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Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

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Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#101

Post by falcolas »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #74
cloakandswagger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you completely, but this whole debacle has highlighted what seems to be hypocrisy in the general public's reaction to this. Remember when The Daily Stormer got kicked off CloudFlare and a whole host of other platforms, to the point that no one would take their business and they were effectively censored? The average take on that seemed to be a mix of "Free speech doesn't apply to private companies" and "…

The difference is that a country which is committing human rights abuses is pressuring said private company (among _many_ others) to abridge free speech. The other case is a private company not wanting to host right-wing neo-nazi content of which the general public isn’t really accepting. I don’t see the hypocrisy here at all.. tbh I don’t even quite understand how you can conflate the two situations other than the f…

FWIW, there is no visible pressure that has been exhibited from China against Blizzard. There have been no statements from China either in support or condemnation of any of the involved actors.

The situation is entirely driven by Blizzard, for fear of their potential revenue stream out of China.

This is in contrast to the NBA scenario, where China did speak out against the NBA, and later began to cancel contracts.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#102

Post by dx87 »

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.

Protesting against Blizzard may not do enough to have an impact, but it certainly helps. Here's a short article where they claim that the way China dealt with the NBA was doing them more harm than good, so the government started trying to suppress chinese nationalism since it was making them look bad to the rest of the world. I agree that it'd be better if the government did something, but company and consumer protests can be effective as well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/business/china-blows-whis...

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#103

Post by krustyburger »

fouc wrote: post #100
datapunk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. B…

Blizzard could remove all Blizzard signs and advertising. Make the conference look unofficial.

I can’t tell if you’re serious.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#104

Post by belltaco »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #74
cloakandswagger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you completely, but this whole debacle has highlighted what seems to be hypocrisy in the general public's reaction to this. Remember when The Daily Stormer got kicked off CloudFlare and a whole host of other platforms, to the point that no one would take their business and they were effectively censored? The average take on that seemed to be a mix of "Free speech doesn't apply to private companies" and "…

The difference is that a country which is committing human rights abuses is pressuring said private company (among _many_ others) to abridge free speech. The other case is a private company not wanting to host right-wing neo-nazi content of which the general public isn’t really accepting. I don’t see the hypocrisy here at all.. tbh I don’t even quite understand how you can conflate the two situations other than the f…

>is pressuring said private company (among _many_ others) to abridge free speech

It was a post-game interview on a Blizzard event in a Blizzard broadcast. How is that different from "a private company not wanting to host " ? The player had supported HK freedom on his Twitter in the past, yet was allowed to play in the tournament. Gaming events have not been places for sharing political ideas, like social media is.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#105

Post by flippinburgers »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #65
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…

I agree with you completely, but this whole debacle has highlighted what seems to be hypocrisy in the general public's reaction to this. Remember when The Daily Stormer got kicked off CloudFlare and a whole host of other platforms, to the point that no one would take their business and they were effectively censored? The average take on that seemed to be a mix of "Free speech doesn't apply to private companies" and "…

The only difference is that one type is a type of free speech that people tend to agree with.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#106

Post by alasdair_ »

DFectuoso wrote: post #73
alasdair_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Broadcast a good wifi hotspot name of course.

Fantastic idea!

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#107

Post by [deleted] »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #65
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…

I agree with you completely, but this whole debacle has highlighted what seems to be hypocrisy in the general public's reaction to this. Remember when The Daily Stormer got kicked off CloudFlare and a whole host of other platforms, to the point that no one would take their business and they were effectively censored? The average take on that seemed to be a mix of "Free speech doesn't apply to private companies" and "…

[deleted]

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#108

Post by irq »

paulddraper wrote: post #22
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?

They are between a rock and hard place. It's a total no-win for them now. (Queue morbid curiosity.)

It's definitely not no-win. They can completely exit the Chinese market. The company will still survive if they do so. Earlier in this thread it was pointed out China generates only 10% of their revenue.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#109

Post by DoreenMichele »

CocaKoala wrote: post #84
DoreenMichele wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created How do you figure they created it?

If they had just not done anything when blitzchung made his statement in support of Hong Kong, it likely would have gotten essentially zero media play.

I haven't followed the situation closely, but we never get to A/B test such decisions. We make a decision and see the outcome for which one we chose.

Saying they created this situation is a little like blaming a casualty of war for living in the country they were born in. China exists and it's a large country with growing power that has fundamental cultural differences with the West and always has.

There may be better and worse ways to respond, but we have to recognize that everyone is, to some extent, just a bit player on a world stage where many other forces are in play. Not everything that happens in our lives is a thing we directly caused.

It's common to take it for granted when the existing world stage benefits us and wonder where we went wrong when it shafts us. Both views are only partial explanations at best.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#110

Post by vbezhenar »

ncallaway wrote: post #89
DoreenMichele wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very awkward situation for blizzard, one they have ultimately created How do you figure they created it?

They banned a player and stripped their prize-money for speaking out in favor of HK. They did this in order to try and maintain access to Chinese markets, probably assuming that the US market wouldn't care.

They banned him because he spoken about politics which have nothing with video games. I don't think that they tried to censor exactly HK speech. I guess they would have banned him if he would talk about Putin as well.
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