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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

#711

Post by VRay »

netsharc wrote: post #559
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…

> If we're going to repeat the same cycle with Vietnam and India, we'd do well to encourage democracy this go-around. I don't think the idea is to introduce democracy, because it's cheaper if the people making our consumer goods had less rights. It was like that with the original banana republics, and it's like that now. Sure we the people may want democracy and we may elect people who want to spread democracy (like…

> "well, just 30 more years, and the world's going to end after that anyway."

I don't think that kind of exaggeration is productive. People have been saying that for decades, and now climate change deniers are using it as evidence for the whole thing being overblown, even though we're already suffering from the effects of climate change and they're getting progressively worse

It's not technically going to be the end of the world, it'll just be a much crappier world for most of the people living on it

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#712

Post by closetohome »

ergothus wrote: post #680
joelx wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.

After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money. I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and t…

I feel like there are different levels here. The Bnetd thing was unfortunate, but still an exceptionally first-world problem. People being beaten to death in the streets may warrant a bit wider reaction.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#713

Post by colorincorrect »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #613

A lot of comments here seem to take as a given that banning any offensive speech in any forum leads inexorably to situations like this, where the "offensive speech" is political speech offensive to an authoritarian government. But this implies that it's impossible to distinguish between different kinds of "offensive" speech based on any meaningful criteria whatsoever, and this just seems to be fundamentally incorrect…

>These are not incredibly difficult to distinguish between

this is fundamentally misguided. who gets to judge who is the marginalized individual? global geopolitics is more complicated than there being strict good actors and bad actors

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#714

Post by cryoshon »

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…

i'm on board with a boycott of blizzard and also activision.

we can't continue with appeasement of a totalitarian state bent on controlling the discourse of the world if we want to claim that we are a democracy.

unless we're willing to lose money to stay true to our ideals, our ideals aren't real whatsoever.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#715

Post by dontreact »

iamsb wrote: post #694
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…

Would you oppose firing of James Damore as well? Look I understand that we need to have free expression and free speech. Absolutely. But a business wants to protect itself from negative political reputation. If the gamer was talking about say LGBT rights, and his opinions were considered against the current acceptable position on the matter, and then he was banned, I am sure everyone would have applauded blizzard. Le…

Supporting HK protests is very different from falsely claiming that the hiring bar was lowered for women (it said this in the doc, I know enough people at Google who participate in hiring committee to know that it was a false statement).

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#716

Post by hannasanarion »

leshow wrote: post #561
clucas wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Are you saying that I am a hypocrite for liking the contents of some speech but not others Not OP, but I believe they are talking about objecting to censorship ostensibly because of freedom of speech, and then not objecting to other censorship. If you don't believe in freedom of speech then there is no issue, if you do, you can object to the content of someone's speech, but not their right to express it. That is, i…

You can believe that censorship in general is appropriate at times, and that there are inappropriate ways to use it.

Censoring racists and serial harassers isn't the same as censoring pro-democracy activists.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#717

Post by throwawaypolicy »

treis wrote: post #644
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…

>Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions. I think Blizzard has a legitimate "time and place" argument here. They shouldn't regulate competitors speech across the board but I think it's reasonable to mandate that interviews associated with official events focus on Hearthstone and stay away from controversial topics. Of cou…

It more than "looks like" Blizzard is taking China's side. They have outright said that they are in their chinese language statement

> We strongly condemn the player and the casters on what happened in the game last weekend ,and we firmly DISAPPROVE people to state their own political POV in any tournament. The player will be banned from the tournament,and the casters will never be granted the chance to cast any official tournament from now on. Besides,we will firmly PROTECT THE PRIDE OF THE COUNTRY just like what we always do.

(translation taken from another comment on HN, google finds lots of sources with similar translations, including news articles from reputable papers)

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#718

Post by hannasanarion »

ummonk wrote: post #630
johnchristopher wrote: post #231

From https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-... a description of the incident : > As Andy reported earlier today, Blitzchung did not back down after the sudden removal of the broadcast, during which he wore a gas mask and goggles before shouting "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!" Following the incident he released a statement elaborating on his stance, writing "I know what my action on…

Okay that explains it. I thought banning for 12 months was a little harsh for someone making a political statement once, but he knew what he was doing and doubled down on it.

Why does the fact that the person making a political statement knew that they were making a political statement make their banning okay?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#720

Post by bonestamp2 »

blhack wrote: post #589
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…

I had no idea that that second video would have the effect on me that it did. I'm sitting in my office here crying.

Same. I've seen a few of the videos that are used in that video and some of those videos (in longer form) are very powerful too.

For example, that short clip of the blindfolded prisoners on the ground in handcuffs is a drone video that is believed to show religious prisoners being taken to "re-education" camps. Of course, the Hong Kong protesters fear they will also be subject to "re-education" when the Chinese state regains control of Hong Kong as this transition period winds down:

https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows...

Also, here is the longer version of the "give me liberty" speech that they used. May be NSFW (coarse language):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As

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