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

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

#261

Post by alkonaut »

rendall wrote: post #259
alkonaut wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have been more clear: I expect execs to choose what’s right even if it means they do get fired at the first difficult choice. I mean “I need my job” or “what we are doing is legal” isn’t an excuse.

I think this is naive. Expecting a corporation's officers to enforce moral corporate behavior will generally lead to disappointment. Only law or the market will impose morality and ethical behavior on a corporation. This is by design.

> Only law or the market will impose morality

Yes. To be even more clear, when I say "I expect" I mean I'll not purchase products/services unless they do what I expect. I firmly do believe that people should be held to high moral standards - it's not ONLY a question of laws+market though. There are other pressures available. For example, I think NBA execs should be publicly shamed in this case. Right now they are mostly faceless.

This is one segment of a market expecting a compoany to not insult their national pride, and another segment of the market expecting the same company to not infringe on freedoms.

When I say I "expect" NBA, Blizzard etc to leave money on the market it's because I hope that enough people will feel that way, so the market sorts it. I don't think you need to have a number boycotting NBA or Blizard to equal the size of the chinese market - I think moral and ethics actually plays a part once the backlash from the "good" part of the market is big enough, even if it isn't as large as the Chinese market.

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

#262

Post by turtlecloud »

jeffdavis wrote: post #247
steelframe wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hong Kong is literally protesting to have the right to a trail by jury! How anyone in The West could not take their side is baffling to me. Because local prejudice can provide bias, jurors can be influenced by a lawyer's courtroom performance, most juries aren't actually a random sample of the population, long trials usually create hasty verdicts, most jurors don’t have a background in law, and jurors do not need t…

Juries are not about accuracy. They are there as another line of defense against tyranny: it's harder to make up charges or convict people of ridiculous things when a jury can nullify it. Nullification is rare and unfortunately that line of defense largely failed during the drug war. But I think that's largely because the government was able to successfully make it a racial issue. It's not always easy to take advanta…

If you mention jury nullification, you most definitely will not be selected to be a juror.

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

#263

Post by pugwash »

throwaway92747 wrote: post #234
drucik wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In this particular instance? The German legislative branch drafted and passed the law(s?), and the German judiciary branch interprets it. People who are accused of practising hate speech are given an opportunity to defend themselves in court.

Despite the kind of hand-wringing about this that folks such as yourself routinely engage in over this subject, German society has somehow managed to survive and thrive despite this relatively minor limitation on their freedom of speech. They even have some hateful racist shitbags gaining seats in the Bundestag.

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

#264

Post by lilyball »

lilyball wrote: post #186
throwaway713 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this as though many companies are not already practicing that alternative.

The alternative benefits nobody. Google famously pulled out of China rather than censor, but that was just a PR move because they already were failing in China. I'd argue that censorship is an altogether different situation anyway. Apple removing iCloud from China helps literally nobody. Chinese users don't have an alternative that isn't subject to the same Chinese laws. Any user that wishes to resort to less-than-le…

Just once I wish someone would put forward an actual argument as to why Apple disabling iCloud in China benefits literally anybody.

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

#265

Post by Nexxxeh »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #251
Nexxxeh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK (Scotland specifically) we had the ridiculous prosecution of Markus "Count Dankula" Meechan. We've certainly not found the right balance over here.

Read the actual judgement, and it's just about impossible to conclude that the conviction was anything but deserved and perfectly balanced. The judge explicitly asked his defence to explore freedom of expression. He chose not to. The rest of his "defence" was laughable and easily disproved lies. The judge pointed out his failure to explore freedom of expression in his summing up. Short of using neon, how much more cl…

I wouldn't argue that he hasn't committed a crime. My issue is that it's a crime at all. Everything is grossly offensive to someone.

I watched the actual video in question, and with regards to the judgement, I disagree that it was menacing, anti-semitic, or racist.

The video, if anything, is anti-racist and anti-anti-semitic. It's certainly not threatening to anyone of reasonable mind, unless one considers the pug to be a danger to the Jewish community.

It's not painting Nazi atrocities as a positive thing, it's making clear that it's literally the most horrendous thing possible.

The judge takes issue with some things having a different impact when part of a joke.

>"You accepted that the phrase “* the *” was anti-Semitic though not, you said, when used as part of a joke."

It isn't anti-Semitic in context. Did you watch the video?

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

#266

Post by ddtaylor »

jknoepfler wrote: post #230
closetohome wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add that personally I've lost a lot of respect for them over the bnetd fiasco/lawsuit, Starcraft II shipping with no local multiplayer, and their long-running legal crusade against private World of Warcraft servers.

I forgot about the absence of LAN in Starcraft II, which was utterly mind-blowing (good luck hosting a serious tournament). It's almost as if they built a business department to kill the company from the inside.

> good luck hosting a serious tournament

And there have been many issues with this over the lifespan of SC2. In the early days it was insanely common to see semi finals or grand finals with dropped games to the point the screen that appears when a connection issue would occur became a meme.

After around 2014 all the major tournaments had "partnered" with Blizzard in one way or another and an on-premise server is now used with a whole cloak-and-dagger system of ensuring the software on it never makes it out to the public. You have to pay Blizzard to operate the server on premise by their staff, essentially the same people who already have access to the Battle.net servers themselves.

And then in the end the game became free to play in 2017 anyhow.

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

#267

Post by ddtaylor »

jiggawatts wrote: post #91
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…

Grinding Gear Games (GGG), the makers of Path of Exile have recently been purchased by Tencent, with an 80% stake. This ownership will increase to 100% in the next couple of years. If you want to boycott pro-China companies, PoE and GGG aren't a good choice!

Torchlight, another popular alternative ARPG, is also owned by Runic Games which was purchased by Perfect World, which is owned and operated out of China.

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

#268

Post by Illniyar »

jasonlotito wrote: post #53
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…

It's interesting to see people give up Blizzard games, but still continue supporting companies like Apple that do far worse, like effectively giving the keys to iCloud to China. I think the conversation is great, and maybe now we'll actually reconsider what the TPP's goal was. But in the end, the people picked money first, so it shouldn't be a surprise when businesses do this as well.

There's a vast difference, namely a geographical one. Blizzard compromising the freedom of a non-Chinese resident because of something he did in a non-Chinese platform.

Apple is compromising the freedom of Chinese residents in China.

While I don't really support Apple's action it's easy to see why the first issue should be Blizzard's blame while the second issue is China's blame.

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

#269

Post by wtetzner »

timbowen wrote: post #178
TulliusCicero wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they only have to actually follow GDPR for European users, right?

As a practical matter, no. Legal told me I have to implement it for all users because it covers EU citizens who might be accessing our site from or living in non EU countries.

That doesn’t sound right. The EU doesn’t have jurisdiction in non-EU countries.

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

#270

Post by Grangar »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #166
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…

You should pickup TF2. It has tighter gun mechanics and doesn't have the ultimate garbage(imo).

Quake Champions is another worthy alternative that is much better.
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