If thats true, it shows you however much you think a company cares about you, they care about the bottom line first. It would mean that Blizzard is conforming to a demand by China to ban people for a political reference.
A company is bending to the will of a self appointed lifetime autocrat so they can sell in his market w/o regards to how much they enable him.
I mean I can’t say I dont believe it when Google actually admitted to researching an algorithm for China to be able to block w/e search they want in their country.
Tech companies dont have great records for being on the side of democracy, despite who they tell you to vote for when on record.
Tells me that China needs a new President who doesn’t look like Winnie the Pooh (it pains me that he’s dragging my favorite bear through the mud like this).
However, they voted him into a president for life position. They like their strongman leaders. They did this to themselves. It’s way beyond Blizzard now.
Important clarification, to my knowledge (which may not be perfectly accurate), the administration of Blizzard games including management of player accounts in China is handled directly by NetEase and not Blizzard Entertainment themselves.
Not sure I understand how the blame ends up on Blizzard (or Google in your other example) when these policies have to conform to restrictions from Chinese government in order to operate in China.
Like, yeah, companies want their product to exist in China if it’s profitable. They don’t really get a say in what they have to do to make that possible. Refusing to sell to China just to oppose the corruption there doesn’t actually benefit anyone, other than possibly as some sort of globally organized boycott type of thing (which hasn’t happened).
No company is going to willfully get itself banned from an entire country just for the sake of a few edgy kids who think it’s funny to insult political figures.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens if people start going to Overwatch League matches dressed as Winnie the Pooh or with Winnie the Pooh clothing/signage/chants.
No duh they are going to adhere to the bottom line and china’s Rule before us. The playerbase is huge in China. If they didn’t, players wouldn’t even be allowed to play their games over there.
Pick your poison.
As much as I love Pooh, I’ll rather him not be mentioned than all of China not allowed to play Overwatch