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IMO, Blizzards actions have been borderline incompetent. I completely understand them not wanting their platform to be used to make political statements. This

IMO, Blizzards actions have been borderline incompetent. I completely understand them not wanting their platform to be used to make political statements. This isn't like the NBA situation where Morey used a private social media account to show support for his private political opiniona. This was a platform owned by Blizzard with a very specific content focus. But banning Blitzchung for any amount of time was just dumb. They have the right to respond that way, but it's still a dumb response. They should have made a public statement following the incident that went something like this: "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." Follow that up with a description of what that punative action would look like. I can't imagine any backlash to that. Many people would be unhappy, but I doubt there would be protests or letters from congress. Blizzard made a mistake and they are refusing to learn from it. Now they get to deal with the fallout.

javerikr 7y ago
> incompetent
dwoozle 7y ago
No. The Chinese government is using this entire crisis as a way of testing the limits of its power. They wanted to test it in a 0-10 scale but found the needle zoomed up to the right stop, so they adjusted the scale to 0-100 by dialing up their actions to even more extreme. That’s why they’re forcing these companies to bend the knee in public rather than quietly. They didn’t want to just disable the HKLive app, they wanted to see whether they could force Apple’s CEO to write a public mea culpa for them, which he did. You can be certain that a person with a direct line of authority to Xi made it very clear that Blizzard would not be allowed to “tactfully” deal with the situation publicist-style. What you will soon see is the Chinese outrage dialing down as the government gets a good read on the 0-100 number and retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing.
- learc83 7y ago
  >retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing. You could argue that China may have worked like that in the past, but they don't under Xi. Dictators are never very patient. They are too concerned with personal power to put long term interests ahead of personal gain. Just look at the HK situation for evidence. All they had to do was keep going slowly and wait till 2047, but Xi couldn't handle looking weak.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    He can handle looking weak as long as the economy keeps humming along, which maintains CCP securely in place, which lessens internal party tensions. If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise.
    - learc83 7y ago
      I meant he couldn't personally handle looking weak, not that the Winnie The Pooh thing was actually a threat to his power base. He overreacted to something that wasn't actually a threat because it hurt his ego. >If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise. But yes that is a very good point.
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
Meh. I'd say just allow all discussion or political discourse and let the community moderate? If people think that's stupid then players that do that will lose out. The community already decides what it will tolerate and what it will not.
ekianjo 7y ago
> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." How about let people say what they want and let the public judge by themselves? Is that so hard to do nowadays? You just don't endorse anything individuals say, that's all.
- yannyu 7y ago
  As seen with the Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets, and the NBA, the Chinese government will go after anyone they can when incidents like this come up. Morey's single tweet in support of HK resulted in China cutting off their relationship with the Houston Rockets and also calling for Morey to be disciplined or punished by the NBA. In this case, the NBA hasn't done anything specific to Morey. However, many people are expecting some sort of retaliation from China against the NBA in the future.
- snapwich 7y ago
  So turn all platforms into 4chan, is that what you're suggesting?
  - smbullet 7y ago
    Yeah just like 4chan. Except instead of anonymous it's public and instead of a message board it's real life. But other than that exactly like 4chan.
    - Iv 7y ago
      And that you only get a 20 seconds message once you won a tournament.
- twh270 7y ago
  When you don't publicly dissociate your company/party/whatev from statements that are made by people associated with your company/etc, people will take that as tacit acceptance or approval. Blizzard's initial response was awful, and they've done little IMO to walk back from that. However, they do have a right (and the responsibility) to enforce their policies. Hopefully, if this same situation occurs again, they respond with something less than the nuclear option.
kevin_b_er 7y ago
The Communist Party of China may have strongly hinted (read: threatened) Blizzard over such a thing not being permitted and if it occurred that severe consequences would happen. So Blizzard was not quite incompetent, they were just panic hedging against financial threats and to appease the Communist Party of China.
mdorazio 7y ago
I think it still would have been met with backlash because Blizzard previously hopped on the sociopolitical issue bandwagon when they thought it would win them public points [1]. A lot of people see the current situation as transparent bullshit because Blizzard obviously wants to have its cake and eat it, too. [1] https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says-lovewins-after-years-of-homophobia-and-transmisogyny https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says...
- ahelwer 7y ago
  Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    There's a large contingent of people who don't want corporations at Pride. But there's also the reasonable view that 'woke for the money' corporations are still better than not woke corporations. It's challenging to work through what's best, especially when the employees of a business might hold stronger views than their employer.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      There's also "woke for the talent", which in the current skill economy is non-negligible. If you're having a hard time finding international software developers to work for you because you're sponsoring US border militias (to use a ridiculous example), then you're materially hurting your bottom line via political speech. And while that's an example of active speech, there are similar examples of lack-of-speech. E.g. employees at cloud companies disagreeing with neutrality regarding ICE contracts. It's sad that only a relatively small subset of labor has this much bargaining ability, but it does seem healthy in making companies responsive to popular (for some definition) demands.
      - SamReidHughes 7y ago
ericol 7y ago
I understand your point; but I don't think Blizzard actions would had been this strong on any other similar situation (Say, Blitzchung supporting the Catalonian separatists). All evidence seems to indicate Blizzard acted this way because China.
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  Blizzard could have kicked him out of the tournament and said "don't use our platform for controversy" and probably nothing would have happened. Instead they stripped him of his winnings, banned him for a year, and then release two public statements one in English that was bad enough, and another in Chinese that absolutely prostrated themselves before the Mainland government. It was pathetic.
  - hermitdev 7y ago
    Blizzard has since reinstated his winnings and reduced the ban to 6 months. > Blizzard originally banned the Hong Kong-based player for a year and withheld his prize money after he said "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" in Chinese during the livestreamed event. That penalty was later reduced to a six-month suspension, and Chung's prize money was reinstated Second paragraph in https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/us-legislators-urge-blizzard-to-reverse-hong-kong-protest-player-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/us-legislators-urge-b...
    - metalliqaz 7y ago
      Yeah, after they were raked over the coals by everyone from their own fans to the US Congress. Perhaps a bit too late.
      - hermitdev 7y ago
        I was not making any commentary on Blizzard, I was just pointing out that they had backtracked, to an extent from what the GP was posting. Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's stance, but it should be noted that they partially backtracked. They're letting him keep the prize money, and down to a 6 month suspension from 12 months. Blizzard's terms about not causing offense are so broad that one could hardly wish someone a good morning without risking offending someone. To reiterate: I am not defending Blizzard, just pointing out they had a partial mea culpa.
pennaMan 7y ago
>Blizzard made a mistake and they are refusing to learn from it. That's the standard Blizzard MO in everything from business decisions to gameplay patches in all their games.
throwaway66920 7y ago
You’re writing this with the assumption that they were not explicitly told what to do by the Chinese government.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jdoliner 7y ago
> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." > Follow that up with a description of what that punative action would look like. Players already sign contracts stipulating that there will be punitive action for making political statements during tournament streams. I still agree with your broader point that they handled it badly, but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left.
- dmix 7y ago
  > but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left. Credibility in terms of having a punitive response which demonstrates their authority or among players who would be outraged over Blizzard not being cool with political speech mixing with pro championship broadcasts?
- CivBase 7y ago
  Yes, but those contracts are vaguely worded catchalls and do not provide details on what that punitive action looks like. I don't consider that to be sufficient to justify their reaction.
harass 7y ago
It was total incompetency, shown in the way they treated their casters. Generally the production staff would be held responsible in traditional media. A producer or show runner should have been able to manage the feed. This leads me to believe that there was no protocol in place to manage this situation, Blizzard should be held accountable. Would you see newscasters held responsible for what an interviewee said on a live feed?

javerikr 7y ago

> incompetent

dwoozle 7y ago

No. The Chinese government is using this entire crisis as a way of testing the limits of its power. They wanted to test it in a 0-10 scale but found the needle zoomed up to the right stop, so they adjusted the scale to 0-100 by dialing up their actions to even more extreme. That’s why they’re forcing these companies to bend the knee in public rather than quietly. They didn’t want to just disable the HKLive app, they wanted to see whether they could force Apple’s CEO to write a public mea culpa for them, which he did. You can be certain that a person with a direct line of authority to Xi made it very clear that Blizzard would not be allowed to “tactfully” deal with the situation publicist-style. What you will soon see is the Chinese outrage dialing down as the government gets a good read on the 0-100 number and retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing.

learc83 7y ago
>retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing. You could argue that China may have worked like that in the past, but they don't under Xi. Dictators are never very patient. They are too concerned with personal power to put long term interests ahead of personal gain. Just look at the HK situation for evidence. All they had to do was keep going slowly and wait till 2047, but Xi couldn't handle looking weak.
- ethbro 7y ago
  He can handle looking weak as long as the economy keeps humming along, which maintains CCP securely in place, which lessens internal party tensions. If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise.
  - learc83 7y ago
    I meant he couldn't personally handle looking weak, not that the Winnie The Pooh thing was actually a threat to his power base. He overreacted to something that wasn't actually a threat because it hurt his ego. >If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise. But yes that is a very good point.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

Meh. I'd say just allow all discussion or political discourse and let the community moderate? If people think that's stupid then players that do that will lose out. The community already decides what it will tolerate and what it will not.

ekianjo 7y ago

> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." How about let people say what they want and let the public judge by themselves? Is that so hard to do nowadays? You just don't endorse anything individuals say, that's all.

yannyu 7y ago
As seen with the Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets, and the NBA, the Chinese government will go after anyone they can when incidents like this come up. Morey's single tweet in support of HK resulted in China cutting off their relationship with the Houston Rockets and also calling for Morey to be disciplined or punished by the NBA. In this case, the NBA hasn't done anything specific to Morey. However, many people are expecting some sort of retaliation from China against the NBA in the future.
snapwich 7y ago
So turn all platforms into 4chan, is that what you're suggesting?
- smbullet 7y ago
  Yeah just like 4chan. Except instead of anonymous it's public and instead of a message board it's real life. But other than that exactly like 4chan.
  - Iv 7y ago
    And that you only get a 20 seconds message once you won a tournament.
twh270 7y ago
When you don't publicly dissociate your company/party/whatev from statements that are made by people associated with your company/etc, people will take that as tacit acceptance or approval. Blizzard's initial response was awful, and they've done little IMO to walk back from that. However, they do have a right (and the responsibility) to enforce their policies. Hopefully, if this same situation occurs again, they respond with something less than the nuclear option.

kevin_b_er 7y ago

The Communist Party of China may have strongly hinted (read: threatened) Blizzard over such a thing not being permitted and if it occurred that severe consequences would happen. So Blizzard was not quite incompetent, they were just panic hedging against financial threats and to appease the Communist Party of China.

mdorazio 7y ago

I think it still would have been met with backlash because Blizzard previously hopped on the sociopolitical issue bandwagon when they thought it would win them public points [1]. A lot of people see the current situation as transparent bullshit because Blizzard obviously wants to have its cake and eat it, too. [1] https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says-lovewins-after-years-of-homophobia-and-transmisogyny https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says...

ahelwer 7y ago
Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  There's a large contingent of people who don't want corporations at Pride. But there's also the reasonable view that 'woke for the money' corporations are still better than not woke corporations. It's challenging to work through what's best, especially when the employees of a business might hold stronger views than their employer.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    There's also "woke for the talent", which in the current skill economy is non-negligible. If you're having a hard time finding international software developers to work for you because you're sponsoring US border militias (to use a ridiculous example), then you're materially hurting your bottom line via political speech. And while that's an example of active speech, there are similar examples of lack-of-speech. E.g. employees at cloud companies disagreeing with neutrality regarding ICE contracts. It's sad that only a relatively small subset of labor has this much bargaining ability, but it does seem healthy in making companies responsive to popular (for some definition) demands.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago

ericol 7y ago

I understand your point; but I don't think Blizzard actions would had been this strong on any other similar situation (Say, Blitzchung supporting the Catalonian separatists). All evidence seems to indicate Blizzard acted this way because China.

metalliqaz 7y ago
Blizzard could have kicked him out of the tournament and said "don't use our platform for controversy" and probably nothing would have happened. Instead they stripped him of his winnings, banned him for a year, and then release two public statements one in English that was bad enough, and another in Chinese that absolutely prostrated themselves before the Mainland government. It was pathetic.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Blizzard has since reinstated his winnings and reduced the ban to 6 months. > Blizzard originally banned the Hong Kong-based player for a year and withheld his prize money after he said "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" in Chinese during the livestreamed event. That penalty was later reduced to a six-month suspension, and Chung's prize money was reinstated Second paragraph in https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/us-legislators-urge-blizzard-to-reverse-hong-kong-protest-player-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/us-legislators-urge-b...
  - metalliqaz 7y ago
    Yeah, after they were raked over the coals by everyone from their own fans to the US Congress. Perhaps a bit too late.
    - hermitdev 7y ago
      I was not making any commentary on Blizzard, I was just pointing out that they had backtracked, to an extent from what the GP was posting. Personally, I disagree with Blizzard's stance, but it should be noted that they partially backtracked. They're letting him keep the prize money, and down to a 6 month suspension from 12 months. Blizzard's terms about not causing offense are so broad that one could hardly wish someone a good morning without risking offending someone. To reiterate: I am not defending Blizzard, just pointing out they had a partial mea culpa.

pennaMan 7y ago

>Blizzard made a mistake and they are refusing to learn from it. That's the standard Blizzard MO in everything from business decisions to gameplay patches in all their games.

throwaway66920 7y ago

You’re writing this with the assumption that they were not explicitly told what to do by the Chinese government.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jdoliner 7y ago

> "We encourage players and community members to express themselves. However, our tournament coverage is a platform for Blizzard e-sports content only. Any future use of the platform to express personal political opinions on sensitive subject matter without Blizzard's express conscent will be met with punative action." > Follow that up with a description of what that punative action would look like. Players already sign contracts stipulating that there will be punitive action for making political statements during tournament streams. I still agree with your broader point that they handled it badly, but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left.

dmix 7y ago
> but I don't think they could have let him off with a warning and had any credibility left. Credibility in terms of having a punitive response which demonstrates their authority or among players who would be outraged over Blizzard not being cool with political speech mixing with pro championship broadcasts?
CivBase 7y ago
Yes, but those contracts are vaguely worded catchalls and do not provide details on what that punitive action looks like. I don't consider that to be sufficient to justify their reaction.

harass 7y ago

It was total incompetency, shown in the way they treated their casters. Generally the production staff would be held responsible in traditional media. A producer or show runner should have been able to manage the feed. This leads me to believe that there was no protocol in place to manage this situation, Blizzard should be held accountable. Would you see newscasters held responsible for what an interviewee said on a live feed?