What Blizzard did is absolutely no different than any other company or sports team does when one of their players make a political statement…
Take MVP star pro football player Colin Kaepernick, he made his public statement and started that whole “take a knee” during the national anthem movement… He was booted out of the 49ers and was essentially blacklisted from the NFL as a result. He is still unemployed to this day and regardless that he’s set as a “free agent”, no team dares to recruit him regardless of his top performance as a player.
Went from Star Pro Football player to unemployed overnight for his inability to keep Politics and Personal Beliefs out of sports…
Sports, regardless if Real or Digital, are about building bridges between cultures… However attempting to force political, religious, or any other sort of personal beliefs or statements into sports only serves to destroy these bridges and instead create a rift.
This is exactly what the Hearthstone player did…
Just because we here in the west support Hong Kong and to us raised on a western ideology aren’t offended and instead support and align with this Hearthstone player’s beliefs… This doesn’t excuse the fact that it is offensive to those raised on an Eastern/Chinese ideology, to all the patriotic/nationalist within the Chinese borders who support and love their country.
I know it’s hard for us in America to believe that Chinese Citizens love their country with their track record of human rights violations, but the reality of the matter is, Chinese are very fanatical about their home country, most are more “patriotic” and love their country even more than Americans do with America.
Also, it’s no different than with Colin Kaepernick, we can agree that the majority of people support their beliefs and cheer him taking a positive stance against police brutality and perceived racism/bias against a certain race at the time, however this didn’t excuse that he also offended so many other Americans who believe that his actions were wrong, on top of the simple fact that he violated a rule of the NFL and sports in general, by failing keep his personal/political beliefs out of the sport/limelight (just like the Hearthstone player also violated).
So not sure why anyone expects Blizzard to make an exception and bend the rules to allow such behavior or allow a player to ruin the sanctity of e-sports by allowing personal/political statements and rhetoric regardless if it’s popular and supported by the masses… Blizzard did the right thing and what Blizzard did is no different than any other sports organization right here in America (right in our own backyard) does and has been doing for decades.