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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

#521

Post by mrkstu »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #439
50656E6973 wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep: >tries to make it 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.

Well, can we say that people have their feelings hurt by Blizzard's opinion here, and try to make it normal that everyone should boycott them for it?

No, very simply they are protesting censorship, which is the opposite of what you're implying.

You are saying that boycotting is itself censorship- no, it is a tool, that can be used by many people, with many POVs, and like most tools it can be used as a weapon either in defense of liberty or against it.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#522

Post by mekkkkkk »

China is clearly up to no good, but I can't shake the feeling that there would be something off about allowing political soapboxing in apolitical events like this. Should people have a set list of political ideas to propagate at the end of every interview? "My deck was not strong enough in the end-game. And also legalize assault rifles and support the Kurds".

I dunno.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#524

Post by knodi123 »

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…

> the thing is they do not care about free speech. All these companies care about is revenue.

Nature of a publicly traded company in a nation that deifies capitalism. Blizzard is on the S&P 500, for pete's sake.

If the CEO prioritized something other than profits, he'd be replaced by the board for breaching his obligations to the shareholders.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#525

Post by LMYahooTFY »

bsanr2 wrote: post #430
cm2187 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your position but it is at odd with the general de-platforming movement. Where banning people from platforms where they can express their opinion seems to be now an acceptable form of political discourse.

That's not what's happening. People are being de-platformed for carrying out or inciting harassment and violence. The only thing that's changed is that we've decided that it's unacceptable to hide behind passive speech when it's obvious to a reasonable observer what you mean to do. E.g., "I heard there might be a fire in this theater!", "My friend says there's a fire in this theater!", "It'd be great if someone yelle…

>hide behind passive speech when it's obvious to a reasonable observer

This is so overloaded with subjectivity, and it's the main problem of why regulating speech remains problematic and dangerous.

I can apply this statement to anything and validate what I claim is the baseline for objectivity.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#526

Post by bpodgursky »

I know it's long, protracted, painful for consumers and companies alike, but I think if we get one good thing out of our current China trade war and economic de-integration -- and this is a big thing -- it is corporate and media independence from PRC pressure.

The PRC exerts pressure on every corporate and media entity which wants access to the Chinese market, and it's amazingly subtle and effective propaganda. In movies, this means a lot of small things that the average consumer doesn't even notice anymore:

- Most blockbuster action movies have a China scene. The China scene invariably shows glistening skyscrapers, futuristic technology, and effective allies.

- You want to film in China? You don't have Chinese antagonists. Use North Koreans. Use Russians. Or some other anonymous / fake country.

Much less criticize the actual government? Hah, good joke.

Now, if average, non-Hollywood companies are self-censoring users to stay in the Chinese market, it's time to cut the umbilical cord. It's going to hurt, but at least we'll come out of it with free expression and companies who simply have to follow the rule of law. Not the rule of subtle pressure and self-censorship to help a foreign government's propaganda campaign.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#527

Post by alkonaut »

tommoor wrote: post #523

Seems like all of the other pro Hearthstone players should come together and voice their support at once. It would certainly be fun to see how Blizzard reacts then – shut it all down?

This is an excellent idea. Why limit it to one game?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#528

Post by a_c »

Timpy wrote: post #491
a_c wrote: post #477

Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Good for the people of Hong Kong. The topic of Hong Kong didn't struck me as sensational/desperate as it deserves until a Hong Kong friend send me this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q Am moved by the clip, especial…

The Taiwan Flag Emoji topic got a lot of attention too. I think that's a fair spread. Censorship, Unicode standards, and Blizzard is kind of the expected overlap of interest topics for Hacker News.

I realised the Emoji topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 after posting my comments. Blizzard, emoji, Hong Kong, and in part NBA too[1], once again shows how unpredictable viral-ness can be.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#529

Post by SkyBelow »

Steltek wrote: post #163
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.

Was that the same lover of freedom that campaigned to take away the freedom of others?

Depends upon what freedoms we consider freedoms. Today, do you support any laws that would deny people what others may consider freedom? For example, supporting age limits on activities. If you support people under 18 being unable to vote, are you not supporting taking away their freedom to vote?

Once you strip away the modern day cultural norms of what is acceptable freedoms and not, and begin to consider other arguments and social views as to what counts as freedom, you find most anyone out there fights to strip freedom from others. Sometimes under the guise of protecting them, but not always.

The same people condemning this person from the freedoms he opposed likely support removing freedoms from others for ageist reasons.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#530

Post by mrkstu »

Beltiras wrote: post #385
ekianjo wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You not giving them money wont hit their bottomline. However, you blaming them online and amplifying other people doing so is more likely to make them feel bad about it.

I'm also doing that. I know lots of people using their games. Liberal folks that will mind this.

This one cuts across partisan lines- and in fact conservatives/libertarians are more likely to be affected by corporate censorship nowadays, and more than happy to push back on obvious over-reach/kowtowing like this.
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