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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

#261

Post by SolaceQuantum »

diveanon wrote: post #93
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you suppose this would be implemented? These things only affect a very small niche audience. Most people don't care what is going on in HK and even less people will care about this incident.

I feel like social media is the best legal venue for it. Start sending messages to every game dev, project manager, and director at these companies asking them why they support the totalitarian oppression of HK. Ask them what they are currently doing to limit the influence of totalitarian regimes on their corporate policy. Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within.

"Make the issue personal for the companies by fomenting discontent from within."

But the only options available to the employees from that point onwards is group organization (eg. unionization) which is itself politically controversial and prone to ruining their careers (see: google employees' organizing efforts resulting in the majority of the original organizers being foistered out of google) or leaving which puts their livelihoods in jeopardy as they abandon one of the biggest employers of their industry..

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#262

Post by IanSanders »

I agree 100% that we should boycott and sanction, however doubt there will be enough people who will, and enough people who care. And I don't blame most for not caring, there are more things to worry about than we have time available. Maybe 1% of hearthstone players will see your comment. Similarly, there are other entities which need to be sanctioned, which you and me won't find out about as it's outside of our areas of interest.

Which makes me believe we need some kind of trusted "morality authority", which would process information similar to this and make informed decisions who to boycott, how and when. Less informed would be able to make an impact without having to do research (which not everyone would do equally well)

Obviously this authority must operate with complete transparency, so that we could verify its decision process when required.

Any hostile actions against it must be treated as a crime against humanity?

Somehow it must be immune from corruption. Perhaps some mechanism to revoke user trust in case of wrongdoings.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#263

Post by Fnoord »

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?

Isn't that the guy who hates gamers? It wasn't difficult to figure out why people dislike him [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Kotick#Business_strategy...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#264

Post by cooljacob204 »

propter_hoc wrote: post #191
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.

Well, currently the Hearthstone and Blizzard discussion forums on Reddit are up in arms. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/blizzard

Yup, I'm cancelling my wow sub over this and read about it first on Reddit.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#265

Post by mcny »

squarefoot wrote: post #247
abbadadda wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a game publisher can (whether directly or not) nuke the job of a journalist for a review and get away with it, I'm not surprised at all when a government does something along these lines. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/21/gaming-the-...

It happened with a journalist on a gun magazine as well. Lifelong second amendment supporter blacklisted for not spewing exactly the party line. This makes me wonder whether the whole right to bear arms things is AstroTurf at this point.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#267

Post by soulofmischief »

rjzzleep wrote: post #157

Have we all forgotten when Mozilla replaced the CTO with a long history of internet freedom work to replace him with a marketing director and the disaster that followed? Are we going to keep trampling on all our freedoms in the name of ... freedom(?) and then blame it all on China? EDIT: I knew some people were going to try to spin it into something it wasn't.

Unfortunately no, I get reminded every single update when something else which has worked for fifteen years suddenly goes wrong. Mozilla has gutted themselves politically.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#268

Post by [deleted] »

scoutt wrote: post #238

With the risk of being flagged I may say that Blizzard did the right thing BUT ONLY if the interview was a an official post-match interview. Otherwise they did wrong, since they cannot force people into not telling whatever they want by any other mean. I think it is the right thing to do in order to avoid future sociopolitical references in official post-match interviews: imagine someone saying 'power to the whites'…

[deleted]

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#269

Post by precisioncoder »

byte1918 wrote: post #80
Aozi wrote: post #58

What we need is a JS developer to take down an important package from NPM in protest, thus breaking the Internet again.

The NPM fiasco should no longer be possible If you want to unpublish a package after 72 hours have passed, contact npm Support. For more information about why we don’t allow users to unpublish packages after 72 hours, see our unpublish policy. https://docs.npmjs.com/unpublishing-packages-from-the-regist...

Doesn't the code still technically belong to you? Can't you submit a takedown request?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#270

Post by sbarre »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #232
StevePerkins wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> we've largely coalesced around the idea that insult should be defined by the insulted. I know that is not an opinion I share. I suspect it is not one many people share at all. I think it's just the one of a vocal minority on the far left. Ideas have a place in the open. If they're going to die somewhere, it needs to be in public discourse.

> I think it's just the one of a vocal minority on the far left.

I think you might be allowing your bias to zero in on one particular group here. Outrage politics is everyone's tool these days, not just one "side" (if you insist on picking sides).

I don't consider myself to be on either side, but a counterpoint for you to consider: "if you're not with us, you're against us", or "pry my guns from my cold dead hands"..

These are examples of using ideological offence to an idea or concept as a way to shut down discourse.

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