "offensive speech" is political speech offensive to an authoritarian government. But this implies that it's impossible to distinguish between different kinds of "offensive" speech based on any meaningful criteria whatsoever, and this just seems to be fundamentally incorrect. (1) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's a show of support for political protestors which might anger an authoritarian government that not so incidentally happens to be of a country with a lot of customers of a product the forum supports; (2) Someone in a forum makes an "offensive" comment that's an insulting attack on other users based on race, and the offensive nature is pretty clear to most people -- at least those who don't agree with the attack -- even if it happens to be prefaced with "I'm not racist, I'm just saying...". These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between. The commenter in the first case is supporting a marginalized group; the commenter in the second is attacking one. Punishing the commenter in the first case is kowtowing to an authoritarian government for baldly monetary reasons; punishing the commenter in the second case is showing support for an oppressed group in a way which is probably not going to bring you any financial benefit -- your company's accountants are not going to step in and say "you need to ban Pepe1488 for consistently sounding like a white supremacist because if you don't, it could cost us hundreds of millions of dollars" -- and whose PR benefit is, at the least, debatable. (The people in the oppressed group might love you, but if there is any press coverage whatsoever you are going to be inundated with threats.) There's a principle involved here which can lead you to boycotting Blizzard, but that principle is "we should support the right of people to protest against their goverment." The principle isn't "you should never ban any offensive speech of any kind at any time because to do so inexorably leads you to taking the side of authoritarian governments." (Use a slippery slope argument once, and you'll use them everywhere.)
- asdf333 7y agowell thought out. its easy to get emotional on social media but i think you make an important distinction.
- xigency 7y ago"The Most Intolerant Wins" > Let’s go one step further, “Should a society that has elected to be tolerant be intolerant about intolerance?” > We can answer these points using the minority rule. Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, as we saw, it will eventually destroy our world. > So, we need to be more than intolerant with some intolerant minorities. [0] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
- 40acres 7y agoPerhaps it's because of the overt nature of it's pressure, but it seems to me that China has definitely reached a level somewhat equal to the US in terms of "soft power". Considering Belt & Road and it's influence over Africa, along with the Europeans not responding to US pressure and accepting Chinese Telecom infrastructure, it definitely seems like a 50/50 balance of soft power going forward.
- Dan_JiuJitsu 7y agoWhile I cant do anything about the money I've already spent, I've just uninstalled all Blizzard games from my PC. Blizzard: As a result of this action, you have lost my business. I've been a loyal customer, but this behavior is unacceptable.
- freeAgent 7y agoTo quote South Park, "You gotta lower your ideals of freedom if you want to suck on the warm teat of China." The saddest part about this is that Blizzard simultaneous says that it supports people's rights to express their individual thoughts and opinions while disqualifying and banning a player for doing exactly that. It's corporate doublespeak. I would have more respect for them if they were simply honest and said that they (clearly) don't support the expression of thoughts and opinions which may lead to loss of business in China. That would actually be a consistent position. They can't have it both ways.
- CobrastanJorji 7y agoBut the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within, — "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."
- rygh 7y agoSouth Park have some great comments for this type of eventd
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- smsm42 7y agoSomehow I am sure if he protested against US government, or climate change, or plastic straws, or patriarchy, or use of wrong pronouns, or anything else we've seen protested against by celebrities lately, Blizzard would probably celebrate it and publish a press release about how brave he (and by extension, they) are. The cowardice and hypocrisy of US corporations, especially on the background of them pretending to uphold higher values, is astonishing. Good thing it's being revealed so clearly and overwhelmingly. They only understand money - so whoever ever paid them money or intends to - should take note.
- kingkawn 7y agoIn a brief swing through China recently I saw young people playing hearthstone everywhere, I cannot stress this enough, _everywhere_ I went.
- ghettoimp 7y agoWhat actually happened in the interview? Is there somewhere we can watch it?
- erulabs 7y agoBetween this and the NBA drama over the same issue: is there a coordinated campaign going on re: censoring the west’s information on HK? It disturbs me that most older people I talk politics with seems to think we ought to confront China over IP violations... human rights violations and anti-democratic activity seem infinitely more important to me. I can’t boycott the NBA as I’m not a fan - but I’ve given Blizzard a lot of time and money - in the past. What a shame. Are there other recent examples besides the NBA and this?
- kerkeslager 7y agoA few months ago we were talking about Facebook and Twitter censoring bigots, and a lot of people responded that it's fine when a corporation does it on their own platform--they own the platform and can do what they want with it. My position was that when corporate platforms are such an important part of our communications, protecting free speech on those platforms remains important even though they're corporately owned[1]. It's easy to be pro-censorship when you agree with the censors, but corporations are amoral and if we set the standard that censorship doesn't matter, there's no guarantee that they'll only censor the way we want them to. Consider this an "I told you so" post. EDIT: More on this subject, perhaps a bit better-thought-out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194433 [1] I'd further argue that we shouldn't give up so much of our communication to corporately-owned platforms for this reason, but that's a separate discussion.
- dm_py 7y agoGods Unchained is giving the player the winnings they lost because of this. https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304 https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304
- dealpete 7y agoI just changed my Battle Tag to "FreeHongKong", let's see how it takes me to get banned :D
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoAt a broader level, this is why I think that "core values" of a corporation in a capitalist system are always, 100% of the time, complete and total bullshit and exist solely to motivate employees to work harder: https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html I have NEVER seen a "core value" that takes precedence over the almighty dollar at the end of the day. It's not a core value if you uphold it only when it also conveniently aligns with making money. The thing that make values, well, values, is that you're willing to uphold them even when (or, more correctly, especially when) it's difficult. This is such a transparent example of cozying up to an authoritarian regime for profit purposes, I'm really wondering how all the Blizzard employees with Western-style values are reacting to this.
- dwags 7y agoBlizzcon is just a few short weeks away, I'd love to see a repeat of last years publicity crisis
- dm_py 7y agoGods Unchained is paying for the player's winnings that Blizzard took away. https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304 https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304
- jimclegg 7y agoOur government paid good money to organize those HK protestors. The media has an obligation to cover it now.
- pcdoodle 7y agoJust sold my blizzard stock. Not sure if that helps. not going to buy the WC3 remaster anymore.
- DennisP 7y agoEthereum-based game Gods Unchained has promised to pay his lost winnings and give him free entry to their own $500K tournament: https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304 https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304
- siculars 7y agoThe US needs to get serious here. We are in a battle for the future, make no mistake. We need to back our companies up when they promote our ideals and reprimand them when they bend to the will of enemy actors - CCP in specific. CCP is an enemy actor and should be treated as such. Their ideals are no more valid than ours. So by default all should be given an equal footing. What happened here is not that.
- Wh1skey 7y agoDid anyone else watch the recent South Park episode? I think it illuminates this matter rather nicely.
- shatteredmask 7y agoCorporations ARE NOT the government. Corporations have NO obligation to tolerate your hate speech on their platform. Free speech ONLY applies to government.
- thinkingemote 7y agoThere we are was looking for the users saying "it's not censorship"
- shatteredmask 7y agoI'm not saying this is not censorship. I'm just giving the boundary of free speech.
- UIZealot 7y agoIt helps to know a little bit about what's been going on in Hong Kong, before you all line up and take your daily dump on China. It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions in the region, including Taiwan and mainland China. The proposed law even explicitly stated that it's not applicably to crimes political in nature. But some HK people were nevertheless concerned that it might be abused by China to target political dissidents in HK. So they have taken to the streets to protest that law. As a result, the law was quickly suspended before it had a chance to pass, and a few weeks ago the HK Chief Executive officially announced the withdrawal of the law. However, despite the concession from the HK government, the protesters pressed on, demanding four more concessions from the government, chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive, who up to this point have been nominated from a narrow pool of Beijing-approved candidates, then voted on by a committee. It's not entirely clear that China even had anything to do with the proposal of the law which started this ordeal. But the protesters have been shrewd to paint a picture, to great effect, of big bad China stomping on the poor helpless people of HK. What I cannot stress enough, is the rampant violence and destruction from these protesters, which has done this great city, and many innocent citizens, unimaginable harm. Feel free to support their peaceful protests, but please don't simply pile on and encourage these violence and destruction. (EDIT: If anything I said is untrue, please correct me. Use the truth to argue your side, don't be a coward and hide behind your downvote.)
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago> crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong There's a lot more to that story. Taiwan explicitly ruled out accepting the proposed extradition law, despite IIRC a HKer murdering their HK partner whilst on holiday in Taiwan. > chief among them universal suffrage, or the direct election of the HK Chief Executive You mean the promised universal suffrage of the Chief Executive that was written in the Sino-British agreement, and decades later has still not materialised. I can see why that might be a sore point to the citizens of Hong Kong.
- monster2control 7y agoWow, when a government can ruin someone's professional career of choice simply because he or she has an opinion that goes against the People’s Republic, that’s when companies should decide to no longer do business in China. Sadly, however, the dollar is more powerful than the the moral high ground.
- chimi 7y agoThis wasn't the government's decision though, was it? It was Blizzard's decision. Just makes me wonder where all of this is going. Americans left and right are choosing China's cultural decisions over America's cultural ... legacy for the lack of a better word. Over money. It's like the Americans who love America, because America made them rich, are now loving China because China is richer. I don't know which is more American, actually. It might be more "American" to love money more than America. Americans have shown it is more important to love money more than where you were born. It's all so ... poetically disturbing.
- adventured 7y ago> It's like the Americans who love America, because America made them rich, are now loving China because China is richer. China isn't richer. That debunks the rest of your follow-on premise. China has less than half the household wealth of the US. The US has 35%-40% of all the world's millionaires and about 32%-34% of all the world's wealth (with just 4% of the population). Fun fact of the day: Since any of the years 1990, 2000, 2005, 2010 (pre or post great recession) the US has produced more new household wealth than China has. Not an outcome very many people would expect. China went from $4 to $52 trillion in household wealth since the year 2000 and the US gain still exceeded that gain by another 1/3. Since just 2007-2008 the US has added $42 trillion in new household wealth, and only added $1.7 trillion in new household debt. The greatest net positive household balance sheet expansion in world history. Americans have been busy boosting savings (~8% savings rate) and paying down their mortgages (share of homes without a mortgage at 15-20 year highs along with strong growth in household equity figures).
- 7y ago
- pcdoodle 7y agoTime to vote with our wallets. No reforged for this guy ^^^^
- 0_gravitas 7y ago"Comments are disabled" how poetic
- jammygit 7y agoAn aside: Blizzard has been fighting harder and harder to control the esports that revolve around its games. Now that it is succeeding in centralizing things as it hoped, it is using its power to destroy careers and impose political censorship literally for the Chinese government.
- asdf333 7y agowhy did this post get so low so quickly? who is downvoting?
- bcheung 7y ago> offends a portion or group of the public This is extremely vague. I'm pretty sure any non-trivial amount of words is virtually guaranteed to offend someone somehow.
- dylanz 7y agoIf you have a Blizzard account and want to cancel your account, you can do that here: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/2659 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/2659
- saltking112 7y agoWhat’s hilarious is that deletion of account might require government issued photo ID. The last step for me to stop doing business with a bad actor is by giving up my privacy.
- jonny_eh 7y agoDevil's advocate here: They probably put this check in place due to the extremely high number of hacked Battle.net accounts.
- Sohcahtoa82 7y agoDon't even need to play Devil's Advocate here. I guarantee 100% that this is the exact reason. If they're truly deleting ALL your data, could you imagine the customer service nightmare if someone's account got hacked and the attacker could issue a request to delete the entire account with no method for recovery?
- FDSGSG 7y agoWhat's the point? Anyone can buy fake id scans for $50 at most, $20 if you aren't getting ripped off. Blizzard obviously doesn't authenticate these IDs as that isn't really possible. The fact that you can do essentially anything to a Battle.net account with just an ID scan is a huge vulnerability.
- Thebroser 7y agoI tried deleting my account just now and was prompted with a screen asking for it. "Might" might well be an understatement.
- phs318u 7y agoI just went through the process to delete my account. First attempt to use my Authenticator was “denied - too many attempts. Try another method”. Tried using SMS auth, “denied - too many attempts. Try another method”. Uploaded my driver’s license. Irrespective of stance on China, for this behaviour alone Blizzard can go and get fucked. EDITED to correct spelling.
- ew6082 7y agoIt needs to be that way. Deleting a MMO account or several thousand dollars worth of hearthstone collections should not be something a casual hacker can do with just your password.
- phs318u 7y agoI didn’t make myself clear. I have 2FA enabled and neither the authenticator nor the SMS verification was accepted. And yet I strangely had no problem logging into the game last time I played. I’m pretty sure they’re just creating hoops to dissuade casual leavers. #blexit
- jimbob45 7y agoMaybe we can force companies to divest from Tencent now like we made Grindr divest? Seems like a bad idea to let foreign state-companies own large swaths of your economy.
- Dove 7y agoThis is a very specific instance of a much more general problem. A lot of private companies control exclusive access to something with a value that dwarfs what you pay for it. I pay nothing for access to Twitter; if I build a business or a social life on the platform, it becomes something I would pay thousands of dollars to prevent losing. I pay nothing for access to Facebook; the memories they store at this point in my life may be nearly priceless. I've paid a low triple digit sum for Blizzard games, yet the time and social investments I have made in those games make them a couple of orders of magnitude more valuable to me, now. The problem is that since these companies control services so valuable to me, anyone who wishes to hurt me for any reason can do it through them. Since no one is paying them to defend me -- I'm certainly not -- they have no resources commensurate with the value of what they're defending. The situation we're in now is one in which political thugs apply pressure to private companies to hurt individuals, in an attempt to chill free speech. Free speech is expensive and valuable, and defending it from those who would wish to destroy it requires commensurate resources. We should not expect Blizzard to stand up to the Chinese government; that is the job of the Chinese people, of other goverments, of perhaps the whole world. To my view, Blizzard is like a store clerk who gives up the store's money to a robber. It would be nice if he was a hero, but he's not equipped for it. Nobody is paying 7-11 to stand up to violent crime. The problem is too big and expensive to ask individuals to deal with. Society paying for police and courts is at least a response on the right scale. The mechanisms we have for protecting individual rights are antiquaited, and need to be rethought to deal with the current situation. Perhaps a model like the unified response to patent trolls could work? I think, if we want free speech to exist in the current environment, it will have to be something that big.
- tenebrisalietum 7y agoMostly playing devil's advocate here: When the Constitution was written, free speech meant literally that, your ability to go to a public space and physically talk. No third party was involved as it is with any telecommunication technology. So the resources consumed in that speech were totally your own. The only way to strictly have that equivalent in the telecommunications realm is for me to own every communication circuit between me and those who I want to communicate with. So lets say I have 10 wires coming from my house to other houses, and someone I know has 10 other wires connected to a different set of houses, that I'm not directly connected to. I can rely on my own self and build new wires (expensive) or I can work with this person to forward my communication (probably cheaper but he/she can view/hear my communication). If I want to communicate with someone else beyond my network, then a third party is carrying my speech, and we're really no longer in realm of free speech. This third party has rights and should be able to refuse to carry my speech for the same rights and reasons as me, unless entered into a contract beforehand. I think your real question is should corporations be treated as legal persons to the extent that they have the Constitutional right of speech.
- musicale 7y agoNice how they disabled comments. Sure that will solve any issues.
- quotz 7y agoI thought the western world was immune to communism??? It seems to me that we are more mercenaries than missionaries
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- rocdirty 7y agoBlizzard doesn't want to take ownership of their problem. If you're serving a country that doesn't have free speech, you need to limit what information is transmitted to that country. Just like any other tech company that has done major business in China... Rather than just censoring information that's transmitted to China's citizens, they are moving the censorship worldwide. I personally cannot support a company who's goes this route rather than the former.
- justcontent 7y agoGoodbye 'globalization'! Whatever that meant.
- yuanotes 7y agoActually, you should boycott every company that do business in China, including Apple, Microsoft, Coca Cola, etc.