Live data from Hacker News

Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

playhearthstone.com

761–770 of 1001 posts

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

"Are they being shot at by police, or are they police shooting at people" is a good place to start.

some things are not quite as well-defined as that: "whose home land is this" is a common motif you can ask. ask that question towards North Americans, and you might have to say all your land originally belonged to the Native Americans; Canadians are in the process of reconciliation with the Indigenous groups, but speaking as an outsider, it doesn't seem like the reconciliation process can do much justice compared to what they suffered through.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#762
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…

That second video is really something. Wow.

A few comments refer to a second video, but the parent only has 1 video link. What are you referring to?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#763
post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Fair enough. I could have used a different example. Though might be worth a thought experiment might be worth considering if people would in fact confirm they treated women differently in hiring process.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#764
post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's a difference between accidentally and knowingly breaking a rule. Regardless of if you feel the rule is fair or right, knowingly breaking is more egregious, e.g. manslaughter is not as bad as first or second degree murder.

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

"Are they being shot at by police, or are they police shooting at people" is a good place to start.

That seems like an extremely bad rule of thumb to me. Neo nazis sometimes get into violent confrontations with the police, for example

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#766
post #500

This is what you get for cosying up to bullies. It may be exhilarating while it lasts, but since the bully doesn't care about anyone but themselves, you will eventually always loose. The west has been gorging on cheap products from China and we started getting dependent. Now the bully senses power over us, and starts applying pressure. The better bullies know how to do this incrementally, slowly at first, so that it'…

Yep, exactly, and furthermore this is a deliberate strategy on the part of China, and a naive strategy on the part of the US. Here’s a good article on this very topic that you might enjoy:

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-joe-biden-empowered-c...

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#767

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…

How intriguing that "we" automatically move the cycle to Vietnam and India. If "we" means USA, why not just move the cycle into the USA. If "we" is Germany or Australia or Norway, why not move the cycle into your own borders?

One obvious reason is cost. Why is it so much cheaper to manufacture in China or Vietnam?

1. Labor costs. Democracy can lead to safer, healthier, more expensive working conditions.

2. Environmental protections. Democracy can lead to safer, healthier, more sustainable, more expensive pollution controls.

If you want to push production out of China and into Malaysia or Vietnam or wherever instead of into your own backyard, I question your real commitment to democracy or human rights.

I am as guilty as anybody else. I want to purchase $2 SOCs and $0.01 resistors for my hobby. I don't buy them from Texas because anything produced in Texas is too expensive. (Read: more expensive than alternatives.) I buy from some place with undrinkable water, unbreathable air, and children missing fingers and eyes. If you show me pictures of those children I might try to pay a tiny bit more (but only a tiny bit) to buy from some place that doesn't yet have reporters taking pictures.

The truth is that I don't know anybody producing MCU in Australia or USA or Norway. I'm not sure it's even possible with the restrictions those governments impose. If it is possible to do it, it is not practical.

If I support a government that makes it that difficult to impossible to manufacture domestically in an irresponsible manner--and I do whole-heartedly support such governments--why am I willing to support manufacturers outside those requirements? Why do I drive misbehavior out of my neighborhood and embrace it in other neighborhoods?

Conversely, if you and I are willing to accept the behavior of manufacturers in Thailand or Laos, shouldn't we allow that same behavior from manufacturers in our own backyards?

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#768
post #481
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…

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.

Companies either abide by the laws of the countries they operate in or they risk being shut down. Most countries have appeal processes for these kinds of things, but just neglecting to follow a legal order is not something that works for multinationals.

Edit: a word

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#769

I really don't like how this is made out as "China clamping down on Blizzard", just like it was framed when Ubisoft tried to get a lower age-rating for Rainbow Six Siege and claimed that was what China demanded for their market. Blizzard has been suspending plenty of pro players in plenty of their games for all kinds of questionable, and not so questionable reasons. And because Blizzard is a private company, offering…

>And because Blizzard is a private company But they are not a private company. Blizzard is a component of Activision Blizzard, Inc., a publicly-held corporation traded under ATVI on the Nasdaq. This is actually part of the problem. If they were still privately held, we would much more likely be sitting on an imminent 2020 Diablo/Starcraft/etc PC title release, rather than mobile game rehashes, 'classic' relaunches of…

Blizzard has been a public company for 25 years

Re: Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

#770
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…

In the video at mark 01:16 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 there is a quote about "non-believers". Does the chinese government have anything against atheists in their policies ? To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs.

CCP is officially atheist.
Post reply on HN