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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

#571

Post by dgzl »

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…

People generally only care about things they care about. I know far more hearthstone players than anything related to Hong Kong.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#572

Post by gowld »

goatinaboat wrote: post #419
MaupitiBlue wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not forget Marriot’s capitulation last year.

Or Gap https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/05/15... ?

That one is more likely a case of "islands are not part of a country, because disconnected components are hard", like the US "lower 48"

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#573

Post by TurkishPoptart »

pbourke wrote: post #486
echelon wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What, a piece of crappy legislation that would allow corporations to sue sovereign states? That is not going to help this problem in our culture.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#574

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

Exactly this.

I hope that what people see is that we've been in a cultural war with China for 20+ years. Now that the Chinese market is big enough, Western companies are dropping any standards they have to keep access to the market.

Individual companies are not going to fight this war.

I don't like Trump as much as anyone, but when Trump adds some tariff on Chinese goods everyone goes batshit insane in the US. The Chinese government almost every day shuts some company or product off from access to the Chinese market for not doing something they say. But until the Hong Kong protests, it seems like no one cared. I hope now that it's LITERALLY, blantantly, and obviously about freedoms and human rights -- it's enough to get people to care. China should lose access to the WTO if it forces any company anywhere (including in China) to censor anything in order to gain or keep access to its market. End of discussion.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#575

Post by mikestew »

Aarostotle wrote: post #520
ndury wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This one is tricky. I always thought they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, so they have to tread that line as well. Does anyone know how that fits into the picture?

Does anyone know how that fits into the picture?

Well, at least you left out the "legally required" part. The board most certainly has a responsibility to shareholders. It can be a long and tiring argument, but from my POV there is only "responsibility" not "fiduciary responsibility". Now, most of the time the shareholders want more money. But AFAICT, there is not a law on the books that says that the board must maximize profits above all else. For instance, and perhaps it's a poor example, but Costco says they will make 15% profit. That's it. You want more money, sell more stuff. Doesn't the board have a "fiduciary responsibility" to bump that to 16% if they can get away with it? Apparently not.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#576

Post by throw0101a »

rmah wrote: post #422
simias wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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) Isn't that effectively the government's job in a democracy? They're elected (directly or indirectly) to enact the will o…

Traditionally it was the established/predominant religion's job, not the government. It was hoped by many that religious institutions could act as a counterweight to the nobles, kings and politicians. Which is why the civil power structure tried (often successfully) to co-opt religion as well. Of course, religious institutions have their own issues in that it often becomes a parallel power structure on its own. Or go…

> And today, post-modernism attempts to put forth the notion that all morality is simply cultural context and relative. Which, while perhaps strictly true, is, IMO, pointless.

Kind of self-contradictory: the statement "it's all relative" is itself an absolute statement.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism#Criticisms

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#577

Post by ehsankia »

decoyworker wrote: post #560

Is China a more profitable market than the US? It's worrying that US companies are willing to go this far for foreign profit.

They do have 5x the population. Obviously not the same purchasing power, but it is quickly growing. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a very significant chunk of their revenue.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#578

Post by drdeca »

trentnix wrote: post #281
whoevercares wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are emotional animals and many can be dominated by feelings, your answer assume they are entirely logical

They ?

They, as in, the aforementioned humans (humans, plural).

What is the problem?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#579

Post by uwuhn »

tomp wrote: post #142

China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship). Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253

>They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship).

You have this reversed. Blue checkmarks learned these tactics from the original Maosists and Stalinists.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#580

Post by joelx »

ehsankia wrote: post #562
Timpy wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.

We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.
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