“Oh good heavens, won’t somebody think of the employees!”
Yes, because Corporations and their investors are so concerned with gainful employment.
Pay no attention to the outsourced slave labour jobs. No, we’re not flooding the tech industry with H1Bs, who are about as competent as what you pay them, which is a disaster for anyone who wants their apps to work, and their 737s to not override their pilots and nosedive into the ocean.
Hey, didn’t Actiblizzard ****can a bunch of employees this year?
The huge problem with Kaepernick is that we just had a black two-term president. That’s the highest possible position you can attain in life. We have black and latino Supreme Court Justices and tons of black, latino, and asian congressmen. He’s protesting as a black multi-millionaire surrounded by dozens of other black multi-millionaires. If this was 1950 then his protest would have a lot more meaning but it doesn’t really have much force now.
Ugh, what a disgusting read. They didn’t need to take away the Prize money. He won it fair and square. Blizzard, among many companies simply lack a spine, or rather they have one its just made of Profits.
Also OP, Players still kneel in football. I don’t see them being fired?
He was no mvp and if you want to see why he isnt in the nfl look up his stats from his last start vs the bears. 1 pass completed, 4 yards passing, 5 sacks.
They will never do this, because it’s corporate suicide. China is the largest market in the world for video games, with over 600 million players. The best thing they can do is keep their noses out of the situation by saying and doing nothing, that way neither side gets pissed at them.
Which is how it was for a long time until Blitzchung decided to open his mouth during an official Blizzard event and inject his political views into the mess.
Privately I am sure Blizzard stands in solidarity with Hong Kong, as I am sure Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook do as well. However none of those big companies will say so publicly, because they’re not stupid enough to cut off access to one of the largest markets that they get revenue from.
Most of the employees are regular joes just trying to make a living, and causing Blizzard to tank will affect them while NOTHING in Hong Kong changes.
Whatever the higher ups of the company do with their business and whether they have let go of employees at other times is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Yes it is, because some people publically cannot make those decisions due to ramifications.
Do you really think that legal teams charged with defending the perpetrator of an offense don’t empathize with the victim? Of course they do, it wouldn’t be human not to, but they can’t do anything about it in public. They can’t side with the victim because it damages the case if they do. They have to remain impartial in public and in the courtroom and most legal teams are able to do exactly that.
Only companies with nothing to lose are going to stand up and publicly make statements opposing China or siding with Hong Kong. Any company that has something to lose is keeping their mouth shut, as they should, because for most of them its none of their business.
And it wouldn’t have been Blizzard’s business either had Blitzchung kept his mouth shut.
Keeping pro-HK statements out and pretending everything is normal there is also, in and of itself, political. Your distinction just serves to suffocate opposing voices.
You dont undestand what ‘standing by/with’ means. Without the distinction of action vs the mere thought , there is no stand.
Blizzard is not above taking a stand on a moral/political issue; they cleary took a stand on sodogamy with Ovewatch. A calculated one, none the less, to signal to their consumers, so blizzard is fine with making it their business. Note that in China, there are no same sex depictions in Overwatch, so Blizzard has already taken a stance by censoring themselves as such.
You assume this is just for China and HK, that is not the case. Blizzard has kept this rule in general, it could have been something massively upsetting to Mongolia or Germany and they’d receive the same treatment - a ban. So no, it is absolutely not political. It is a rule meant to keep political statements OUT. The opposite of political.
People here just assume the worst because China is a more controversial country for obvious reasons, but the simplicity and reality of it is that they simply broke ToS and it could have been any country and they’d receive the same treatment for breaking that ToS. It is not in the company’s interest to be on the political scene like that. It is a gaming company.