Current Events > Can someone please catch me up on all this Blizzard stuff?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Something to do with China or something

I'm seeing it everywhere all of a sudden and wondering where it's all come from
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20904308/hearthstone-player-blitzchung-hong-kong-protesters-ban-blizzard
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Foppe posted...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20904308/hearthstone-player-blitzchung-hong-kong-protesters-ban-blizzard

This.

Additionally, they started handing out thousand year bans to people who discussed Hong Kong on the official forums.

Lastly, they made a shitty PR non-apology on Friday, but they did return the prize money and reduced the suspensions to 6 months.
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Dude named Blitzchung is a Hong Kong-based Hearthstone Grandmaster.

In a post-match interview on an official Hearthstone stream, he wore a mask similar to those by the protesters and said "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our age".

Blizzard China responded by banning him from play for 12 months and making him ineligible for prize money. The two people responsible for the stream were also fired.

Blizzard US later walked that back by restoring his prize money and reducing his ban to six months.

While there are rules in place with regards to conduct, it seems a fair amount of people are thinking that Blizzard is less about "the rules" and more about appeasing China, which Blizzard gets a fair amount of business from.

Blizzcon in two weeks is going to be very interesting.
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CyricZ posted...

Blizzcon in two weeks is going to be very interesting.

It's going to be a glorious shitshow. They've already cancelled the Overwatch Switch release event because of this.

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CyricZ posted...

While there are rules in place with regards to conduct, it seems a fair amount of people are thinking that Blizzard is less about "the rules" and more about appeasing China, which Blizzard gets a fair amount of business from.

Especially since other players (and Blizzard themselves) have used their platform to make political statements before, yet were not punished for it.
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Either they cancel Blizzcon, or any attempt they make to stifle the incoming storm at the event itself is only going to serve to amplify it.
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Something interesting in all of this is Tencent has invested a substantial amount in Activision Blizzard. You know, the guys that have a controlling arm in Epic games, and who also froze streaming NBA games in China after a team executive posted a now-deleted tweet supporting the Hong Kong protest.

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IronChef_Kirby posted...

CyricZ posted...

While there are rules in place with regards to conduct, it seems a fair amount of people are thinking that Blizzard is less about "the rules" and more about appeasing China, which Blizzard gets a fair amount of business from.

Especially since other players (and Blizzard themselves) have used their platform to make political statements before, yet were not punished for it.

It didn't help that in their original comment about it they literally said they would "defend China's pride".
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Alucard188 posted...

Something interesting in all of this is Tencent has invested a substantial amount in Activision Blizzard. You know, the guys that have a controlling arm in Epic games, and who also froze streaming NBA games in China after a team executive posted a now-deleted tweet supporting the Hong Kong protest.

Eventually we as a people will collectively realize that allowing China to buy significant stakes in many of our major social media and entertainment companies effectively lets them remotely apply their censorship laws to us. The problem is that outside of banning Chinese companies from having any ownership in American companies, I don't know what the right approach would be to fix the issue.
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