Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event • Hacker News Board

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#131

Post by vbezhenar » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:09 AM UTC

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 it considered acceptable to push your political agenda on an unrelated events? For me it looks strange and out of place. Now punishing people for that might be too harsh. But if every sport event will turn into political debates (imagine US and RU sportsmen arguing with each other), it'll be bad and free speech has nothing to do with it IMO.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#132

Post by avischiffmann » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

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.

But it’s Blizzcon

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#133

Post by belltaco » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

Dan_JiuJitsu wrote: post #58

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.

How does that jive with continuing to buy products made in China, thus ensuring their financial well being allowing them to oppress HK and minorities?

What Blizzard art and media was subject to Chinese influence?

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#134

Post by zucker42 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

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 "…

It's significantly different because in one case the corporations made the decisions without government influence and in the other they made the decision because of government influence.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#135

Post by falcolas » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:11 AM UTC

colllectorof wrote: post #119

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…

How do you respond? A bit too late for that. Traditionally, reasonable companies preempted this kind of stuff by creating a clear separation between professional and personal matters, and not mixing the two. But hey, these days many people want companies to stick their nose into everyone's business, police "bad speech", create comfortable "spaces", enforce conduct and so on. Well, you reap what you sow. Any mechanism…

Perhaps not cleanly stated, but true. Blizzard quite explicitly catered to the LGBTQ+ demographic recently via an Overwatch promotion, a move that can easily be construed as political speech (and which was voluntarily censored by Blizzard in Russia and China).

They stuck their feet into this arena, and are now realizing that making political statement can affect their revenue in both directions.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#136

Post by Latty » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

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 difference between neo-nazis and democratic protest?

The difference is content. I hate the tendency to fall back to arguments about free speech when that is not the point. Yes, of course everyone should be able to express views individually, but that doesn't mean I don't care about the content of what is being said. That doesn't mean everyone is entitled to the ability to ram that message down everyone's throat through every possible route.

Yeah, companies have a right to self-censor, and consumers have a right to punish them for that.

Hell yes I support CloudFlare kicking off neo-nazis, hell no I don't support Blizzard silencing HK protestors. No hypocrisy because what is being said matters.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#137

Post by zucker42 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #101

thatswrong0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's because Blizzard did the "right" thing in the government's view. Just because the influence isn't visible doesn't mean it's not there, and invisible influence may be even more pernicious.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#138

Post by Craighead » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

colllectorof wrote: post #119

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…

How do you respond? A bit too late for that. Traditionally, reasonable companies preempted this kind of stuff by creating a clear separation between professional and personal matters, and not mixing the two. But hey, these days many people want companies to stick their nose into everyone's business, police "bad speech", create comfortable "spaces", enforce conduct and so on. Well, you reap what you sow. Any mechanism…

Equating so called cancel culture with China political speech policing are truly very different things.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#139

Post by vbezhenar » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #88

thatswrong0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Both situations feature people being banned by companies due to their speech because the companies fear backlash from more powerful entities (China or the media/general public respectively). They seem pretty comparable to me.

It's called double-standards. It's OK to cut free speech for those you don't like, it's not OK to cut free speech for those you like.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#140

Post by belltaco » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 12:13 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #127

vbezhenar wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You reckon they'd have banned him if he'd worn a Elizabeth Warren campaign badge? Really? Like...that's a thing you honestly can imagine?

Yes, because if unpunished, in the next game that will cause another player to wear a MAGA hat. And another to wear a shirt saying "ICE is just doing it's job". They cannot punish those guys because it will make them look biased. And it's all downhill from there.