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Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

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Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#51

Post by gpm »

the_duke wrote: post #47
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. Every corporation and business person is watching this to see which hurts their bottom line less, suppressing free speech globally, or angering China. As consumers, we must make sure that they get the message loud and clear that suppressing free speech globally on behalf of China is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Otherw…

Blizzard stock hasn't suffered yet. And I doubt the cancelled subscriptions and closed accounts will have a significant long term impact. Especially since they mitigated account deletions by only allowing manual deletion requests with a submitted id; due to very conveniently timed and curiously persistent technical difficulties... These public outrage storms quickly subside and people go back to playing the games. It…

Blizzard stock suffering, or not, just has to do with what the public markets think the likely economic outcome of this is for Blizzard. So it seems that so far their shareholders think this will blow over, but there's nothing that makes them a perfect predictor of that.

If they keep cancelling events, if Blizzcon crashes and burns, if sales go way down, the stock will suffer.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#52

Post by vkou »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #46
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. Every corporation and business person is watching this to see which hurts their bottom line less, suppressing free speech globally, or angering China. As consumers, we must make sure that they get the message loud and clear that suppressing free speech globally on behalf of China is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Otherw…

> This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. It’s a crisis created by the political movement to force every company to take a political stance on every issue, and to force companies to not associate with political out-group members. I’m sure it feels really good when you’re in the in-group, but quite obviously gets people really worked up when it doesn’t come down on their side.

This is the correct interpretation of this issue.

All of a sudden, millions of people who are quite happy to be fence-sitters about all sorts of injustices across the world (Many of them in their own countries) have decided to draw the line on China and Hong Kong.

According to them, anyone who does not explicitly support pro-HK politics is an enemy, and must be punished accordingly. (Even if what they want is a no politics policy.)

This is, of course, the same sort of 'with us or against us' behaviour, that those same fence-sitters criticized when it came to other injustices...

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#53

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

the_duke wrote: post #47
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. Every corporation and business person is watching this to see which hurts their bottom line less, suppressing free speech globally, or angering China. As consumers, we must make sure that they get the message loud and clear that suppressing free speech globally on behalf of China is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Otherw…

Blizzard stock hasn't suffered yet. And I doubt the cancelled subscriptions and closed accounts will have a significant long term impact. Especially since they mitigated account deletions by only allowing manual deletion requests with a submitted id; due to very conveniently timed and curiously persistent technical difficulties... These public outrage storms quickly subside and people go back to playing the games. It…

Prisoners dilemma. Any individual corporation that stands up for human rights suffers the potential loss of market space to competitors and the likely revolt by shareholders, for which ~1/3 of American stocks are owned by foreign investors for whom there is no guarantee that they care about human rights either.

If American corporations banded together to stand up to China the way they claim to care so gosh darn much about LGBTQ+ rights, they could send a powerful signal that some values are higher than profits. But who wants to be first?

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#54

Post by Mountain_Skies »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #46
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. Every corporation and business person is watching this to see which hurts their bottom line less, suppressing free speech globally, or angering China. As consumers, we must make sure that they get the message loud and clear that suppressing free speech globally on behalf of China is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Otherw…

> This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. It’s a crisis created by the political movement to force every company to take a political stance on every issue, and to force companies to not associate with political out-group members. I’m sure it feels really good when you’re in the in-group, but quite obviously gets people really worked up when it doesn’t come down on their side.

Can't feel bad for companies since they started this with their targeted advertising campaigns in which they took sides in social and political issues to gain favor with certain customer demographics. Now that the precedent has been set, they're being pushed and pulled in every direction as a consequence. They're reaping what they sowed.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#55

Post by datapunk »

cjbprime wrote: post #10

The huge question here is what's going to happen at BlizzCon in two weeks. There'll be 40,000+ attendees, cameras everywhere, there are usually Q&A panels, homemade signs for player support, cosplay, everything. How can you host BlizzCon when you're terrified of political speech?

How do you respond when a character from your top grossing game is turned into a political meme? This is what Blizzard has been learning this week.

How do you handle potentially thousands of attendees, at your organization's biggest annual event, turning it into a platform for political protest agaisnt your biggest growing market?

There's three possible events:

BlizzCon is canceled. Extremely unlikely but possible.

Blizzard attempts to control the narrative during the con by policing the floors to extinguish any mention of china or Hong Kong. Stripping those who do of their con membership. Leading to more negative reactions from domestic users.

Blizzard does nothing. Thousands of videos and photos flood the web of blizzcon of what looks like a sanctioned public protests by the company. China responds by blocking all Blizzard products in their country.

This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created, no real way they will win.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#56

Post by alasdair_ »

cjbprime wrote: post #10

The huge question here is what's going to happen at BlizzCon in two weeks. There'll be 40,000+ attendees, cameras everywhere, there are usually Q&A panels, homemade signs for player support, cosplay, everything. How can you host BlizzCon when you're terrified of political speech?

I, and several friends, all have tickets. We're still deciding what form of protest will be most effective (too overt and the message gets quickly lost when security kicks you out).

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#57

Post by rayiner »

jacquesm wrote: post #37
rayiner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These incidents are making me reevaluate my views on the Cold War. Growing up after the Cold War was over, I always thought the domestic reaction (in the US) to the Soviet Union and Communism was overblown. Of course, growing up during the 1990s boom, it was inconceivable to me that any foreign country could have the slightest negative impact on me, or that there was any possibility that the future offered anything o…

Pity you didn't spend any time behind the Iron Curtain when it was still up. Formative experience if there ever was one for me.

I'm from, and lived in, Bangladesh, which was also formative. At the time, we saw America as the future for Bangladesh too. The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism as a competitor to Westernization (in its Anglo-American form) came as a total shock. At least to my family. For the same reason I find China's Belt and Road initiative deeply disquieting.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#58

Post by Dan_JiuJitsu »

I will never purchase another game from Activision or Blizzard unless they recant this backwards position. American art and media should not be subject to Chinese influence.

I've been a loyal customer over the years, but I have a long memory. Refuse to delete my account if you will, it will never be used again.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#59

Post by onli »

streb-lo wrote: post #17
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

This is a crisis point for everyone who supports political free speech. Every corporation and business person is watching this to see which hurts their bottom line less, suppressing free speech globally, or angering China. As consumers, we must make sure that they get the message loud and clear that suppressing free speech globally on behalf of China is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Otherw…

> is going to hurt their bottom line far more than China will. Yea right. a) China has a huge market and b) most people don't really care. Go to /r/hearthstone or /r/wow and browse by new. People don't care.

Many of the blizzard related subreddits are staffed by mods that remove posts about China. And when you post something in /r/wow you see a big "no politics" banner. Not seeing that many posts about this there means nothing about how the players feel.

And reddit in general was up in arms about this.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#60

Post by MrStonedOne »

gtirloni wrote: post #36
Waterluvian wrote: post #2

I hope this emboldens people as they see that their protesting actually works. I'm often super pessimistic that large corporations are immune to protest because people have short attention spans and get bored of being outraged.

I wish protesting against Blizzard would have an impact on Chinese policy but there's zero chance of that happening. I understand it's a long game (no pun intended), getting more and more companies to take a stand for free speech, but the impact on the lives of the people really affected by it is too small. The US government has much greater means to make a really powerful impact but I don't see that ever happening.

The goal is not to change chinese policy, it's to change the policy of how american business interact with chinese policy.

I don't care nearly as much about how china is a draconian hellhole as I do about that hellhole infecting how american business do shit.

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