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What is really interesting about this is how completely and utterly horrible a job Blizzard did in anticipating and preparing this very obvious possibility, an

What is really interesting about this is how completely and utterly horrible a job Blizzard did in anticipating and preparing this very obvious possibility, and thus is so poorly handling every single aspect of this.This so obviously was likely to happen that it easily could have been anticipated and planned for to be dealt with in a much, much more professional way, and yet clearly they didn't, and it's beyond inexcusable for any major company to drop the ball like this. And they just continue to prove their incompetence in how they're (not) responding now -- they should be in crisis PR mode, yet they're just sitting there, paralyzed. How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come.

legohead 7y ago
They could have gotten away with it had they not been so severe. They: Banned the player, fired the casters, and took back the player's winnings. They should have just banned the player for a year and left it at that. (not agreeing with anything that they did, just looking at it from a PR perspective)
- stereolambda 7y ago
  I think the details that you mention wouldn't be so important in the media narrative (although maybe they would in the gamers' perception). The ban alone probably speaks to the imagination the most. I am, for one, moderately optimistic looking at the Western counter-outrage and people ditching Blizzard. We need strong and widely held convictions to defend our basic liberty. Coming from the former Eastern Block, I can easily imagine what is it like to have an unfree government convincing the world that we want to live under its "protection", applying material pressures and pseudo-patriotic propaganda to make it appear so etc. If clumsy Chinese silencing play will trigger more popular defensive reactions, it's good. And in economy, historically totalitarian regimes can be extremely good in catching up (see Stalin's industrialization), not so good in outrunning.
  - yifanl 7y ago
    As a single data point, I've uninstalled all my (2) blizzard games and tried to purge what data I could from my account. I submitted a ticket to delete all my data, but they requested a government photo id... and given that I don't trust Blizzard with my game data, I definitely don't trust them with that.
    - not_a_cop75 7y ago
      Well, given their record, they might just sell your ID photo to the Chinese.
      - yifanl 7y ago
        Which is something I try my best to avoid, yes.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Agreed, they went nuclear without anticipating the world to fire back.
  - Guph 7y ago
    they went nuclear not caring about anything but keeping china's totalitarian government happy. I hope this really hurts blizzard. To many people value playing the game than protecting rights, let alone rights of other people.
    - silexia 7y ago
      We should all completely boycott Blizzard and never purchase games from it again. Same thing with the NBA. In the long run, we need to fight back in China itself against the dictatorship.
MisterTea 7y ago
> What is really interesting about this is how completely and utterly poorly Blizzard anticipated this very obvious possibility and thus is so poorly handling every single aspect of this. I kind of doubt that. With potential billions on the line, losing a few protesting players and face isn't anything to worry about. They have plenty of people hooked playing their games so they don't have much face to lose.
- fpgaminer 7y ago
  I'm curious what the reaction to these events has been in South Korea, where Blizzard derives a significant amount of their worth from. I would think South Korea would be particularly incensed, given that they are also a small country near China and are familiar with tyrannical rule. But I've not read up enough to know if these events are making waves there. If they are, that's a far bigger issue for Blizzard than a handful of angry American players.
  - hkmaxpro 7y ago
    > South Korea, where Blizzard derives a significant amount of their worth from > that's a far bigger issue for Blizzard than a handful of angry American players In fact Activision Blizzard only has 12% of revenue from Asia-Pacific [0][1]. The vast majority is from the Americas and EMEA [2]. The west should have a bigger say on Activision Blizzard's business, not China or South Korea. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df2ke8/the_asianpacific_market_only_makes_12_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df2ke8/the_asi... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/df8tmr/the_entire_asiapacific_region_accounts_for_12_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/df8tmr/the_entire... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activision_blizzard_revenue_by_country_boycotts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activis...
    - hkmaxpro 7y ago
      Additional info: For those wondering why Activision Blizzard kowtows to China while having a small revenue base there, tweets by Mark Kern (team lead of World of Warcraft and former Blizzard employee) may offer an answer. https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1181737774132518912 https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1181737774132518912 The whole thread is a gem. Boils down to bribes and subsidies. He's taking a huge risk by making it public.
tasubotadas 7y ago
I think it is called the benefit of hindsight. Everyone is smart after it happens but in reality, nobody anticipated that.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  some things are knowable beforehand.
  - gdy 7y ago
    Can you prove that you knew it beforehand?
    - dvt 7y ago
      The NBA literally just went through this 3 days prior. South Park literally released an episode satirizing this exact scenario 2 days prior. It's definitely prior knowledge. They either didn't care or are grossly incompetent.
      - jrockway 7y ago
        What I think is interesting is that none of this happened during US business hours. Someone in their China office or whatever made the decision, and when everyone in LA woke up, they found a shitstorm. The trouble that Blizzard has is walking back this decision could put their employees in China in danger.
      - gdy 7y ago
        Good point :)
  - x0x0 7y ago
    China's using economic leverage to bully companies into toeing their propaganda line -- particularly in light of the nba incident -- should have every public companies entangled in China figuring out their strategy for when someone speaks this way.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
Blizzard has been on a downward spiral for years. They still have awesome teams releasing and maintaining awesome games, (thank you for custom colors in SC Remastered!), but by and large their direction has been towards EA and away from their true fans.
- benologist 7y ago
  This is because their name is not Blizzard. Their legacy is Blizzard. Their name is Activision Blizzard. They are actively opposed to players' interests in many ways, like lootboxes which many countries seek to outlaw for teaching children to gamble, always-online DRM etc.
  - redisman 7y ago
    Metzen is out, Morhaime is out. Really the soul of the company has departed already. They still have some of the best talent in the industry but the products are not going to be what we used to love anymore. Makes me sad as I've supported them from Warcraft I and Diablo I until about last year (when they killed the competitive scene for HOTS with very little warning).
- josefx 7y ago
  If anything their perspective seems to be that their "true fans" are mainly Chinese and are playing cheap knock of mobile games.
  - MrMember 7y ago
    That does seem to be the case. The "big" announcement at last year's Blizzcon was a Chinese free to play mobile game with a Diablo skin.
    - benologist 7y ago
      It helps if you consider China has millions of little baby whales who will grow up to spend tens of billions of dollars in Activision Blizzard titles that leverage dark patterns that western countries are starting to outlaw.
ericmcer 7y ago
Only time will tell? Blizzard has not been a hip indie game studio for many years now, and people have incredibly short memories. Will you still be talking about this 3 months from now? Their chinese investors, partners, etc. may have a much longer memory than a bunch of Americans getting outraged at the latest injustice to be outraged about.
- baby 7y ago
  French people are outraged too.
  - jammygit 7y ago
    What do you mean? Lots of social media activity?
    - baby 7y ago
      (I’m French)
- metalchianti 7y ago
  I agree with you 100%. I would bet that Blizzard's radio silence had been planned from the start. People will forget but the more they apologize the more they dig themselves into a hole that's tough to get out of. Personally, I hope that I can withstand the desire to re-subscribe in two weeks.
- AlexandrB 7y ago
  I think we'll get a pretty good indication of whether this will blow over in 3 weeks at Blizzcon. I fully expect at least some attendees will bring signs/symbols to troll China - we'll see how Blizzard handles it.
- ryacko 7y ago
  Yes, people have incredibly short memories, they will forget all about Blizzard and never return.
rapsey 7y ago
> How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come. I doubt it. The internet has a very short attention span and online activism is pretty much useless.
- sushid 7y ago
  Really? “Online activism” is how Trump got elected. It also raised millions for ALS many years ago despite all the naysayers claiming it’ll do nothing.
  - rapsey 7y ago
    This kind of online backlash activism is useless.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Trump got elected because his opponent was as weak and unpopular as he was, but unlike her he had the benefit of constant TV news coverage for a year and a half leading up to the election.
    - not_a_cop75 7y ago
      And she was going to start a war with Russia. Admittedly, it'd be nice to have a president that tows the line more in the middle of the two, but another war is not what we need.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        I wish more voters cared about that sort of thing. Both 3rd-party candidates were anti-war, and they got 3.25% and 1%. Anyway, it's curious how much this "online chicanery is what got Trump elected" meme appears, despite its obvious falsehood. I wonder whose interests are served by that?
      - justsubmit 7y ago
        Wait, you think Clinton was going to start a war with Russia? Did you miss how she sold American uranium interests to Russia? Did you miss how Russia worked with her campaign to prepare the Steele dossier, i.e. how Russia worked with the Clinton campaign to prevent Trump from being elected? Did you miss how the Obama administration (in which she was Secretary of State) worked with Russia, how Obama was caught on-mic telling Medvedev to tell Putin that Obama would have more flexibility after Obama was reelected? These are all widely reported facts. It's bizarre how people still think Russia wanted Trump to win the election.
throwawayjohnny 7y ago
That's because the people taking the decision to ban are not used to the concept of a "backlash". In China if you dare protest a decision to ban you, you'd end up in prison, or worse, dead [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutallip_Hajim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutallip_Hajim [2] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171222-2-uyghur-students-returned-from-egypt-dead-in-china-police-custody/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171222-2-uyghur-students...
556343throwaway 7y ago
> How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come. It really depends on their goal. Reading the Chinese gaming forums, everyone is praising Blizzard for their “fair” stance and saying they will spend more on them. So if this actually helps their bottom line, Blizzard’s actions could be studied as a master stoke on how to deal with geopolitical PR.
secraetomani 7y ago
These kind of decisions are made by a 5th level middle manager, not by the CEO or the PR department. Just like when the Delta flight crew forcefully removed that doctor from the airplane. Or a Starbucks employee calling the police on black people waiting there. By the time PR get's involved, it's too late. This is one crucial vulnerability of many companies in today's world, any low level employee can generate a huge PR disaster by just not being smart enough to see the bigger picture. So basically today you need every employee to be trained like a world class PR agent.
- KineticLensman 7y ago
  > any low level employee can generate a huge PR disaster by just not being smart enough to see the bigger picture The military of many countries recognise this, recognising the concept of the 'strategic corporals' [0] [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War [1] https://thediplomat.com/2012/03/the-strategic-corporals-evil-twin/ https://thediplomat.com/2012/03/the-strategic-corporals-evil...
- mrosett 7y ago
  Ha - one bit of irony here is that it was actually United, not Delta, that removed the doctor from the plane. That's another angle in these situations. People remember the outcry, but not all of the details.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

legohead 7y ago

They could have gotten away with it had they not been so severe. They: Banned the player, fired the casters, and took back the player's winnings. They should have just banned the player for a year and left it at that. (not agreeing with anything that they did, just looking at it from a PR perspective)

stereolambda 7y ago
I think the details that you mention wouldn't be so important in the media narrative (although maybe they would in the gamers' perception). The ban alone probably speaks to the imagination the most. I am, for one, moderately optimistic looking at the Western counter-outrage and people ditching Blizzard. We need strong and widely held convictions to defend our basic liberty. Coming from the former Eastern Block, I can easily imagine what is it like to have an unfree government convincing the world that we want to live under its "protection", applying material pressures and pseudo-patriotic propaganda to make it appear so etc. If clumsy Chinese silencing play will trigger more popular defensive reactions, it's good. And in economy, historically totalitarian regimes can be extremely good in catching up (see Stalin's industrialization), not so good in outrunning.
- yifanl 7y ago
  As a single data point, I've uninstalled all my (2) blizzard games and tried to purge what data I could from my account. I submitted a ticket to delete all my data, but they requested a government photo id... and given that I don't trust Blizzard with my game data, I definitely don't trust them with that.
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    Well, given their record, they might just sell your ID photo to the Chinese.
    - yifanl 7y ago
      Which is something I try my best to avoid, yes.
m-p-3 7y ago
Agreed, they went nuclear without anticipating the world to fire back.
- Guph 7y ago
  they went nuclear not caring about anything but keeping china's totalitarian government happy. I hope this really hurts blizzard. To many people value playing the game than protecting rights, let alone rights of other people.
  - silexia 7y ago
    We should all completely boycott Blizzard and never purchase games from it again. Same thing with the NBA. In the long run, we need to fight back in China itself against the dictatorship.

MisterTea 7y ago

> What is really interesting about this is how completely and utterly poorly Blizzard anticipated this very obvious possibility and thus is so poorly handling every single aspect of this. I kind of doubt that. With potential billions on the line, losing a few protesting players and face isn't anything to worry about. They have plenty of people hooked playing their games so they don't have much face to lose.

fpgaminer 7y ago
I'm curious what the reaction to these events has been in South Korea, where Blizzard derives a significant amount of their worth from. I would think South Korea would be particularly incensed, given that they are also a small country near China and are familiar with tyrannical rule. But I've not read up enough to know if these events are making waves there. If they are, that's a far bigger issue for Blizzard than a handful of angry American players.
- hkmaxpro 7y ago
  > South Korea, where Blizzard derives a significant amount of their worth from > that's a far bigger issue for Blizzard than a handful of angry American players In fact Activision Blizzard only has 12% of revenue from Asia-Pacific [0][1]. The vast majority is from the Americas and EMEA [2]. The west should have a bigger say on Activision Blizzard's business, not China or South Korea. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df2ke8/the_asianpacific_market_only_makes_12_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/df2ke8/the_asi... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/df8tmr/the_entire_asiapacific_region_accounts_for_12_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/df8tmr/the_entire... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activision_blizzard_revenue_by_country_boycotts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activis...
  - hkmaxpro 7y ago
    Additional info: For those wondering why Activision Blizzard kowtows to China while having a small revenue base there, tweets by Mark Kern (team lead of World of Warcraft and former Blizzard employee) may offer an answer. https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1181737774132518912 https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1181737774132518912 The whole thread is a gem. Boils down to bribes and subsidies. He's taking a huge risk by making it public.

tasubotadas 7y ago

I think it is called the benefit of hindsight. Everyone is smart after it happens but in reality, nobody anticipated that.

celticmusic 7y ago
some things are knowable beforehand.
- gdy 7y ago
  Can you prove that you knew it beforehand?
  - dvt 7y ago
    The NBA literally just went through this 3 days prior. South Park literally released an episode satirizing this exact scenario 2 days prior. It's definitely prior knowledge. They either didn't care or are grossly incompetent.
    - jrockway 7y ago
      What I think is interesting is that none of this happened during US business hours. Someone in their China office or whatever made the decision, and when everyone in LA woke up, they found a shitstorm. The trouble that Blizzard has is walking back this decision could put their employees in China in danger.
    - gdy 7y ago
      Good point :)
- x0x0 7y ago
  China's using economic leverage to bully companies into toeing their propaganda line -- particularly in light of the nba incident -- should have every public companies entangled in China figuring out their strategy for when someone speaks this way.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

Blizzard has been on a downward spiral for years. They still have awesome teams releasing and maintaining awesome games, (thank you for custom colors in SC Remastered!), but by and large their direction has been towards EA and away from their true fans.

benologist 7y ago
This is because their name is not Blizzard. Their legacy is Blizzard. Their name is Activision Blizzard. They are actively opposed to players' interests in many ways, like lootboxes which many countries seek to outlaw for teaching children to gamble, always-online DRM etc.
- redisman 7y ago
  Metzen is out, Morhaime is out. Really the soul of the company has departed already. They still have some of the best talent in the industry but the products are not going to be what we used to love anymore. Makes me sad as I've supported them from Warcraft I and Diablo I until about last year (when they killed the competitive scene for HOTS with very little warning).
josefx 7y ago
If anything their perspective seems to be that their "true fans" are mainly Chinese and are playing cheap knock of mobile games.
- MrMember 7y ago
  That does seem to be the case. The "big" announcement at last year's Blizzcon was a Chinese free to play mobile game with a Diablo skin.
  - benologist 7y ago
    It helps if you consider China has millions of little baby whales who will grow up to spend tens of billions of dollars in Activision Blizzard titles that leverage dark patterns that western countries are starting to outlaw.

ericmcer 7y ago

Only time will tell? Blizzard has not been a hip indie game studio for many years now, and people have incredibly short memories. Will you still be talking about this 3 months from now? Their chinese investors, partners, etc. may have a much longer memory than a bunch of Americans getting outraged at the latest injustice to be outraged about.

baby 7y ago
French people are outraged too.
- jammygit 7y ago
  What do you mean? Lots of social media activity?
  - baby 7y ago
    (I’m French)
metalchianti 7y ago
I agree with you 100%. I would bet that Blizzard's radio silence had been planned from the start. People will forget but the more they apologize the more they dig themselves into a hole that's tough to get out of. Personally, I hope that I can withstand the desire to re-subscribe in two weeks.
AlexandrB 7y ago
I think we'll get a pretty good indication of whether this will blow over in 3 weeks at Blizzcon. I fully expect at least some attendees will bring signs/symbols to troll China - we'll see how Blizzard handles it.
ryacko 7y ago
Yes, people have incredibly short memories, they will forget all about Blizzard and never return.

rapsey 7y ago

> How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come. I doubt it. The internet has a very short attention span and online activism is pretty much useless.

sushid 7y ago
Really? “Online activism” is how Trump got elected. It also raised millions for ALS many years ago despite all the naysayers claiming it’ll do nothing.
- rapsey 7y ago
  This kind of online backlash activism is useless.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Trump got elected because his opponent was as weak and unpopular as he was, but unlike her he had the benefit of constant TV news coverage for a year and a half leading up to the election.
  - not_a_cop75 7y ago
    And she was going to start a war with Russia. Admittedly, it'd be nice to have a president that tows the line more in the middle of the two, but another war is not what we need.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      I wish more voters cared about that sort of thing. Both 3rd-party candidates were anti-war, and they got 3.25% and 1%. Anyway, it's curious how much this "online chicanery is what got Trump elected" meme appears, despite its obvious falsehood. I wonder whose interests are served by that?
    - justsubmit 7y ago
      Wait, you think Clinton was going to start a war with Russia? Did you miss how she sold American uranium interests to Russia? Did you miss how Russia worked with her campaign to prepare the Steele dossier, i.e. how Russia worked with the Clinton campaign to prevent Trump from being elected? Did you miss how the Obama administration (in which she was Secretary of State) worked with Russia, how Obama was caught on-mic telling Medvedev to tell Putin that Obama would have more flexibility after Obama was reelected? These are all widely reported facts. It's bizarre how people still think Russia wanted Trump to win the election.

throwawayjohnny 7y ago

That's because the people taking the decision to ban are not used to the concept of a "backlash". In China if you dare protest a decision to ban you, you'd end up in prison, or worse, dead [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutallip_Hajim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutallip_Hajim [2] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171222-2-uyghur-students-returned-from-egypt-dead-in-china-police-custody/ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171222-2-uyghur-students...

556343throwaway 7y ago

> How they've (mis)handled this will be studied by business and PR students for years to come. It really depends on their goal. Reading the Chinese gaming forums, everyone is praising Blizzard for their “fair” stance and saying they will spend more on them. So if this actually helps their bottom line, Blizzard’s actions could be studied as a master stoke on how to deal with geopolitical PR.

secraetomani 7y ago

These kind of decisions are made by a 5th level middle manager, not by the CEO or the PR department. Just like when the Delta flight crew forcefully removed that doctor from the airplane. Or a Starbucks employee calling the police on black people waiting there. By the time PR get's involved, it's too late. This is one crucial vulnerability of many companies in today's world, any low level employee can generate a huge PR disaster by just not being smart enough to see the bigger picture. So basically today you need every employee to be trained like a world class PR agent.

KineticLensman 7y ago
> any low level employee can generate a huge PR disaster by just not being smart enough to see the bigger picture The military of many countries recognise this, recognising the concept of the 'strategic corporals' [0] [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Block_War [1] https://thediplomat.com/2012/03/the-strategic-corporals-evil-twin/ https://thediplomat.com/2012/03/the-strategic-corporals-evil...
mrosett 7y ago
Ha - one bit of irony here is that it was actually United, not Delta, that removed the doctor from the plane. That's another angle in these situations. People remember the outcry, but not all of the details.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]