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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

#481

Post by wbl »

ndury wrote: post #450
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #353

Absolutely agree, it's time for American video games to stop publishing in China. It's not worth the Chinese influence on our society.

These studio's should not stop publishing their games in China. The issue lies that these studio's happily comply with whatever restrictions a govt is willing to oblige due to possibly playerbase loss. Think lootboxes, forbidden skins in regions, exc... exc.. Companies as big as Blizzard should be prepared to lose 5/10/15% of their playerbase to defend free speech, the thing is they do not care about free speech. All…

Lootboxes are one thing. But I doubt an aircraft simulator with a Taiwan Straits scenario would be massively published, or a Wolfenstein set in a Xinjiang reeducation camp.

Would Amazon stop selling 1984 if China asked it to? Hopefully not.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#482

Post by hdfbdtbcdg »

ahi wrote: post #400
propter_hoc wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

r/blizzard is now locked down.

What? What is happening there?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#483

Post by isoskeles »

groby_b wrote: post #374
whatshisface wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think back to before gay marriage was accepted as a culturally obvious fact, some of the arguments against it involved hating gays, but others didn't. Without the ability to tell which beliefs actually motivated his donation, it is not possible to discern if he was against gays or not. (I'll refrain from giving any specific examples in order to avoid starting that debate again, but I think most of us can remem…

It's kind of hard to say "you do not deserve to share your life with the person you love. You don't deserve to take care of them when they're sick. You don't deserve a family with them. Because you're gay" without actually hating gay people. Just because you don't call for somebody to be killed doesn't mean you don't hate them.

Not allowing a legal marriage recognized by the state doesn't strictly prevent much of what you wrote. Although it does prevent some privileges (e.g. hospital visitation rights) which was definitely an issue at the time.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#484

Post by streb-lo »

trentnix wrote: post #468
streb-lo wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate-speech laws exist because people are programmable. Try and tell me your opinions are your own and the books and media you consume do not own some portion of them. Hate-speech laws exist to prevent the programming of people to systematically hate and exterminate other people, a lesson that has been learned many times over in history.

If hate-speech laws exist to deal with people that are programmed, wouldn't it also follow that hate-speech laws might exist because programmed people want to control the speech of others? It would go like this: hate speech is first yelling fire in a theater, then it's espousing bigotry, then it's holding the wrong opinions, until it's finally speaking ill of the Party. That's also a lesson that has been learned many…

We're all programmable, sure. And I think it's important for their to be competing voices such that we don't end up in the Party.

But some level of social cohesion is desirable, and I think starting at the level of 'not allowed to advocate for the rape and murder of peoples' is a reasonable step towards ensuring less people think that is viable.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#485

Post by mrbonner »

I see that American businesses play double standard here. In the USA, sport teams and entertainment businesses are the loudest when it comes to free speech and civil rights, LGBT rights. But they will bend over for CCP money instead of standing for the same causes. I have yet to see ANY business roll the freedom drum and make a stand about human rights when it comes to the violations in China. It’s sad that a recent South Park episode is exactly the reality here and not a satire.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#486

Post by pbourke »

echelon wrote: post #451
missosoup wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What factories? Everyone already has or currently is moving manufacturing operations from China to Viet Nam or India. 5 more years and the only factories China will have are going to be domestic.

If we're going to repeat the same cycle with Vietnam and India, we'd do well to encourage democracy this go-around. If we elevate authoritarian countries to our level, democracy may be in for a rough future. We should be learning a lot from the China situation. Modern China proves that authoritarian capitalism works and that you don't need freedom or liberty for your citizens. And that's incredibly scary. Imagine if…

> We need to be handling this situation with urgency.

We tried to - it was called the Trans Pacific Partnership. It included Vietnam. One of the Trump administration’s first acts was to kill it.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#487

Post by magicsmoke »

ajmurmann wrote: post #318

Why did we have a Cold War with the Soviet Union, but are buddies with China?

The USSR was very explicit about spreading communism and destroying the west. China has been vague about what they want, which is why you have the current culture wars over China's influence in the west and what it all means. It's a much harder to get in the mood to fight someone when they're not right up in your face with a gun.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#488

Post by dba7dba »

travisgriggs wrote: post #452
missosoup wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What factories? Everyone already has or currently is moving manufacturing operations from China to Viet Nam or India. 5 more years and the only factories China will have are going to be domestic.

I've wondered about this. Are there sourceable numbers in this? Is it the case that a couple newsworthy departures are giving the impression that everyone's leaving? Or is it the case that these are exceptions in the statistical noise?

Just few days HN had a thread where samsung moved its last phone factory from China to Vietnam.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#490

Post by clucas »

quotemstr wrote: post #381
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…

Give me a break. When companies censor speech HN likes , it's all about how we have to boycott companies to preserve our society. When it's speech HN doesn't like , it's all about how censorship is actually good and that companies are just "showing people the door" via their freedom of association. People around here need to make up their minds. If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to d…

> If you want to object to censorship, great. But if you do, you need to do it as a general principle

Why? I think it's perfectly reasonable to say "Blizzard, you should ban people who make racist statements from your tournaments, but you should allow people whose who voice support for pro-democracy protestors to compete. And if you decide not to do that, I won't watch your tourneys or buy your games."

Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others, and acting on that preference? Note that no one is saying the government should use its monopoly on force to ban speech - we are talking about private action.

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