Resetera reports here that Blizzard is banning Chinese Overwatch players for typing Winnie the Pooh, a name used when one is mocking the Chinese President Xi Jinping for looking like Winnie the Pooh. It is legally required in China to censor this.
Link to the report: https://www.resetera.com/threads/chinese-overwatch-players-are-reporting-getting-banned-for-being-baited-into-typing-winnie-the-pooh.102612/
Itâs not just Blizzard. Itâs actually pretty much all of China.
Seeing Blizzard kowtow to their Chinese overlords makes me sad.
Bla, bla, blaaa.
Blizzard has Chinese partners that take care of the China-releases.
China enforces these rules. Blizzard is no government entity, they have no say in the matter.
They can try to not offer their IP, but noone cares in China. They would just copy the concept and sell the stolen intellectual property. ez, pz, lmn sqz.
Itâs like saying that facebook would suck because its in China or something.
It obviously doesnt exist there and voila, Tencent just copied the entire concept and Facebook is the only one who lost.
I find it remarkable that this gets the overwatch-community outraged. Itâs hilarious.
How about the fact that every videogame-company is being enforced to reveal the entire online-activity (gametime) of Chinese citizens in order to distribute negative social points to them if they game too much?
It didnât excuse Henry Ford and IBM from trading with Germany in the 20s and 30s before the war. It doesnât excuse companies today. China is a totalitarian garbage dump with about zero human rights protections. But these companies put dollars above anything resembling ethics or standards. Sad.
Oh god, dude, really? Iâm bailing this thread. Be thankful anyone is even trading with the US then.
Hard to talk about this without getting into politics, but thank god we live in a capitalist democracy with freedom of speech. Dont have to worry about that here in the US, this is part of the reason my gfs family left china.
Anyways onto this subject i think Blizzard has a dilemma on this tho, they dont take action they lose their ability to market in china, they do they anger their American base. They should as a buisness do what they think is better for buisness and seeing as theyâve invested heavily in OWL they gotta hard censor or else lose their franchises. If it wasnt for OWL theyd probs just cut ties with China id guess
I saw the link andâŚ
This is just absurdly stupid
Banning simply for typing a kids cartoon character´s name?
Thats just makes you look like an idiot
still better than what happens in us 
Blizzard has to cater to laws set around the world. If Blizzard hails to a weird law, thereâs always a good reason for it.
Blizzard complies with laws because they donât want to get into any legal conflicts that could potentially ruin their business.
Blizzard have a choice, Follow the laws or donât operate in that place.
The Chinese government donât care if Blizzard games are in China.
The only people who care are Chinese gamers and Blizzard.
Unless Blizzard hate Chinese gamers there is no reason not to follow the laws.
There is no winning no matter what they do, At least by following the laws they can allow Chinese gamers to distract themselves.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but rather than banning players canât Blizzard simply make âWinnie the Poohâ register as something else like they do with ggez? Or better yet, discard the message with a warning that it isnât permitted? I agree that they arenât left with much choice, but thereâs surely better options.
It should actually be like that, in my opinion EVERY SINGLE player that got banned for this BS should get unbanned and instead Ban the baiters
Iâm laughing so hard right now, you wouldnât believe 
Does he, though?
As far I understand it this is not an option.
Chinese citizens already try to get around censorship by changing the tone and characters in sentences and it doesnât go down well.
If Blizzard start doing this it will be seen as Blizzard helping to get around censorship so they will be breaking the law.
Their options are follow the law or donât operate in China and punish Chinese gamers.
There is no winning in this situation.
Is that also true of simply not allowing them to type the words into chat at all? Thatâs a really unfortunate situation.
Did a lot more then just trade. Thingâs are bad now, but as terrible as Actvision Blizzard are, they should not be compared to a company that used slave labor.
They have to. Just donât type it in-game if you know your country has a ban on it. Generally speaking.
So, should Blizzard just abandon China and with that all Chinese players and people who play from China? Even if there wasnât a ban, Blizzard as a company has to abide by the laws of each country their games are accessible to players.
So by your logic, we should ban you from accessing Blizzardâs servers because you live in a country that has a law against the word âhelloâ for example.
Gentlemen
I have come to say the W word