Actually around evening when the new forum mod shift comes on, they start combining threads. Watched it happen a dozen times yesterday.
You’re right she broke a law. What she did was indeed heroic. How is a contract anymore airtight than a law? Lots of contracts are unenforceable. Rosa Parks premeditated it. So did thousands of other activists by their peaceful protests during the 60s. Are you gonna tell me each of them is any less heroic? Or that they got what they deserved after knowingly breaking laws?
I don’t see why you rules are rules people can’t agree to lesser punishments. Your unwillingness to see reason is baffling and not at all comprehensible.
I would expect a similar punishment to the one i suggest for Chung. There was absolutely no call to punish a kid that harshly for risking his life openly calling for revolution in HK. He is a HK citizen, he know faces the wrath of the CCP. A fascist government who will disappear you, kill you, take your organs and crap on your entire family for being a thorn. Why the hell do you think they were spray protesters with blue paint from fire trucks? So they could track them down later.
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all the more reason blizz needs to detach the chinese product from the global community. that way the gov wont be offended, employees wont be in danger for just working at their jobs, and their families wont be threatened. just make separate wow, hearthstone etc, for china. not sure how they should handle hong kong as that is such a hot potato. they are basically in a civil war right now.
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You had me at “I’m glad”
Your kinda missing the point there. People make laws you don’t agree with. Rosa Parks didn’t agree with the laws and violated them. At no point did she say yes I agree with these laws and will abide by them.
This HS player on the other hand went into the tournament signing up saying he would follow the rules and act appropriately. He didn’t and he got in trouble. It’s literally that simple. Was the punishment too harsh? Perhaps, but thats not for you, or me, or anyone else to decide except for the Blizzard teams in charge of these things.
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She did. The social contract of the Law. Blitzchung did the same thing, to spread the message of freedom and democracy for Hong Kong. That’s heroic, just as heroic as Rosa Parks, because his country is also being oppressed by tyrants. Deal with it.
That’s baseless speculation, and you know it. They still would have punished Blitzchung, and thus still would have appealed to China with it. That said, if China is so thin-skinned, then they aren’t worth working with, as anything you do can be seen as threat, no matter small or petty. It leads to a complete lack of creative freedom, creative freedom is the thing (or at least good art direction) that made Blizzard so recognizable.
Which is why globalism is retarded. You can’t be expected to change your stance on the fly for every whiny little dictator that tries to bully or censor you. It just isn’t worth it. They were always going to get negative press like this, eventually, because of the way China works, and China will eventually find a reason to ban them all.
Yes, but at least I wouldn’t have a feather in my cap for them being stupid hypocrites, which is rather worse in most cases. They aren’t just censorious, they are hypocritical censors that only do it to please one entity, China, while they don’t give a damn about non-Chinese customers.
Correction: we don’t want Leftist SJW censorship and bullying politics in games, as they are essentially the same crap that Communist China does on a smaller scale. Fictional politics, or satirical politics, are fine.
Because pissing off Communists is an American right, deal with it. Hell, Trump should “build the wall” around China through tariffs. That would be some good stuff to watch.
Looks like HK Mei is catching on.
There’s now photos of protesters in Hong Kong using the image of Mei from Overwatch as a pro-democracy symbol going around twitter.
It will be interesting to see what the Chinese Communist Party will do in response.
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“Oh senpai authoritarianism daddy notice me!”
This is the reaction of HK university students when a student from China wanted to express her opinion. This is what you guys are supporting so-called “Free of speech”?
FYI, what she was saying is “I love HK, can we talk peacefully?” And the HK students were shouting “fk off , bixxh, shut up” and also the slogan that the player got punished.
The player being punished is one of these young ppl of HK, and now you may understand why their slogan that the player shouted in Blizz event is something likes “fxxk off” for most Chinese and a part of HKer.
Who is a hero? This girl is a hero. Confronting a group of ppl opposing her is brave. Shouting some words in a neutral event while confronting a screen is a coward.
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In response to the OP, to the community, and to any Blizzard Staff that are hopefully following this:
I am a free speech absolutist. I fully support the Democratic movement in Hong Kong and am hopeful for a peaceful resolution to that crisis. I am NOT in favor of any form of Tech Censorship or compromising Western Liberal Enlightenment values to pander to authoritarian regimes.
Having said that, I think it is Blizzard’s prerogative and responsibility to their shareholders to defend their market space and China is part of that space. I do think Blitzchung and hosts acted inappropriately in bringing a loaded political statement into a gaming event where it had been proscribed by the rules. And if Blizzard had stuck to that statement, things would have been fine.
But they didn’t. They decided to adopt a tone in their Asian press release that took the side of China. That may have been, and likely was, demanded of them either directly or through contract stipulation by the Chinese government. The problem is that in this day and age, everyone has access to translation programs, youtube, and by extension what that message meant in Mandarin Chinese. The Western and Chinese releases send two completely different messages.
Blizzard’s actions of late, send ONE very clear message: “Whatever values we say we hold as a company are secondary to corporate greed and censorship in the name of protecting our image in the eyes of those who hold the power within the governments of the countries we operate in.”
This is a pattern of behavior on Blizzard’s part that encompasses its embrace of Liberal Progressive ‘values’ in the United States, its growing reliance on in-game chat censor systems in WoW, HS, Overwatch, and HotS. It includes Blizzard’s participation in the so-called ‘Fair Play Alliance’s’ AI player behavior monitoring, the banning of over a thousand Overwatch accounts, and now this.
It is true that Blizzard has legal obligations not only to government entities, but also to its parent company Activision. So as much as they may want to take a different approach, their hands may be tied in some cases. But what they need to understand is that their actions hurt and shame the fans that have stood by them for decades.
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Lol, you have no true argument so you just resort to troll posts. Typical.
Yes, you could. You could cost Blizzard a whole lot of revenue.
Guess what would happen then?
Some people would lose their jobs, maybe lots.
China would remain the same
HK still would be under Chinese rule in 2047
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well yes, yes it is up for us to decide . what if the gov’s punishment for him doing that was even more severe and the gov insisted blizz enforce it? line in sand needs to be drawn. that was over the top, from the perspective of many people.
i didnt unsub or delete my account because i know its not the fault of blizz employees. i’m just voicing what i think is the only tenable solution for blizz - detach from china, globally, and serve them locally. its a contagion that doesnt need to spread.
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No, we don’t get to decide what someone elses punishment should be, Blizzard makes that decision. We can discuss it, we can disagree with it, sure. But its still their decision.
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if they dont have customers, we decided. yeah, we get to decide.
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Good post.
But they do have customers, you yourself admit your not going to unsub or delete your account. So they will still have customers, perhaps some may quit but considering there are millions of players around the world. The few that actually stay commited to this will be a drop in the bucket in comparison.
And lets face it, most of the people deleting accounts now will get over it in a month and be yelling at Blizzard to reinstate their accounts, since most of them are just on the outrage bandwagon right now. they didn’t care anything about the HK situation 3 weeks ago and didn’t care at all til this Blizzard situation and they see if as a chance to scream about how mean Blizzard is, just like the “Do you not have phones” fiasco.
All excellent points.
But my guess is contractual obligations and, frankly, money, will trump any transient PR nightmare.
PLUS 10.
Can’t wait to see the crying/begging threads re: reinstating deleted accounts.
ever read the declaration of independence? it has an interesting observation about the average human being. we are quite patient, as a general rule. we put up with lots and lots of not good stuff, until finally, we dont anymore. thats what you are witnessing. we havent got to the “dont anymore” part yet. but its not far off if we end up having to abide with china interfering in how the game’s rules are enforced.
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