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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

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Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#211

Post by leppr »

_rrnv wrote: post #47

People 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 citize…

Allow 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=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.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#212

Post by alimbada »

ehnto wrote: post #165
alimbada wrote: post #158

It'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.

What was it about Activision that caused you to boycott them?

It 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.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#214

Post by thedudeabides5 »

abbadadda wrote: post #204
alimbada wrote: post #158

It'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.

At this point it goes far beyond just gamers. From the NBA to Google, this effect is everywhere. To be explicit, the effect is U.S. firms letting China dictate what they do or do not care about on a global political scale.

Seems like a modern kowtow. Relevant:

https://amp.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1877753...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#215

Post by bayesian_horse »

It'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...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#216

Post by bayesian_horse »

cooperadymas wrote: post #39

Is 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 d…

No, this is about Chinese influence.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#217

Post by nabdab »

diveanon wrote: post #55
kkarakk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering 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

So then the real question is how do we use Trumps ego and addiction to social media to get him to start caring about HK. His "trade war" already puts him in an adversarial stance towards from the perspective of his base.

Russia liberated Ukraine and USA will liberate Hong Kong. Makes perfect sense, and then Trump has something to one-up his good pal Putin with.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#218

Post by StevePerkins »

zwaps wrote: post #139

Then 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…

> "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"

Umm... yeah... but... oh boy... okay look, I AGREE with your ultimate conclusion here. But I think you might need a new rubric which with to argue it. Because as-written, this calls to mind half of all social interaction within United States culture today.

To differentiate these things, you have to tap dance around the "non-insulting opinions" qualifier. Which is kind of a mess, because we've largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be determined by the insulted.

I do think there's a great (and obvious) point here. I'd love to see it phrased differently, because that might be helpful more broadly.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#219

Post by HNthrow22 »

FIFA (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.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#220

Post by freeflight »

I 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!".

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