This has been answer over and over and over and over and over and over and over again:
Issue a press release reiterating that the political opinions of their players are not the political opinions of the company.
Create a clearly defined rule that prohibits political speech at official events.
Give Blitzchung a warning. At most, you could suspend him from the next event.
No one can realistically expect them to do nothing, but in overreacting, and then doubling down on that overreaction, they dug themselves further into a hole they down have to dig themselves out of.
EDIT: On second reading, perhaps it’s unrealistic of you to know this. Due to Blizzard’s censorship, many different threads have been collapsed into this one. It’s unreasonable for me to expect you to have read every post (which is why the did this).
You said: Blizzard Chinese twitter literally defended their no politics ban with a follow up saying. “We will always respect and defend the pride of our country.”
And that’s a lie. That’s why I responded to you Bipzi because - although apparently not to you - the truth matters.
And I’m sure ALL of you, if you were in Blizzard’s shoes, would choose morals over your business. Yep, you all TOTALLY would! Hah!
“‘Keep politics out of my games??’ OMG you believe your video games are more important than the people in Hong Kong!!! You’re a horrible person!!”
Welp, you got me. I’m a bad panda. I must come clean.
When I turn off the news and stay away from politics because I want to enjoy my nice quiet home, I’m putting my personal comfort before all the poor and homeless people in the world.
When I go out to eat, the fact that there are starving children in Africa doesn’t cross my mind at all!
But I’m sure YOU think about all those poor and oppressed people every day of every minute without EVER putting your own enjoyment of the simple things and the freedoms living in America give you above the fact that those unfortunate people exist, because y’all are so much more morally superior to me!
The truth matters, your nitpick is covering up a larger truth, which you obviously don’t care about. Telling you that nitpick doesn’t matter is me telling you you may be right about this small thing, and I won’t make that specific claim anymore, but the larger problem still looms and you nitpicking this point to death while being blind to the larger picture is a lot of what is wrong with people. It’s like enforcing a law for the sake of the law and not it’s intent. Guess what, I get ticked at that sort of thing as well, especially when the law is used to pound people in contradiction to the laws intent. It happens more than you think.
You lied about Blizzard posting something they didn’t post - and then when corrected you flatly said it doesn’t matter. That’s not my problem - it’s yours. Blizzard is getting piloried over something they flat out did not do. There’s enough to criticize them for without willfully making crap up.
How would any of this help the political climate in China? I guess my question is, who benefits from Blizzard “standing up to China” and keeping Blitzchung on the payroll? Do the people of Hong Kong benefit? Who does it help? If the answer is no-one, why would they keep him?
How is thousands of Blizzard employee’s losing their jobs over ruined Chinese relations the “right thing to do” if it does nothing to actually help the people in Hong Kong?
Because, American companies should not be influenced or forced/bullied into censoring things we value. We value rights, freedom so on and so on. If the people of China get sick of their government they should try to change it. If they lose their jobs because we didn’t appease them enough then thats tragic but you shouldnt compromise your values to spare someone totally fine with living under the oppression of China. Would you sacrifice what believes you hold dear to spare others? It’s an ethics exercise basically. I’d like to add, blizzard made this political with the extreme heavy hand they laid into Blitzchung. There were lesser punishments they could’ve gone with. And so because it was so heavy handed logically i must conclude it was to appease the folks over in China.
Yes, that. Now show me where in that article it says they walked over Blizzard apologizing to China…which they didn’t do. They walked over the ban and forfeiture of prize money, not some non-existent Blizzard apology.
