71–80 of 91 posts
I would feel a lot better about companies talking out of both sides of their mouths here if what they said in English wasn't already so compromised. Firing the broadcasters and banning the player shows which side of their mouth Blizzard is speaking truth out of, I think.
If that's real, that's a surprisingly bad PR move from Blizzard. I understand this was targeted at a Chinese audience (since Weibo) but they must have known this would get back to their English speaking audience almost immediately. There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation).
I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.
The thing is that they are right, right now all of this mess is mildly entertaining to regular internet news and memes consumer crowd because it is novelty. Twitter of course thrives on fresh scandalous information, especially if it involves big names, big words and gives an illusion of action and major influence - see?! I just reetwtted, I'm doing my part, I'm contributing to fight with great regime! Just go ahead go on streets,I'll tweet for you all!
However the problem is that 'likes' and 'retweets' are mostly meaningless and once novelty aura fades away nobody cares- Venezuela? it is still happening, Syria? still going, Libya? Yemen? what's this? Boo, boooring, man! What's is this all about, stop being such party pooper /s
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Redditors are already talking about going in Rockets gear and Winnie the Pooh shirts.
It would probably be more meaningful to cancel registration, and maybe even picket the place wearing that stuff (or at least post photos of wearing that gear on social media announcing they cancelled their registrations for the convention).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed - did Blizzard staff post this willingly or was this posted on Blizzard's Weibo account via Weibo staff or even someone else who followed an order? They certainly want to make the Blizzard game fans fall in line thinking Blizzard is aligning with China's tyrants' orders.
The motive wouldn't make any sense. Why would the CCP go out of its way to save face for an American company that offended it?
An American company didn't offend them. An American company "bent their knee" (as people are saying) and ban a user who showed support of the Hong Kong protests, fired the two commentators, and rescinded the prize money the gamer won.
CCP wants people to believe they have "power" - control, and that "all" will "bend their knee" for them. We don't know if Blizzard posting an "apology for offending 'China'" for the actions of a user was from anyone in a decision chain at Blizzard - from the very top or if it was ordered or perhaps "requested" under pressure.
Gaming companies have messed up and lost gamers' trust in so many different ways: predatory microtransactions, oodles of crappy DLC, half-finished products being shipped with huge Day 1 patches, etc. But all those were directly related to the industry and could at least be bounced back from if the company removed transactions/made meaningful DLC/improved the state of their games in the future. How the hell do you bou…
If that's real, that's a surprisingly bad PR move from Blizzard. I understand this was targeted at a Chinese audience (since Weibo) but they must have known this would get back to their English speaking audience almost immediately. There has to be a better balance then "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country" (even if that is a slight mistranslation).
I think they're betting that 13-17 year olds don't care about politics, and there will be plently of Blizzard apologists among older gamers. Western democracies are not very principled these days and people are easily bought. Either way I think gamers can't boycott to save their life.
Yep, frankly I'd guess part of the logic here is "Have you seen what EA gets away with? We'll be fine." The further removed the offense is from the purchase, the harder boycotts are to organize. And AAA game boycotts seem tricky to manage even for "this specific game is ripping off its players in these specific ways", so "this company did something shady around a tournament that casual players will never even hear about" is a pretty tough target. Plus, "don't buy" and "don't microtransact" are much easier targets than "don't play WoW/SCII/Hearthstone after you're already invested".
On the other hand, boycotts for any popular product don't tend to have their impact through actual lost income. There's already media focus on the story, and if a boycott influences devs, streamers, modders, etc. then it's not just a question of direct sales losses.
Big corporations doing big business in market too big to be ignored... Still, I think they should grow some balls. Acting like this now mean it will be worse in the future.
Gaming companies have messed up and lost gamers' trust in so many different ways: predatory microtransactions, oodles of crappy DLC, half-finished products being shipped with huge Day 1 patches, etc. But all those were directly related to the industry and could at least be bounced back from if the company removed transactions/made meaningful DLC/improved the state of their games in the future. How the hell do you bou…
That's exactly how they're going to bounce back from it, it's going to be easy for the game companies, and it's going to work great. Or, more likely, they won't have to bounce back from it at all. The people cancelling their accounts will be back within a month. Gamers will tolerate anything, unless there's a better game that they'd rather play they're not going anywhere.
How about any reasonable replacement game? I'd say the game industry is pretty well saturated. It's not like there's only one great game per genre, or only one great gaming system.