Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 460 posts

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#161

Post by taurath »

datapunk wrote: post #55
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. B…

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

I don't think they created it per-say. I think they, and probably most of the executives in the industry, missed just how much a powder-keg chinese censorship is, and how political doing live international (or even national) sporting events can get. Everyone in the west is pissed at blizzard for cowing to China. China is obviously in the wrong here, because they're the ones threatening to kick Blizzard out of China unless Blizzard does what they say.

This is a risk that no matter how Blizzard execs managed it, if China pushes that lever all of their profits turn to zero. I think now any company should start to think twice about the risks of operating in China. I think ultimately this will fizzle out, unless the players don't stop protesting, at which point they'll have to stop broadcasting to China, and probably stop operating there.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#162

Post by Kaveren »

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…

this is a really illogical take that sounds extremely biased. I do not believe for a second that if American companies did not do anything you claim they do, that would somehow make Blizzard not be threatened by the Chinese government in this situation.

like I have no clue how you can relate these two. we aren't just talking about public backlash, we are talking about the threat that a government can harm your operations in their country for speech. this is so different.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#163

Post by falcolas »

irq wrote: post #152
falcolas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have literally no idea what might be being communicated in private between China and Blizzard. How can you make such a claim in good faith?

By qualifying my statement with the word "visible", and presenting an almost identical case where there was visible feedback from China.

Why would China treat the (comparatively huge and influential) NBA one way, and (comparatively tiny) Blizzard another?

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#164

Post by wyldfire »

Latty wrote: post #125
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?

All these companies should refuse to self-censor for China. China does want western media and products. The fact that companies capitulate makes that the standard practice, and means China feels safe demanding it (or doesn't even need to because of the chilling effect). They can make a spectacle of any one company that refuses. I'm not saying that China wouldn't just ban them all, but it would at least mean there is…

You can't totally blame Blizzard. It's a Nash equilibrium, right?

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#165

Post by streb-lo »

onli wrote: post #59
streb-lo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>And reddit in general was up in arms about this.

For two days.

>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.

Activity level is pretty much the same.

I'm sorry, but this is just the latest outrage target and in two weeks it will be something new entirely.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#166

Post by PeterisP »

belltaco wrote: post #104
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…

>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.

I think that there would be no meaningful uproar if Blizzard would simply not host or broadcast that interview because they don't like it for whatever reason, and left it at that.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#167

Post by bitL »

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.

It's possible Blizzard is only surviving if they have access to Chinese market? We don't know their financials, management might be just prudent from their point of view in order to survive (people are way more obsessed with gaming in Eastern Asia than anywhere else and those regions have largest population). The management is certainly fully aware of the whole sh*tshow and likely aren't happy with whatever choice they have.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#168

Post by falcolas »

zucker42 wrote: post #137
falcolas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't diminish that it was purely Blizzard's decision in the end. Blizzard had a choice, and they picked censoring Blitzchung on their own.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#169

Post by bitL »

themacguffinman wrote: post #144
falcolas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't say there is no visible pressure on Blizzard while mentioning the NBA in the same breath. China's aggressive move on the NBA is the pressure. It's an example to every company that operates in China: toe the party line, or face local obstruction like the NBA.

"If they could do that to NBA, what would they do to me?"

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#170

Post by empath75 »

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 never fails that someone will come into one of these threads crying crocodile tears for nazis.

People are free to associate and do business with whoever they want to and that is all part of the marketplace of ideas. Blizzard is choosing to get into bed with the Chinese government and cloudfare chose to get out of business with nazis and their customers get to decide how to react that. Right now it seems to be going poorly for blizzard and well for cloudflare.

Post reply on HN