If it were the rule, they would be enforcing it universally. They would not be picking and choosing, as it’s clear the American team also broke the rule yet were not punished.
That leaves it being solely to appease China, and the only reason the rule is even mentioned is because it’s a cover as they can’t just say “We’re doing this to appease China”.
The rule is not being enforced evenly, and any argument about Blitzchung being punished just because of the rule is null due to that. If the American team were also punished as severely as Blitzchung, then the argument could be made that it was just them enforcing their rules. That didn’t happen though.
What we need to be doing is petitioning to have titanforging renamed into freedomforhongkongforging, this way Blizzard will be quick to remove it.
Also to the people saying that they don’t like that the HS tourney was turned into a “political event,” um, it wasn’t. Commenting on a human rights tragedy is not political. It’s not political to support Hong Kong, that’s called being human and having a soul. The Blizzard employees who didn’t participate in the walk out don’t have one.
Yeah you one of the few people that seems to be talking regularly on the topic.
You know what’s really sad though, is that China seems to think that the Hong Kong protests have been orchestrated by Western forces to undermine China and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was true.
I mean let’s face it, Antifa and all the rest of it get paid by George Soros so nothing would surprise me anymore.
I can get telling the player to not turn Hearthstone event political, but banning him is too heavy handed. The problem is Blizzard already dabbled in the politics environment. They can’t tote themselves as being an open-minded and inclusive company and then shun someone from the community. Blizzard should have not touched any of this altogether.
the operative word there being “could” and its all wobbly depending on diplomacy, at the expense of the rest of the planet. what happens if the topic is freedom for people locally? freedom is more important than diplomacy, if the two are at loggerheads. the guy took a chance, risked it all, lost it all, and blizz had a hand in that.
i dont envy them their position but they made the choice to sell their products globally. if they dont want to end up in situations like this, and are dealing with a country that wants to force everybody else to capitulate as regards their behavior/graphics/etc, they need to make a special isolated version of the game for such places and not make everyone else cowtow or have to be subjected to the politics of an out of control regime. they’ve done a disservice to the rest of the planet, forcing us to witness them over-reacting to appease the chinese gov.
yawn you people are your double standards are tiresome
The player broke the terms of the contract they agreed to. They chose to break that contract in a pre-meditated manner, meaning, it wasn’t something that just happened as a spur of the moment, or by accident. It was planned. They deserve to be punished for that violation
Had Blizzard permitted it with no repercussion that could have potentially endangered their employees in mainland China who would have been seen by the government as being compliant with the protests, and if China shut down Blizzard those people would be out of jobs, and probably worse, much worse.
The American team, no matter what Blizzard would do people would be rushing out with more outrage. If they do nothing like what happened then people scream bias, if they ban that team as well then people scream censorship. There really is no right or wrong route there.
No politics means no politics. Even if you agree with those politics. What if a player came out at a tournament interview wearing a MAGA hat yelling “Hail Trump, BUILD THE WALL” and Blizzard turned around and banned them in the same way? All of you would be praising Blizzard for it, guaranteed.
The contest rules are clear enough that anyone attending the event knew not to air a political agenda. Have you seen the interview? Everyone involved knew before it started, what was going to happen.
It’s just a flagrant, blatant, pre-meditated violation of the rules of the contest.
And by the way, these discretionary rules are always drafted very broadly so as to give maximum control over the paid event to the sponsor, who writes the rules.
In addition, the statement created a bit of a diplomatic issue for Blizzard, whose Asian affiliates were required to distance itself publicly from the event.
So rather than being appease China first, then apply the rule, it was quite the other way around.
There is no Both sides. Communism is slavery to the state. The fact you think any company is justified in order to make a profit is laughable. If anyone thinks China is a great place to live and grow up, I invite you to go live there for a year.
I whole heartly agree that we should be allowed our support for hong kong against the tyrannical government of CCP! Additionally, anyone should be able to espouse their beliefs within blizzard ecosystem as they supposedly are all for being who you are as long as it conforms their ideology.
In all honesty Blizzard is damned whatever they do really…
If they speak up in favor of the Hong Kong protests, that’s going to piss off China. A lot. The could lose money.
If they suck up to China, they could piss off their Western audience more. They could lose money.
The most optimal path for them is to do what they have been doing-literally nothing. Let the Hong Kong situation just take whatever course it’s going to, see who comes out on top and then just take it from there.
Rules, shmules. If people like you care so much about “rules”, go say that Rosa Parks was wrong for not wanting to move out of her seat.
No one’s saying there shouldn’t be any repercussion. We’re saying that the punishment was too ruthless, heavy handed, and smacked of Chinese appeasement.
Completely disproves the security blanket of “Da Rules!”. One rule for everyone, or none at all.
Blizzard constantly violate this “no politics” rule themselves, when they push LGBTQLMNOP crap into their games, or their employees screech about Trump on Twitter. This wasn’t “politics”, it was about kissing the CCP’s grundle.
Then explain why this US based company is only allowing comments against China in this one thread, while the opposing side can post wherever they want.
This is literally Blizzard playing sides and now it’s affecting Americans.
I seriously don’t mean to split hairs here, but the circumstances are slightly different;
In the Taiwanese interview, before it even started, it was obvious that the interviewers knew in advance, what the player was going to do and they let it go on. Some might say, they knowingly facilitated it.
The AU event went a little differently:
The AU students lost a match, held up a sign that read, “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz." Blizz cut the Twitch stream, cut to the winners, and the broadcasters ignored what happened.
I suspect that had Chung’s comments NOT made it onto live mic, none of this would have happened.
Admittedly speculation on my part. What do you think?
only if its gonna be global, which it shouldnt be because clearly forcing our ideals on others is not a good plan. ya know practice whatcha preach - dont wanna be forced? dont force. we are never gonna be able to convince communists to not be communists. those people are gone. they’re borg. let them be borg in their own little borg paradise.
let the rest of us who agree with normal punishment for normal infractions (i mean we’re all for freedom as a general rule - its that whole do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, thing) live peacefully together. take our wrist smack for being political against the rules, not take our winnings, our money, our livelihoods, and send them off to siberia.