This is really one of the saddest things that I have seen in a while. Blizzard didn’t do anything wrong, they enforced a contract that one of their players signed in full knowledge of what he was doing. It’s not about it being in China, if it was in another country and a player said something that you can’t/shouldn’t say in that country they would have done the same thing. The contract said if you do this, we’ll do this and when they did this everyone blew up just because the issue happened to be some idiot choosing to use a public venue to tout democracy and to stick his nose into foreign politics while representing a company as a pro player.
If this had been over pretty much anything else no one would really be talking about it. If this was an NBA player who went on ESPN and said something homophobic and the NBA suspended and fined him no one would think anything of it.
China is a different country with different rules and different laws, when you operate overseas as a business or when you travel overseas as a tourist it’s not like you can just ignore all of their laws and rules just because they don’t match up with your countries or what you think is “right” or “wrong”.
Blizzard would much rather suspend one player(hell they’d perma-ban him rather), for only a year mind you which isn’t even that long, than violate the nations regulations which they have no place interfering in which is the point of that clause in the contract. You all saying that it’s only for the money is also ignoring the millions that play Blizzard games in China. Yes that is revenue for Blizzard, but so what. They are still players that enjoy the same games that you do and to selfishly strip them of that so you can feel better about your selves and pointlessly scream about the supremacy of democracy on forums and
twitter is arrogant and self-righteous.
Everyone and their mother gets so upset once China comes into play on anything because they are’t democratic, big whoop. That doesn’t mean that any transaction that they don’t come out on the losing end of means that they somehow win and the other side is a “traitor to the cause of freedom”. Freedom is a long lost illusion that none of us really have anyways, and all you are doing by talking about bringing democracy to everyone is hypocritically announcing your imperialistic tendencies. “For your own good, we will bring you democracy and change your life cause we think it’s totally better than what you have now(regardless of whether it is or isn’t).”
See here I can put stuff like this and I won’t get into trouble because this is a social setting(and I’m not under a contract), maybe if that guy came and ranted on here he’d have fewer problems right now.
Why are people posting about Hong Kong? [Explanation]