Bottom line is - you can say no political discussion from competitors but if you’re doing business in a country where it gets that bad that this is a controversial statement you might want to rethink where you invest your money. I mean if you said you support free speech in America that wouldn’t be a controversial political statement, we’d just take it as a normal value. You’d have to push it much further to claiming a specific politician or policy would damage personal liberties.
TLDR - its only a controversial political statement because Blizzard does a lot of business there. It wouldn’t be if they didn’t.
As this is a real world political issue not relating to world of warcraft itself, no you are not and this post breaks the ToS.
A better venue would be the offtopic forum i believe.
But considering how frequently these are popping up and not being removed i wouldnt be worried about a ban, just dont be surprised if it does happen.
Can someone quote me where blizzard has come out and said that they back the communist china regime and support all they do? Because everyone seems to be making a lot of assumptions here.
From what I understand some hearthstone player used blizzard resources to advocate the for pro democracy in Hong Kong. Doing so is against blizzards policy on advocating for politics during their events or in their games, and thus the player got banned and the employees allowing this got fired.
This to me does not show that blizzard supports communisim, China, or any of its policies. They are showing that they will follow through on their policies and punishments.
The meltdown everyone seems to be having seems way to extreme for the situation, and i dont think an appology is due for enforcing their policy.
I would expec the same action to be taken if this was a us political advocate, or if china even if china tried using blizzard channels to advocate their regime.
This isnt an attack on democracy, its a business enforcing their policies.
In situations like this we look at Blizzards conduct as the environment is highly political. Blizzard quickly, and cruelly, punished a player for speaking and supporting the protests in Hong Kong. They may have a blanket clause that says that they can do this if the person in question is harming blizzard in anyway but does that make it right? How is he hurting them?
How is someone supporting the Hong Kong movement hurting Blizzard? It hurt’s Blizzard because it could eradicate a huge player base for Blizzard. So Blizzard bends to the wishes of a communist state to keep that player base intact. I wouldn’t say they are adopting China’s communism but this is certainly an attack on Democracy by a capitalistic organization. They are choosing money over free speech.
Why Blizzard would have a monument dedicated to “Every Voice Matters” and having values that reflect free speech but then silencing a player is using that free speech to show support for Hong Kong? It’s pretty reasonable to assume that China has leverage over Blizzard and that Blizzard is silencing the player to appease China.
I stand with Hong Kong. I think Blizzard made a capitalistic choice, which in the end, is a attack on free speech and the principles of our democracy.
It’s kind of funny how just about this time last year Blizzard was getting crapped on for “catering to china” over the whole Diablo: Immortal announcement. Wonder if we’ll see stocks fall 35% again over this one?
Protest for China on a senators door step and they will throw you to the crub. Their no different then Blizzard there just trying to make themselves look better while knowing they would do the same.
If people are living off your back, frankly it’s because you’re not making enough money. You don’t pay into social security if you make more than ~128k a year.
Yes a big part of the problem is how they handled the issue.
It’s one thing to want be neutral, but sacking the casters and a 1 year ban with them cancelling his prize money is clearly bending over for China. As is their explications for doing so.