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Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

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Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#281

Post by waterhouse »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #278
Nexxxeh wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue that he hasn't committed a crime. My issue is that it's a crime at all. Everything is grossly offensive to someone. I watched the actual video in question, and with regards to the judgement, I disagree that it was menacing, anti-semitic, or racist. The video, if anything, is anti-racist and anti-anti-semitic. It's certainly not threatening to anyone of reasonable mind, unless one considers the pug to…

Have you read the whole judgement? I think it's still available as a pdf on the court website. Not the carefully selected snippets and quotes dumped in the media. I recommend it, it's hilarious (at Meecham's expense), and IIRC only a couple of pages. He had a defence. He chose not to use it, despite the judge explicitly encouraging him to. So after the judge points to the exit, he faces the other way and sulks. He de…

http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha...

Is that the judgment? If so, when you say "He had a defence. He chose not to use it, despite the judge explicitly encouraging him to", are you referring to this part?

> I should note that although I invited both legal representatives to make legal submissions during the trial about the law on freedom of expression, that was done only to a very limited extent. In the absence of focused submissions on that topic by either the Crown or the defence, all I can say is that, while that right is very important, in all modern democratic countries the law necessarily places some limits on that right.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#282

Post by sseth »

chongli wrote: post #158
panpanna wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google for one. Although I think they have regretted that decision.

Google did not have as much skin in the game as Apple does. If Apple defied the CCP, they could lose their factories overnight. To say this would cause immense damage is an understatement. They would have no product to sell within weeks and they would have no means to produce anything. It would be catastrophic. Google, on the other hand, walked away from China and it's business as usual for them.

At the time of walking away they had 33% of the Chinese search market - so it is hard to see how they did not have skin in the game - to lose all access to the largest market in the world forever. And not only for search, but also youtube, android and so many other things.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#283

Post by NeedMoreTea »

waterhouse wrote: post #281
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the whole judgement? I think it's still available as a pdf on the court website. Not the carefully selected snippets and quotes dumped in the media. I recommend it, it's hilarious (at Meecham's expense), and IIRC only a couple of pages. He had a defence. He chose not to use it, despite the judge explicitly encouraging him to. So after the judge points to the exit, he faces the other way and sulks. He de…

http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha... Is that the judgment? If so, when you say "He had a defence. He chose not to use it, despite the judge explicitly encouraging him to", are you referring to this part? > I should note that although I invited both legal representatives to make legal submissions during the trial about the law on freedom of expression, that was done only to a very limited ex…

That's the one. I'd forgotten the Crown hadn't bothered either. The judge was trying to encourage an exploration of freedom of expression. Had the defendant bothered, he would likely have had very reasonable chance of acquittal or trivial fine in place of the £800. That the Youtube and "private joke for his girlfriend" aspects of his defence were shown up as lies probably didn't help his case. :)

The next paragraph is relevant to the context, as he makes clear that in the absence of those explorations, the conviction rests solely on the narrow fact of whether the law was breached or not. i.e. without any mitigation taken into account:

“This trial, unusual though some aspects have been, was therefore concerned, ultimately, only with the narrow fact-based question of whether the Crown has proved beyond reasonable doubt that your using a public communications network on one day to post the video onto your video channel, constituted an offence contrary to section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003. I found it proved on the evidence that it was. My finding establishes only your guilt of this offence. It establishes nothing else and sets no precedent.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#284

Post by parasubvert »

andrepd wrote: post #180
parasubvert wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Companies are made of people. They're not machines, they're organizations of people. There is no "business ethics" there's just ethics. People in leadership positions can take actions that aren't always in the interest of short term profit maximization, and will not get fired for it, so long as these actions are vaguely aligned to the long term health of the organization. One might suggest that encoura…

>Companies are made of people. That is "technically correct" but meaningless in practice. It's like saying that people are just a collection of molecules. While technically not wrong, humans are of course more than the sum of its parts. The collection of molecules, arranged in a certain way, exhibits emergent behaviour; it will seek food or have intelligent thoughts, which molecules individually can't be said to do.…

It is not meaningless in practice. I can agree it is insufficient and that groups lead to emergent behavior. But it is meaningful to note that the individual components of an organization have free will and potentially a sense of ethics/morality.

Each company has different behaviors, some broadly can be assumed, like, a company won’t usually want to deliberately destroy or bankrupt itself (there have been exceptions to this!). Others will contribute greatly to social or environmental programs that directly hurt short term profits. how they get to those decisions is complex and requires strategy, execution, leadership, etc. Not something so 19th century as “profit maximization”

My original post was to state that’s it is false to suggest that a company is always a profit-maximizing amoral machine. People aren’t machines and The emergent behavior of any given corporation rarely is “Profit maximization”. It is sort of like saying the emergent behavior of a sports team is “point maximization”. It is meaningless and not true.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#285

Post by overcast »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #252
overcast wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is monetized in Overwatch? A bunch of silly skins you don't need? Everything is included, they are constantly updating, and releasing new characters, all for no additional cost. Best $20 I've ever spent for a multiplayer game.

And they give out Loot Boxes like candy in game. There's no need to purchase them. Play some games? Loot box. Be a positive player? Loot boxes. New event? Loot boxes. Play "Anything but DPS" right now? Loot Box. I've bought game merch and London Spitfire (Overwatch League) merch, I've bought the OWL Pass thingy, I've cheered bits. And I bought the game at launch (no pre-order). I've played a lot for a casual player,…

Yeh I've never purchased a single loot box, and I play roughly once or twice a week since it was launched. I'm currently sitting at about 75% coverage for skins and what not, with 22,000 credits. Just playing the game, gets you more than enough.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#286

Post by raxxorrax »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #251
Nexxxeh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK (Scotland specifically) we had the ridiculous prosecution of Markus "Count Dankula" Meechan. We've certainly not found the right balance over here.

Read the actual judgement, and it's just about impossible to conclude that the conviction was anything but deserved and perfectly balanced. The judge explicitly asked his defence to explore freedom of expression. He chose not to. The rest of his "defence" was laughable and easily disproved lies. The judge pointed out his failure to explore freedom of expression in his summing up. Short of using neon, how much more cl…

If the law is a tool for the quest for justice, this was a very dark time for the judiciary.

> In addition to being a bottom feeding racist.

It surely was a dog whistle all along. A pug whistle to be exact. I am not sure what to say to this.

> a load of money

deserved in my opinion and he is not the one looking like an idiot coming out of this story.

Admittedly, some jokes live only from the reaction.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#287

Post by Nasrudith »

ddtaylor wrote: post #15

As much as I want to think change will happen, it's much more likely this will be a few weeks of PR and ultimately nothing will change. For something to change people have to vote with their wallets. In this context that means cancelling subscriptions or dropping games they are already playing in favor for ones by competitors with better integrity, and I don't see that happening. Diablo players could go to Path of Ex…

The lack of will towards cancellation doesn't seem to be an issue given that Activision Blizzard has an "overloaded" account deletion feature which shows they have had enough deletions to make them afraid and decided to break the law over it.

Some additions though: I know for RTSes AOE2 is still shockingly active and viable as it happens to have landed on "peak RTS complexity" from a combination of minimal auto along with some unique features like one of the fewer RTSes to have a remotely accurate tooth to tail ratio - it is extraordinarily rare for the military to outnumber the civilian sector and if you are in that position unless victory is assured defeat is inevitable.

AOE2 is conveniently open in its protocols and they demonstrate why independence from competitive tournaments is important to game making. From a business standpoint the best choice isn't to kowtow but to stay not responsible for it.

Which is an ironic but tangible advantage for open software and giving up control. Even the unreasonable can see that any controversial actions are not your fault just like Lego can't stop you from building dongs and swastikas with their bricks.

Personally I suspect MMOs would be harder to replace by "flavor" from how out of Zeitgeist they are after so many tried and failed to create WOW killers they stopped trying. Combined with Free To Play models sucking much of the staple player base away. Even longtime rivals or disliked MMO variants mourn the passing or decline of others. They have effectively become period pieces in many ways - not dead but in clear twilight.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#288

Post by celticmusic »

cgarvis wrote: post #207
celticmusic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's troubling for China to have as much influence as it does when it's directly trying to undermine freedoms that we have fought tooth and nail and died a million lives to get in The West. WE have thrown it away already, China is just trying to speed things up. I've thought quite a bit about this, and my conclusion is that everything is cyclical and has a rise and fall because it only takes a few generations to un…

“The Lessons of History” by Will Durant and Ariel Durant talks about the cyclical nature of history. They talk specifically about the cycles of control and chaos. How our liberties are only possible after a period of control.

Thank you for the recommendation, I just purchased that book on Amazon.

I'm not generally interested in history, but this particular topic interests me due to the changes I've seen in just my lifetime.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#289

Post by thefringthing »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #200
kaybe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more difficult than that, I think. If you look at free speech in Europe for example, in eg Germany there are laws against hate speech or defamation of individual people (quite differentiated, an opinion is ok and true facts are ok, but invented facts are not). One of the targets is Nazi propaganda, and in general the support is good. Still, the goal is similar, social stability, peace and protection of min…

I sympathize with the idea, but how does one define hate speech? Couldn't The CCP claim that any speech in support of Hong Kong is speech in hate of The CCP? Limiting speech in anyway gets very slippery.

Americans: "How could one possibly define hate speech!?"

Most countries: Has a fairly clear legal definition of hate speech, in statute or precedent.

Re: Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer

#290

Post by NeedMoreTea »

raxxorrax wrote: post #286
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the actual judgement, and it's just about impossible to conclude that the conviction was anything but deserved and perfectly balanced. The judge explicitly asked his defence to explore freedom of expression. He chose not to. The rest of his "defence" was laughable and easily disproved lies. The judge pointed out his failure to explore freedom of expression in his summing up. Short of using neon, how much more cl…

If the law is a tool for the quest for justice, this was a very dark time for the judiciary. > In addition to being a bottom feeding racist. It surely was a dog whistle all along. A pug whistle to be exact. I am not sure what to say to this. > a load of money deserved in my opinion and he is not the one looking like an idiot coming out of this story. Admittedly, some jokes live only from the reaction.

Justice was done, and clearly seen to be done. I'm very comfortable with the balance of the law after that trial. Had the defendant bothered to offer a defence exploring freedom of expression, we might be discussing his acquittal.

Reading the judgement took my opinion from surprise at an apparently ridiculous verdict, to one that was entirely fitting.

>> a load of money > deserved in my opinion

For what? A defence he did not use after encouragement?

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