Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

thedailybeast.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 317 posts

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#231

Post by drucik »

kulahan wrote: post #199
ohithereyou wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TF2 is also less aggressively monetized despite being free to play.

I feel like the only way you get "less aggressively monetized" than OW is to have zero microtransactions from the start.

I thought so too, but I stumbled upon SC2 with it’s war chests, and I like the idea of paying 25$ and getting the whole set of skins* instead of loot boxes.

* - I suppose there’s a little less content. And old sets are ridiculously expensive for stupid skin packs. But the idea itself is neat.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#232

Post by cannonedhamster »

ddtaylor wrote: post #15

As much as I want to think change will happen, it's much more likely this will be a few weeks of PR and ultimately nothing will change. For something to change people have to vote with their wallets. In this context that means cancelling subscriptions or dropping games they are already playing in favor for ones by competitors with better integrity, and I don't see that happening. Diablo players could go to Path of Ex…

Did not realize that PFE was Chinese. Thanks for the heads up. Sorry to see you go STO.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#233

Post by cannonedhamster »

cwkoss wrote: post #109
minimaxir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common albeit reductive meme around the entire controversy is that Blizzard games were already declining in popularity (especially Starcraft and HotS) so it's easy to boycott them. Path of Exile is an interesting case as I know a lot of Diablo players went there since Diablo III is effectively on life support (including myself), but the resurfacing of the Tencent ownership news is causing ethical complications: htt…

Thanks, I was just considering getting back into PoE, but I'll look for other ARPGs. Any recommendations? I've heard good things about Grim Dawn

If you haven't checked out Spiderweb Software games it's worth at least a glance. The graphics aren't really anything but serviceable, but the stories have tons of depth and replayability.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#234

Post by throwaway92747 »

drucik wrote: post #229
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize with the idea, but how does one define hate speech? Couldn't The CCP claim that any speech in support of Hong Kong is speech in hate of The CCP? Limiting speech in anyway gets very slippery.

Oxford defines as follows: “abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation.” And it seems to be a general definition, I think sometimes it’s narrowed to threats or to calls for violence, I suppose? Let’s not act as if that’s an unimaginable term.

The problem isn't that it's an unimaginable term; the problem is that every single person imagines it differently. Your definition of hate speech and my definition might be the same for some examples and drastically different for others. For some people, saying "men are not women" is considered hate speech, while others would say it has nothing to do with hate speech. Hate speech is inherently subjective, and banning it always results in the same question: who gets to decide what is hate speech?

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#235

Post by yellowapple »

hnick wrote: post #193
harshreality wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong's entire value , as far as I can see [and I'm referring to the value of Hong Kong as a community including people and businesses, not just their geographic value], either as a place to live or to do business or to visit, comes from it being a SAR with its own government, culture, historical legacy, and lack of interference from its mother country. If it becomes a homogenized satellite of Shenzhen with sky h…

What proportion of China's economy is HK? I don't know a good source but I recall seeing it's a low single digit percentage of China as a whole. They definitely punch above their weight per capita but I feel like China is more than willing and able to take the loss. After all, with Western governments changing every few years, who will even remember in a decade?

I think the usual argument is that Hong Kong is much more attractive as a meeting place for foreign and domestic businesses than other cities (in no small part due to the Great Firewall getting in the way of corporate communications). It might represent a small fraction of China's GDP (or whatever other measure we're using for economic significance, since IIRC attempting to calculate China's GDP is a pretty wonky affair), but if it stops being that place where domestic and foreign businesses meet (and other cities fail to take up the slack), it could make things a lot harder for operations in other cities to continue.

That is: HK's value is less about its own numbers and more about the numbers it enables other Chinese cities to achieve.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#236

Post by atr_gz »

morningseagulls wrote: post #136
harshreality wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong's entire value , as far as I can see [and I'm referring to the value of Hong Kong as a community including people and businesses, not just their geographic value], either as a place to live or to do business or to visit, comes from it being a SAR with its own government, culture, historical legacy, and lack of interference from its mother country. If it becomes a homogenized satellite of Shenzhen with sky h…

>Hong Kong's entire value, as far as I can see [...] Keep in mind that that's the perspective you've been conditioned to see by the media you've consumed. >If it becomes a homogenized satellite of Shenzhen with sky high real estate, which seems to be what China wants, what's left of Hong Kong? Well, for one thing, the unstable political condition is likely to change the "sky high real estate" bit. >I thought China wa…

Independence is not one of the demands of the protestors. Please provide a source for that claim.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#237

Post by undefined3840 »

throwaway66920 wrote: post #227
undefined3840 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immorality is subjective. McKinsey is hired to (maximize|minimize) some objective. The fact someone didn’t want to work on the Purdue Pharma opioid marketing project when McKinsey employs a fungible pool of thousands of consultants means nothing.

I don’t really think that contradicts anything I said

Just because you choose not to work on a project due to personal reasons doesn’t free you of the unethical or immoral things the company you chose to work for does. And if you actually believe it does then it only supports the argument that these firms have found a way to act immorally in the pursuit of fees while making sure their staff don’t become too demoralized. They know there will always be someone to take on the work because the workforce is highly fungible so they don’t care either way, and if anything makes them look compassionate to their employees which benefits them.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#238

Post by scruple »

mattrp wrote: post #154
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…

I’m amazed at just how open (and wrong) cctv’s recent reply to the nba scandal was: “We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC“ This is not just wrong, it’s so…

The message from Heartstone's official Weibo account read similarly. It reads like it's written by a party member, not some corporate PR employee. It reads like something I'd expect to have come out of the USSR in the 80s. It's all very disturbing. It's also strangely familiar in that regard, and quite frightening when taken from that perspective.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#239

Post by the_resistence »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134
jrockway wrote: post #14

The Internet's reaction to this has warmed my heart a little. Overwatch and Hearthstone are among my favorite computer games. I've certainly played more Overwatch than any other game. I have made real-world and online friends in Overwatch. I met my girlfriend in Overwatch. It made me sad to have to throw all that away yesterday. But the conversations we're having as a result of this is great. The mainstream media is…

One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…

Beautifully put. Kudos.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#240

Post by the_resistence »

mattrp wrote: post #154
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note -- it's not really troubling for a country to have a lot of influence. It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. This is not a question of a foreign country being different. This is a question of a foreign company forcing us to slowly give up the very th…

I’m amazed at just how open (and wrong) cctv’s recent reply to the nba scandal was: “We are strongly dissatisfied and we oppose Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right of free expression. We believe that any speech that challenges national sovereignty and social stability is not within the scope of freedom of speech,” CCTV said in its statement in Chinese, which was translated by CNBC“ This is not just wrong, it’s so…

Pros at orwellian double-speak which allows them to get away with heinous acts.
Post reply on HN