Blitzchung should have known he was breaking the (highly subjective) rule in question. Certainly it is a legitimate perspective – I swear I’m not being sarcastic here – that his action “brings [Blizzard] into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages [Blizzard’s] image.” If you ask me, Blizzard’s doing more to violate the principle behind that rule right now, but that’s beside the point. He took the risk. It was his to take. So are the consequences. Blizzard should face no legal or political consequences for responding in the way they did.
However…
Social ostracism and boycotts are on the table for dealing with matters like this and I believe both are highly appropriate in this case.
I am a huge fan of capitalism. When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism with a separation of state and economics, in the same way, and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church. But it’s more than just an economic system. In fact, it’s primarily a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
Individual rights – not money or markets or competition – are the very foundation of capitalism. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no person or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting the individual’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting them from physical force; the government acts as the agent of their right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.
What China is currently doing to Hong Kong is the very opposite of the above.
It’s clear that Blizzard has done this for the money they believe that can be made in the Chinese market. They believe that eventually this sort of thing blows over. But, a moral default of this magnitude does not go unnoticed or ignored. Doing the dirty work of a band of thugs – collaborating with the Communist Party of China’s export of censorship, however indirectly – can be worth no amount of money. You cannot count your profits in good health as dissenters to those governing your market are tear-gassed and black bagged half a world away from the corporate office.
I’m going to think globally and see if my voice matters by starting with the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, which I usually buy every convention year. I will miss it this year. As events unfold I will continue to withdraw from Blizzard as it continues to withdraw from its own core values and those of its nation of origin.
I don’t want to stop playing World of Warcraft. I love it. But if Blizzard persists in its willingness to see young people yearning to breathe free crushed under the boot of communism in order to earn a buck in the Chinese “market”, then they certainly don’t need my money and I don’t need them.