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Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

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Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#131

Post by 013a »

anthony_doan wrote: post #101
ayakura wrote: post #12

My own take throughout the whole thing is similar to Brian Kibler's [1]. To me, even though it made sense that Blizzard wanted to stay neutral, the punishment was too severe for all of the people involved (zero prize money, 1 year ban) so it's nice that at least one of them was reverted. [1]: http://bmkgaming.com/statement-on-blitzchung/ Sidenote, Linus is reading the statement on the WAN show and he mentioned that B…

> it made sense that Blizzard wanted to stay neutral To me it made sense that Blizzard wanted China's money, see diablo mobile. "Do you guys not have phones?" Also there are reports Blizzard is stopping people from deleting their accounts.

I ran into that "stopping from being able to delete your account" thing with regards to the SMS code to verify your account. Its definitely real, at least for some people.

My suspicion, however, is that it was an unintentional bug on their end. We've all seen this before in engineering. You're using some service like Twilio. You've got a TON of people trying to cancel their account at the same time, using SMS verification. Their backend trips a rate limiter or account limit. You don't handle the error properly, and the client gets an inaccurate error. Its a story as old as time.

I went through the drivers license verification just fine. Its totally possible that they're being malicious, but its just so much more likely that engineering fucked up and it was blown out of proportion.

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#132

Post by Tenoke »

twno1 wrote: post #111
mullingitover wrote: post #41

Command + f "sorry": 0 results Command + f "mistake": 0 results Command + f "apologize": 0 results They still aren't listening to a PR expert, and this is only going to throw gasoline on the fire. This blog post [1] counseling Burning Man back in their dumpster fire of pain when they switched to a lottery system is very instructional, Blizzard should be following it to the letter if they intend to get out of this hol…

And I immediately check blizzard cn website. They don't even has this announcement. https://cn.news.blizzard.com/zh-cn

They have a statement in China. It just has the opposite message than here, with them implying it was the specific message they disagree with.

https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1182867411260698625?s=19

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#133

Post by bmarquez »

mullingitover wrote: post #41

Command + f "sorry": 0 results Command + f "mistake": 0 results Command + f "apologize": 0 results They still aren't listening to a PR expert, and this is only going to throw gasoline on the fire. This blog post [1] counseling Burning Man back in their dumpster fire of pain when they switched to a lottery system is very instructional, Blizzard should be following it to the letter if they intend to get out of this hol…

Perhaps their PR experts have decided not apologizing will cause them temporary pain in the short term, but people have short memories and a new generation of gamers with no recollection of the past will latch on to some future bright shiny thing from Blizzard.

To use your example, Burning Man still sells out within minutes, and few current burners actually remember the ticket lottery of 2012. There have been numerous fiascos including the Ticketfly data breach, tickets getting lost in the mail and sent without signature confirmation, and cancellation scams. Volunteers being denied the staff tickets they were promised. Yet for every jaded burner who stops attending, a fresh virgin (first-year burner) takes their place.

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#134

Post by JumpCrisscross »

KhalilK wrote: post #117
taneq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They still aren't listening to a PR expert, and this is only going to throw gasoline on the fire. Of course, if they had listened to a PR expert and written a first-rate apology letter, then we'd be calling them out as insincere and saying it was just PR fluff, a la the StackExchange letter recently.

They were put in a lose-lose situation from the start.

> They were put in a lose-lose situation from the start

Sure, but it’s telling which lose they chose. If we don’t want this to keep happening, the consequences from losing us have to be greater.

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#136

Post by samtheprogram »

minimaxir wrote: post #10
bipolar_lisper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh they absolutely are not. You should see the way people have always, and will always defend this company.

Scanning social media, I haven't seen a single gaming influencer say it's a sufficient statement: https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20https%3A%2F... The contrarian viewpoint is "what were you expecting?" in which case the reply is "an actual apology."

Anecdotally, most those I know, while unhappy about it, are continuing to play. While I don’t think people are going to defend this, I doubt this will meaningfully affect them in the long-term.

It’s easy for companies, after some backlash by a loud yet small crowd on social media, to blacklist a certain high profile individual out of risk. It’s hard for that same group to make a difference against an organization as large as Blizzard. Most people still want their product.

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#138

Post by ng12 »

bertil wrote: post #72
anonimouse5t43w wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t she ban a lot of subreddits?

Reddit has to make a lot of decisions, some were soon after she joined. Not sure CEOs of social media company get involved in making that decision personally, rather than name people who would -- Pao might be an exception, though. From all the subreddits that were closed, I’d be hard-pressed to name one that I felt contributed to free speech.

> contributed to free speech.

What does it mean to "contribute to" free speech?

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#139

Post by natch »

randallsquared wrote: post #103

> We now believe he should receive his prizing. We understand that for some this is not about the prize, and perhaps for others it is disrespectful to even discuss it. That is not our intention. It's a little weird that they say they "believe he should receive" his prize, rather than saying that he actually will. It's hard to think of a reason they would word it that way, except to give the false impression that he's…

Wow yes that really is odd, thanks for pointing it out. Not proud to say it, but their statement fooled me (made me skim right past it thinking what they wanted me to think) the first time.

Re: Regarding Last Weekend’s Hearthstone Grandmasters Tournament

#140

Post by josefx »

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #89
wpietri wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that "our profit is more important than your people dying" is also moralizing, right?

You can argue Blizzard puts profits over free expression (every company does to varying degrees). It's absurd to say the kid's obtuse outburst, if left uncensured, saves lives.

> (every company does to varying degrees).

That is where the problem comes in, it isn't a single censored outburst by a single player and not a single company doing the censoring. China is using that uncaring greed to ensure that these protests are censored on a larger scale.

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