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Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

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Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#111

Post by flukus »

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 "…

For a start it's time we created a universal service obligation for online companies that create a high bar for deplatforming or service refusal.

This is fairly simple and not particularly radical, through anti-discrimination laws we already force companies to do business with individuals regardless of whether they want to, it just makes it universal.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#112

Post by threeseed »

ReptileMan wrote: post #69
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.

And I will never purchase another game until they start making good ones again. That is far bigger sin than refusing to be political about Hong Kong.

People have died and many are missing due to the Hong Kong situation.

That's more important than a game.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#113

Post by belltaco »

azernik wrote: post #18
vkou wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. It's a crisis for speech by entities that are seeking to make millions of dollars in China. Those corporations were never in the business of defending free speech in the first place. If you were expecting them to, I would suggest finding better role models. This is not a problem for anyone who does not care about selling out to the Chinese market.

> anyone who does not care about selling out to the Chinese market It's a crisis for speech by customers of those companies , who must make clear that they are just as capable of punishing those companies as the Chinese government.

The Chinese customers are also capable of punishing those companies, not just the Chinese government.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#114

Post by danharaj »

vbezhenar wrote: post #110
ncallaway wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe that you believe that, but I'm here to tell you that your counterfactual is not realistic.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#115

Post by belltaco »

falcolas wrote: post #66
cjbprime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, didn't know that, I'd thought it was Blizzard China.

Net-Ease is Blizzard China. All of Blizzard’s sales and marketing must occur in partnership with NetEase; there is no other voice for Blizzard in China.

Net-Ease isn't Blizzard China, they are a partner, not a subsidiary. Net-Ease is not owned by Blizzard.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#116

Post by Lazare »

belltaco wrote: post #94
CocaKoala wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wrong, it would have got huge media play in China as Blizzard not enforcing its rules in opposition to China. Just like the NBA issue.

Highly debatable. It's by no means clear the rules should have been applied to this case; they were very vague "we can ban anyone for anything that makes us look bad", but what has made Blizzard look bad here has primarily been the enforcement of the rules.

If they had just played it off as the players speech, and nothing to do with them at all, it is by no means clear any significant blowback would have stuck to Blizzard.

The NBA issue is very different because the original tweet was from the general manager of a team with close Chinese ties. It's like if a Blizzard exec had expressed pro-human rights sentiments in an interview.

Obviously we'll never know now, but Blizzard did so much to increase the perceived importance of the event beyond where it would naturally have been (eg, their statement on an official account saying they would always "resolutely safeguard [China's] national dignity"). Once you've framed it in those terns, it's hard to back down. Were there really no alternatives though?

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#117

Post by belltaco »

danharaj wrote: post #114
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.

I believe that you believe that, but I'm here to tell you that your counterfactual is not realistic.

The same pro player had expressed his HK independence support on his social media in the past, yet was allowed to play.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#119

Post by colllectorof »

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…

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 that is created to do all this "activism" will inevitably be subverted by something like CPC to enforce their interests upon everyone else.

Re: Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Event

#120

Post by mantap »

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.)

I actually see it the other way around. This action to appease China is extremely cynical and they only reason they are emboldened to take it is because Blizzard have immense financial security.

Most normal corporations would be way too scared of exactly this kind of backlash to so brazenly crack down on behalf of a totalitarian state.

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