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If that's real, that's a surprisingly bad PR move from Blizzard. I understand this was targeted at a Chinese audience (since Weibo) but they must have known thi

If that's real, that's a surprisingly bad PR move from Blizzard. I understand this was targeted at a Chinese audience (since Weibo) but they must have known this would get back to their English speaking audience almost immediately. There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation).

opportune 7y ago
There is a good chance it was not authorized by HQ and might be some China-specific PR division acting autonomously. I have a feeling blizzard just wants this problem to go away, otherwise people are going to turn blizzcon 2019 into a shitshow
- rubinelli 7y ago
  Redditors are already talking about going in Rockets gear and Winnie the Pooh shirts.
  - apotheon 7y ago
    It would probably be more meaningful to cancel registration, and maybe even picket the place wearing that stuff (or at least post photos of wearing that gear on social media announcing they cancelled their registrations for the convention).
    - ulzeraj 7y ago
      Agreed but on the other hand I’m dying to see the “is this an April’s fool joke?” moments during Q&A.
    - snagglegaggle 7y ago
      The tickets and accommodations are nonrefundable.
      - nordsieck 7y ago
        Not sure about accommodations, but the tickets are definitely not refundable. > Tickets to BlizzCon, once purchased, cannot be refunded by the purchaser or exchanged; https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agreement https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agree...
- jethro_tell 7y ago
  Maybe they should nut up and make it go away?
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  It's actually quite impressive how they have managed to be on an even worse PR trajectory than the out-of-season april fool's joke of last blizzcon
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > There is a good chance it was not authorized by HQ and might be some China-specific PR division acting autonomously. I'm not sure why that should matter. Either the company immediately disavows the "rogue" statement, or everyone (including employees) will see it as an official statement.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CreepGin 7y ago
Seems legit. Weibo verified account with 700k fans/followers. You can check the page at: https://www.weibo.com/playhearthstone https://www.weibo.com/playhearthstone https://imgur.com/wyeJpCU https://imgur.com/wyeJpCU
rapsey 7y ago
Anyone know if a shit storm is also on the chinese side?
- jploh 7y ago
  I doubt that a Chinese citizen is willing to risk imprisonment or a dent in their social credit score for this.
  - Majestic121 7y ago
    There could be a shitstorm of the other side, i.e. "how could blizzard have streamer defend the rioter in Hong Kong, this is an outrage!" I guess this kind of complaints would improve the citizen social credit
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > Anyone know if a shit storm is also on the chinese side? I don't trust any of these reports about Chinese social media being outraged about these actions by Westerners or Western companies -- it's controlled too tightly by the Chinese government. I could see any of the following being true about any of these recent controversies: 1. The outrage is fully manufactured by the government-paid 50-cent party posters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party). 2. Normal Chinese social media users are genuinely outraged, but only because the 50-cent party got the ball rolling. 3. The outrage is genuine, widespread, and organic. 4. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread. It's just basement dwellers and the like, and most regular Chinese people don't care or don't care much. 5. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread, but is also getting amplified and promoted by the authorities through algorithmic ranking. 6. etc. Honestly, IMHO only #3 deserves any response from Western companies and coverage in Western media as popular opinion. The rest should be either ignored or reported on as a propaganda campaign.
yorwba 7y ago
> There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation). I'd translate it as: "We will continue to uphold respect towards countries." There's no "pride" or "our" in the original.
- fwip 7y ago
  I've heard multiple people explain that this is standard phrasing in Chinese to refer to China the country, and not "countries in general."
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - yorwba 7y ago
    "Our country" would be "我国". They used "国家", which is the term used for one or multiple countries in general. They could have meant just one country, but it's not what I believe to be the most likely interpretation.
    - class4behavior 7y ago
      国家 simply means state or nation and in this context national. 国家尊严 means national dignity. In the US you rarely address one's dignity, honor, or national dignity. You talk about US values, democratic values, respect for the constitution, etc. So to properly convey the meaning and intonation to a US audience, you would try to rephrase that term into "respect for the country" or something along those lines.
loceng 7y ago
Indeed - did Blizzard staff post this willingly or was this posted on Blizzard's Weibo account via Weibo staff or even someone else who followed an order? They certainly want to make the Blizzard game fans fall in line thinking Blizzard is aligning with China's tyrants' orders.
- secraetomani 7y ago
  Is there any recorded instance of Weibo stuff forcefully posting on behalf of an account?
  - twno1 7y ago
    I really hate this but it's our everyday life to see actor or singer we love they need to apology to China on their social media almost every month. These stars from Taiwan who have PRs in China, their Weibo wall may have post they do not agree automatically. That's because these PRs in China work so hard to doing their damage control job before everything goes wrong. I think years before, this may worked in China. But something changed recently. There are too many "internet red guards" in China. They want to use the same criteria to censor whole world by VPN the great wall. Once "internet red guards" target a company or star, they will dig everything they don't like(maybe 5 years ago!!) and post inside the wall. Then they encourage everyone in China boycott it. After that, government have excuse to suspend someones business. That's why Morey's twit cause NBA so much. And I don't think situation like this that Weibo post of Blizzard will do any help once Blizzard they need to apology to people outside of china. But we don't see Blizzard have any announcement to us yet. I think this PR post or discussion inside great wall is a clever move that control Blizzard international. They want Blizzard to say nothing or it will cause them more damage in China. for our everyday life reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-singer-chou-tzu-yu.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-s...
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The motive wouldn't make any sense. Why would the CCP go out of its way to save face for an American company that offended it?
blaisio 7y ago
Most Americans will see this message as intentionally trolling the US and Hong Kong. Politicians are already angry about this regardless of political party. Honestly it is one of the worst responses possible. It has to be a mistake.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  No, this is how it works in China. When Tencent has seats the board, it's how it works in the US, too. What Tencent has never seen before, and what all Chinese companies need a wake-up call to, is punishment for bending over backward to a dickbag government. US companies are used to weighing what the government wants and what its consumers want and finding a decent footing (to maximally benefit shareholders). Chinese companies just do whatever the party wants. It's bad for everyone except the CCP.
  - suby 7y ago
    It remains to be seen how much Blizzard will actually suffer for this. How many people will cancel their WoW subscriptions? How many will boycott their next big game. I have doubts that it will be a larger impact than the profits they've made in their ventures in China.
b0rsuk 7y ago
I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.
- pxtail 7y ago
  > they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politic The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty. Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all! However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  > gamers can't boycott to save their life Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested". On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.
jammygit 7y ago
They had to apologize to SOMEBODY, and they chose Chinese censors. The bad publicity is incredible so far, there are 5 top stories on reddit at the moment

opportune 7y ago

There is a good chance it was not authorized by HQ and might be some China-specific PR division acting autonomously. I have a feeling blizzard just wants this problem to go away, otherwise people are going to turn blizzcon 2019 into a shitshow

rubinelli 7y ago
Redditors are already talking about going in Rockets gear and Winnie the Pooh shirts.
- apotheon 7y ago
  It would probably be more meaningful to cancel registration, and maybe even picket the place wearing that stuff (or at least post photos of wearing that gear on social media announcing they cancelled their registrations for the convention).
  - ulzeraj 7y ago
    Agreed but on the other hand I’m dying to see the “is this an April’s fool joke?” moments during Q&A.
  - snagglegaggle 7y ago
    The tickets and accommodations are nonrefundable.
    - nordsieck 7y ago
      Not sure about accommodations, but the tickets are definitely not refundable. > Tickets to BlizzCon, once purchased, cannot be refunded by the purchaser or exchanged; https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agreement https://blizzcon.com/en-us/event-info/attendees/ticket-agree...
jethro_tell 7y ago
Maybe they should nut up and make it go away?
tomatotomato37 7y ago
It's actually quite impressive how they have managed to be on an even worse PR trajectory than the out-of-season april fool's joke of last blizzcon
nordsieck 7y ago
> There is a good chance it was not authorized by HQ and might be some China-specific PR division acting autonomously. I'm not sure why that should matter. Either the company immediately disavows the "rogue" statement, or everyone (including employees) will see it as an official statement.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

CreepGin 7y ago

Seems legit. Weibo verified account with 700k fans/followers. You can check the page at: https://www.weibo.com/playhearthstone https://www.weibo.com/playhearthstone https://imgur.com/wyeJpCU https://imgur.com/wyeJpCU

rapsey 7y ago

Anyone know if a shit storm is also on the chinese side?

jploh 7y ago
I doubt that a Chinese citizen is willing to risk imprisonment or a dent in their social credit score for this.
- Majestic121 7y ago
  There could be a shitstorm of the other side, i.e. "how could blizzard have streamer defend the rioter in Hong Kong, this is an outrage!" I guess this kind of complaints would improve the citizen social credit
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> Anyone know if a shit storm is also on the chinese side? I don't trust any of these reports about Chinese social media being outraged about these actions by Westerners or Western companies -- it's controlled too tightly by the Chinese government. I could see any of the following being true about any of these recent controversies: 1. The outrage is fully manufactured by the government-paid 50-cent party posters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party). 2. Normal Chinese social media users are genuinely outraged, but only because the 50-cent party got the ball rolling. 3. The outrage is genuine, widespread, and organic. 4. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread. It's just basement dwellers and the like, and most regular Chinese people don't care or don't care much. 5. The outrage is genuine and organic, but not widespread, but is also getting amplified and promoted by the authorities through algorithmic ranking. 6. etc. Honestly, IMHO only #3 deserves any response from Western companies and coverage in Western media as popular opinion. The rest should be either ignored or reported on as a propaganda campaign.

yorwba 7y ago

> There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation). I'd translate it as: "We will continue to uphold respect towards countries." There's no "pride" or "our" in the original.

fwip 7y ago
I've heard multiple people explain that this is standard phrasing in Chinese to refer to China the country, and not "countries in general."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yorwba 7y ago
  "Our country" would be "我国". They used "国家", which is the term used for one or multiple countries in general. They could have meant just one country, but it's not what I believe to be the most likely interpretation.
  - class4behavior 7y ago
    国家 simply means state or nation and in this context national. 国家尊严 means national dignity. In the US you rarely address one's dignity, honor, or national dignity. You talk about US values, democratic values, respect for the constitution, etc. So to properly convey the meaning and intonation to a US audience, you would try to rephrase that term into "respect for the country" or something along those lines.

loceng 7y ago

Indeed - did Blizzard staff post this willingly or was this posted on Blizzard's Weibo account via Weibo staff or even someone else who followed an order? They certainly want to make the Blizzard game fans fall in line thinking Blizzard is aligning with China's tyrants' orders.

secraetomani 7y ago
Is there any recorded instance of Weibo stuff forcefully posting on behalf of an account?
- twno1 7y ago
  I really hate this but it's our everyday life to see actor or singer we love they need to apology to China on their social media almost every month. These stars from Taiwan who have PRs in China, their Weibo wall may have post they do not agree automatically. That's because these PRs in China work so hard to doing their damage control job before everything goes wrong. I think years before, this may worked in China. But something changed recently. There are too many "internet red guards" in China. They want to use the same criteria to censor whole world by VPN the great wall. Once "internet red guards" target a company or star, they will dig everything they don't like(maybe 5 years ago!!) and post inside the wall. Then they encourage everyone in China boycott it. After that, government have excuse to suspend someones business. That's why Morey's twit cause NBA so much. And I don't think situation like this that Weibo post of Blizzard will do any help once Blizzard they need to apology to people outside of china. But we don't see Blizzard have any announcement to us yet. I think this PR post or discussion inside great wall is a clever move that control Blizzard international. They want Blizzard to say nothing or it will cause them more damage in China. for our everyday life reference: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-singer-chou-tzu-yu.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/world/asia/taiwan-china-s...
_bxg1 7y ago
The motive wouldn't make any sense. Why would the CCP go out of its way to save face for an American company that offended it?

blaisio 7y ago

Most Americans will see this message as intentionally trolling the US and Hong Kong. Politicians are already angry about this regardless of political party. Honestly it is one of the worst responses possible. It has to be a mistake.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
No, this is how it works in China. When Tencent has seats the board, it's how it works in the US, too. What Tencent has never seen before, and what all Chinese companies need a wake-up call to, is punishment for bending over backward to a dickbag government. US companies are used to weighing what the government wants and what its consumers want and finding a decent footing (to maximally benefit shareholders). Chinese companies just do whatever the party wants. It's bad for everyone except the CCP.
- suby 7y ago
  It remains to be seen how much Blizzard will actually suffer for this. How many people will cancel their WoW subscriptions? How many will boycott their next big game. I have doubts that it will be a larger impact than the profits they've made in their ventures in China.

b0rsuk 7y ago

I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.

pxtail 7y ago
> they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politic The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty. Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all! However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s
Bartweiss 7y ago
> gamers can't boycott to save their life Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested". On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.

jammygit 7y ago

They had to apologize to SOMEBODY, and they chose Chinese censors. The bad publicity is incredible so far, there are 5 top stories on reddit at the moment