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It's anecdotal, but I know at least five or six people who stopped playing blizzard games, especially HS, after they punished a player and staff for expressing

It's anecdotal, but I know at least five or six people who stopped playing blizzard games, especially HS, after they punished a player and staff for expressing support for Hong Kong in a post tournament interview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

DanHulton 5y ago
I'm one of those people, but let me tell you, they have made it very easy on me. They haven't made anything even vaguely interesting in years.
- cdolan 5y ago
  Ditto. Blitzchung incident got me to cancel WoW classic, which is a pretty big deal to me… Sometimes I wish I had a character but I heard they are messing up classic by introducing power leveling!
bgutierrez 5y ago
I didn't like how obsessed I'd become over Hearthstone. When this happened, I took it as an opportunity to delete the app and I haven't played it a single time since.
FalconSensei 5y ago
This type of thing prevented me from starting playing anything Blizzard at all.
bcrosby95 5y ago
I did, but none of my friends did. I went sofar as to delete my Blizzard account. I wasn't having fun with their games anyways though, and I tend to get irrationally addicted to watching numbers go up (WoW achievements) so I think it was a good choice all around for myself.
maxkwallace 5y ago
I did this, and I went through the support process to totally delete my account, including purchased content. Sometimes I wish I could still play SC2 with friends, but expressing support for freedom of speech in Hong Kong and the sinosphere is more important.
Tsarbomb 5y ago
This describes me. I was playing WoW Classic with a close friend and regular WoW with a guild doing scheduled raids. Basically the day it all went down I disabled my account and uninstalled the bliz client. It was so weirdly easy to let go of it for some reason.
freeflight 5y ago
Which was and still is a completely artificial controversy pushed by certain interest groups. Blizzard is a private company, it's their tournament, their platform. If they don't want that to be instrumentalized as a political platform then they have every right to disallow that. For another, very recent, example of this: The International Olympic Committee just issued a strict warning against wearing BLM apparels, or any kind of social protests, at the Tokyo Games [0]. Yet the popular mainstream response to that is not "The IOC is bowing down to attempts of censorship by an evil regime!", as it was the case with Blizzard and China, but all around agreement how the Olympics shouldn't be a political platform. [0] https://thebridge.in/tokyo-2020/wearing-blm-apparels-social-protests-lead-strict-punishments-tokyo-olympics-21332 https://thebridge.in/tokyo-2020/wearing-blm-apparels-social-...
- blibble 5y ago
  they say they don't want their games to be used to take political positions then they put their president on stage wearing pride pins, make statements about BLM, and go on at length about how "every voice matters" ... whilst simultaneously banning people for saying "free hong kong", censoring the fact that Tracer/S76 are gay (in countries where this would hurt profitability), amongst other things
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > Yet the popular mainstream response to that is That's a broad claim to make. I have seen plenty of prevailing opinions and discussion the other way; commonly referencing Tommie Smith, prior country boycotts and similar events. In any case, I think it's reasonable for Americans to think that US companies should not sacrifice American ideals on the alter of foreign profits by cowtowing to (perceived) regressive demands of foreign countries.
  - freeflight 5y ago
    > That's a broad claim to make. I have seen plenty of prevailing opinions and discussion the other way; commonly referencing Tommie Smith, prior country boycotts and similar events. It's not really broad, even here on HN I'm getting downvoted for pointing this out, even tho out of all places we should know better. If you want to see the overwhelmingly non-controversial responses to this you can check out the Reddit discussions about it [0], those are mostly defined by understanding, and not outrage. > In any case, I think it's reasonable for Americans to think that US companies should not sacrifice American ideals on the alter of foreign profits by cowtowing to (perceived) regressive demands of foreign countries. And there it is again: The narrative that there were demands from the Chinese government to do it, instead of Blizzard just proactively putting the lid on it because it's bad for business. If we would apply similar assumption to this situation, then that would mean the IOC was apparently pressured by the US government to make that statement, yet that's not something anybody even dares to speak out. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5i7iu/black_lives_matter_apparel_banned_from_tokyo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5i7iu/black_liv...
stevehawk 5y ago
I straight up put in for a refund on the remastered War3 after they did that. Voting with your dollar is always a good move.
eric-hu 5y ago
This was me as well. I was actively playing Starcraft 2 up until then and logged at least 10 hours a week. I still miss the sense of purpose from trying to hit master, and following the esports side of it, listening to streams and YouTube videos, etc. I couldn’t play or watch again in good conscience. It felt like a big personal sacrifice at the time, but I’m glad to see that it added up into a noteworthy headline here, even if there are other reasons for player decline.
jszymborski 5y ago
I'm one of those who left in protest (played compulsively for around 2-3 years, bought every expansion for at least 1.5), and frankly it heartens me to see so many here in the replies who left for the same reason.

DanHulton 5y ago

I'm one of those people, but let me tell you, they have made it very easy on me. They haven't made anything even vaguely interesting in years.

cdolan 5y ago
Ditto. Blitzchung incident got me to cancel WoW classic, which is a pretty big deal to me… Sometimes I wish I had a character but I heard they are messing up classic by introducing power leveling!

bgutierrez 5y ago

I didn't like how obsessed I'd become over Hearthstone. When this happened, I took it as an opportunity to delete the app and I haven't played it a single time since.

FalconSensei 5y ago

This type of thing prevented me from starting playing anything Blizzard at all.

bcrosby95 5y ago

I did, but none of my friends did. I went sofar as to delete my Blizzard account. I wasn't having fun with their games anyways though, and I tend to get irrationally addicted to watching numbers go up (WoW achievements) so I think it was a good choice all around for myself.

maxkwallace 5y ago

I did this, and I went through the support process to totally delete my account, including purchased content. Sometimes I wish I could still play SC2 with friends, but expressing support for freedom of speech in Hong Kong and the sinosphere is more important.

Tsarbomb 5y ago

This describes me. I was playing WoW Classic with a close friend and regular WoW with a guild doing scheduled raids. Basically the day it all went down I disabled my account and uninstalled the bliz client. It was so weirdly easy to let go of it for some reason.

freeflight 5y ago

Which was and still is a completely artificial controversy pushed by certain interest groups. Blizzard is a private company, it's their tournament, their platform. If they don't want that to be instrumentalized as a political platform then they have every right to disallow that. For another, very recent, example of this: The International Olympic Committee just issued a strict warning against wearing BLM apparels, or any kind of social protests, at the Tokyo Games [0]. Yet the popular mainstream response to that is not "The IOC is bowing down to attempts of censorship by an evil regime!", as it was the case with Blizzard and China, but all around agreement how the Olympics shouldn't be a political platform. [0] https://thebridge.in/tokyo-2020/wearing-blm-apparels-social-protests-lead-strict-punishments-tokyo-olympics-21332 https://thebridge.in/tokyo-2020/wearing-blm-apparels-social-...

blibble 5y ago
they say they don't want their games to be used to take political positions then they put their president on stage wearing pride pins, make statements about BLM, and go on at length about how "every voice matters" ... whilst simultaneously banning people for saying "free hong kong", censoring the fact that Tracer/S76 are gay (in countries where this would hurt profitability), amongst other things
anonymousab 5y ago
> Yet the popular mainstream response to that is That's a broad claim to make. I have seen plenty of prevailing opinions and discussion the other way; commonly referencing Tommie Smith, prior country boycotts and similar events. In any case, I think it's reasonable for Americans to think that US companies should not sacrifice American ideals on the alter of foreign profits by cowtowing to (perceived) regressive demands of foreign countries.
- freeflight 5y ago
  > That's a broad claim to make. I have seen plenty of prevailing opinions and discussion the other way; commonly referencing Tommie Smith, prior country boycotts and similar events. It's not really broad, even here on HN I'm getting downvoted for pointing this out, even tho out of all places we should know better. If you want to see the overwhelmingly non-controversial responses to this you can check out the Reddit discussions about it [0], those are mostly defined by understanding, and not outrage. > In any case, I think it's reasonable for Americans to think that US companies should not sacrifice American ideals on the alter of foreign profits by cowtowing to (perceived) regressive demands of foreign countries. And there it is again: The narrative that there were demands from the Chinese government to do it, instead of Blizzard just proactively putting the lid on it because it's bad for business. If we would apply similar assumption to this situation, then that would mean the IOC was apparently pressured by the US government to make that statement, yet that's not something anybody even dares to speak out. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5i7iu/black_lives_matter_apparel_banned_from_tokyo/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/n5i7iu/black_liv...

stevehawk 5y ago

I straight up put in for a refund on the remastered War3 after they did that. Voting with your dollar is always a good move.

eric-hu 5y ago

This was me as well. I was actively playing Starcraft 2 up until then and logged at least 10 hours a week. I still miss the sense of purpose from trying to hit master, and following the esports side of it, listening to streams and YouTube videos, etc. I couldn’t play or watch again in good conscience. It felt like a big personal sacrifice at the time, but I’m glad to see that it added up into a noteworthy headline here, even if there are other reasons for player decline.

jszymborski 5y ago

I'm one of those who left in protest (played compulsively for around 2-3 years, bought every expansion for at least 1.5), and frankly it heartens me to see so many here in the replies who left for the same reason.