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Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

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Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#91

Post by koonsolo »

glogla wrote: post #90
koonsolo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me, so maybe you have the answer. At some point, the line of evilness becomes so thin that you will have to "pick a side" if you have done it before. Easier to just not go down that route. But still, is Trump evil?

> Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps. There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear. I…

Ok I was wrong, you can actually divide the world into evil or not. It's not always as clear to me and others, so can you share if following things are evil or not: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Barack Obama.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#92

Post by unionpivo »

radiator wrote: post #86
glogla wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying seems to be built on assumption that all "politics" is the same. It absolutely isn't. Evil (fascism, concentration camps, ehtnic cleansing, ...) and fighting against evil, are both political stances, but they are very different. And "let's not interfere with evil because it would be politics (or affect our bottom line)" is definitely political stance - it's picking the evil side.

I would say this is a rather childish view of the world, to separate things into two categories, evil and good.

Sure most of the times its shades of grey.

But sometimes like in this instance it really is black or white.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#93

Post by prepend »

I like how esports is so close to sports sports. This is the equivalent of “taking a knee” during NFL games while the national anthem is played.

What’s curious is that it now pits free speech vs China with Heartstone own Kaepernick. The NFL issue, I think, was two social groups (kneeler vs people upset by kneelers) with NFL/Nike/etc in the middle.

This new situation has a social group (players/free speeches/HK) vs a state (China) with Blizzard/etc in the middle.

It’s curious how Blizzard so quickly picked their side while NFL and Nike are still not going all in on one side (NFL didn’t ban, just no one hired player).

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#94

Post by mlang23 »

hos234 wrote: post #56
mlang23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this basically the same with all big corporations these days? If you say unpopular things on your YouTube channel, you will be demonitized.as a way of punishment. In short, either you please big brother, or you will suffer.

Big corps can't escalate things as a reaction or on a whim. They have much more to loose than a single protestor does. It has to be planned. Preferably with all other big corps in tow. Google tried and their market share went from 35% to 2%. Now if they had got together with other corps, and drawn a line the story might have been different. That said, with each attempt comes learning and the next attempt wont go the…

I agree with your analysis, but I dont agree with the motivations. The issue is forced growth. Why exactly is it so important for Google to have a market share in China? As if they aren't dominating the internet enough already. And because everyone buys the "we need endless growth"-myth, it is suddenly OK if Google sides with China because all they are doing is trying to grow. Aha. I tend to see things differently. They use the market share as an excuse to not care. As long as we put bussiness over everything, we can't really be surprised about corporations working against citizen rights.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#95

Post by craftoman »

pinouchon wrote: post #87
craftoman wrote: post #70

I keep tracking Blizzard cause I play Hearthstone from time to time. This company is unethical, it doesn't even care or respect their own employees and you can see it based on their previous scandals. They are treating both designers & developers like money making machines and they ruined almost every of aspect of their games. They spend millions of dollars in tournaments and always trick their costumers into buying…

They shouldn't have accepted to get bought by Activision. The only way they make good games now is by releasing old titles (sc remastered, classic, reforged)... And now this

Yeah and the irony is that Activision was formed by Atari employees who left the company because they were treated like sh!t.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#96

Post by lordlimecat »

glogla wrote: post #90
koonsolo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me, so maybe you have the answer. At some point, the line of evilness becomes so thin that you will have to "pick a side" if you have done it before. Easier to just not go down that route. But still, is Trump evil?

> Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps. There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear. I…

>He's responsible for ICE

In what world? ICE was created in 2003.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#97

Post by Isinlor »

orisho wrote: post #15
calcifer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blizzard should not pick a side. Not picking a side is siding with the status quo, which is Chinese oppression in Hong Kong.

Not picking a side is not allowing political discussion, no matter who you (or they) perceive to be right. Coincidentally, this is also the choice that makes most sense to a corporation which stands to lose a lot from picking a side. Players will likely respond to sensationalist reporting of this case, but forget about it soon after, while the Chinese government is not gonna go easy on Blizzard picking the other side…

In other words they do pick a side - they side with Chinese government, because the communist party has a leverage on them.

But we have a leverage too!

If we manage to damage their brand and profit, they may decide that censorship is not to their benefit.

We need to be loud and clear - communism will not be tolerated. Otherwise, it will start to creep trough Blizzard and many other companies, and limit our freedoms too.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#98

Post by glogla »

lordlimecat wrote: post #96
glogla wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps. There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear. I…

>He's responsible for ICE In what world? ICE was created in 2003.

I mean, yes, but

1) ICE is Executive branch and he's the chief of Executive branch (I guess the proper word would be accountable).

2) I'm pretty sure a lot of the way ICE is acting now (you know, the children in cages who are refused medical care and so on) is affected by the guy in charge being openly racist who considers non-white people subhuman, wants to build a wall and considers "good people on both sides" between nazis and non-nazis.

President is not just chief of the army and the executive branch, he's an ideological leader who represents the people and shows what kind of behavior is proper, and what is acceptable and so on.

At least he should be, anyway.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#99

Post by noxxten »

koonsolo wrote: post #71
VicFrank wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the rule in question > Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms. The rule is not "poli…

You have to ask the question as a company, to allow politics to enter your space. Now it is supporting HK, next time it is against nazi's, next time maybe against Trump. Once you disallow one, you will "pick a side". I'm not saying this ban was good or bad, I'm just saying it's more complex than picking side in that debate. Maybe they just don't want to get into the shit of any political debate. But for the rest, all…

I completely disagree. It isn't a complex issue and companies don't get to decide whether to "allow" politics or not. Politics are a part of EVERYTHING... Ignoring and trying to moderate that is just foolish.

Re: Blizzard bans player from Hearthstone following on-stream Hong Kong protest

#100

Post by joelx »

virgilp wrote: post #38
mlang23 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this basically the same with all big corporations these days? If you say unpopular things on your YouTube channel, you will be demonitized.as a way of punishment. In short, either you please big brother, or you will suffer.

Is it a "big corporations" thing? Try saying e.g. that maybe Minsky was innocent, see how that works. OTOH who knows anymore, maybe big corporations do have something to do with it.... it's certainly convenient. If you have money it's rather easy to summon a mob to do your bidding and silence inconvenient people, so they must love this new trend. Also if you have money and power, it's easy to get discretionary, arbit…

I think we all need to boycott Blizzard and the NBA for putting money over freedom and democracy.
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