I might believe this, if the American team who made the exact same statement (pro-Hong Kong) in a virtually identical context (on a stream with shoutcasters) had received the same punishment.
They didn’t. They didn’t receive any punishment, they were immediately moved on to the next match.
So, Blizzard is not acting any anything resembling consistently on this matter. Some voices matter more than others; in this case Blizzard’s business with China has proven to matter more than allowing someone to “share their point of view”.
Well the real test of hypocrisy is if someone made a statement in support of China on the same topic in a streamed event. Or if someone made a comment about any divisive issue from any side. Note I am saying it's a test of hypocrisy not whether their policy is "moral" or not
The reality is companies are in the politics of pandering to gain the largest audience possible. Blizzard is perfectly fine with western participants wearing things such as gay pride clothing (sadly a social/political issue) because it's popular with their audience. But they don't like what happened here because it isn't popular with their audience in China.
So of course it has to do with China. If they knew it wouldn't get them kicked out, and most of their potential players in China supported the issue, they wouldn't have cared. Because that's exactly how they handle social/political issues in the west.
> If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same.
Also Blizzard:
> We will defend the pride of our nation (that nation being China)
So when will they be terminating the people in their company that posted that announcement on behalf of the company? Oh wait, they won't be, because this company is completely and utterly full of shit. This is a company that will ban players for using naughty words, but won't ban a country from the market place for actual real life atrocities. People like this make me ashamed to be American. Honesty and integrity mean nothing in this country. All people care about is whether you use nice words.
It was made by a company that works for blizzard under blizzard's name as an official blizzard response to the event. Your failure to include this information makes it look like you are attempting to mislead people.
My own take throughout the whole thing is similar to Brian Kibler's [1]. To me, even though it made sense that Blizzard wanted to stay neutral, the punishment was too severe for all of the people involved (zero prize money, 1 year ban) so it's nice that at least one of them was reverted.
Dunno about version 3 or later, but in the classic system ‘lawful’ means adhering to strict principles and ‘evil’ means selfish with disregard to others. So I'm pretty sure Blizzard is either chaotic or neutral, what with it trying to appease both sides at once. And probably neutral on the good-evil axis, since it passably honestly trades its games for the money.
I ran into that "stopping from being able to delete your account" thing with regards to the SMS code to verify your account. Its definitely real, at least for some people.
My suspicion, however, is that it was an unintentional bug on their end. We've all seen this before in engineering. You're using some service like Twilio. You've got a TON of people trying to cancel their account at the same time, using SMS verification. Their backend trips a rate limiter or account limit. You don't handle the error properly, and the client gets an inaccurate error. Its a story as old as time.
I went through the drivers license verification just fine. Its totally possible that they're being malicious, but its just so much more likely that engineering fucked up and it was blown out of proportion.
> If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same.
So now some Chinese player should make a statement praising China and condemning Hong Kong.
(But I've already said it: with Blizzard controlling a huge money market in WoW and China being big on farming that gold all day every day, there's zero chance Blizzard would give that up.)
By the way, does anyone know what the estimates are for the size of the in-game economy in WoW: items, characters, currency/jewelry, etc? I've heard some claims that would sober me right up, but dunno if those were too fictional.
If you're talking in real-world currency, then the size of the ingame economy is the sum of the maximums each player would be willing to spend for things in the game.
Any other calculations are just cryptocurrency-esque market cap dreams.
The real world money to purchase those token (and anything else) come from people. Those people do not have infinite resources to spend on the game.
Ergo, if you exhaust their real world resources, and then offer them the best item in the game for $1, they wouldn't take it.
At that point, you've got the value of the total in-game economy. Because anything virtual after that would be worthless.
(Subject to demand curve, etc. But in aggregate it boils down to the same point.)
(You might be able to make the case that speculators without interest in the game would come in at that point to buy items, but I'd question how many would take the risk after the playerbase was already financially drained)
its not so clear because while your argument is true - people are only gonna spent disposable money on this - it can nonetheless be directly linked to actual transactions which happen at an incredibly frequent rate.
there is an actual cashflow happening - and not just for speculation like with cryptocurrencies - as people are actually spending the ingame currencies on their respective markets, which often removes the money from the market entirely. (not everything you buy ingame is sold by players)
* Bliztchung's suspension from pro play halved to 6 months
* Casters will now be allowed to cast Blizzard events after 6 months
Key statements:
* In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly
* The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision.
* We have these rules to keep the focus on the game and on the tournament to the benefit of a global audience, and that was the only consideration in the actions we took.
* If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same.
Imagine a comparable situation. Someone wins an olympic medal, and makes a political statement in the subsequent interview. Then the olympic committee decides to take the medal away, and ban the winner from competing again.
I’m not a gamer, but I imagine most are smart enough to see through this cringe-y PR disaster. Late Friday night dump of nonsense corporate speak is painfully predictable. This will do more harm than good. Yikes.
Or even a hamfisted attempt at an apology like you get out of many PR departments. The only thing that remotely resembles an apology in the whole release is:
> In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly.
No explanation of how that happened. No discussion about what they are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's not even saying, "We made a snap decision and it was wrong." It seems to be saying, "We made all the right decisions, but we're going to tune the degree a little."
Had they not done that they might be believable, but because of the way the kowtow to china, definitely hard to find any honesty/truth in their statement.
>> In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly.
I'm not even sure here what "reacted too quickly" means. If the player did clearly violate an unobjectionable Blizzard policy, one would hope that the sanction would be swift -- it shouldn't take a week to (for example) ban a player for blatant cheating.
Anecdotally, most those I know, while unhappy about it, are continuing to play. While I don’t think people are going to defend this, I doubt this will meaningfully affect them in the long-term.
It’s easy for companies, after some backlash by a loud yet small crowd on social media, to blacklist a certain high profile individual out of risk. It’s hard for that same group to make a difference against an organization as large as Blizzard. Most people still want their product.
I've been unable to play this week. I haven't outright deleted my account, but it made me sick to the stomach to think about opening the Blizzard launcher.
I've seen others in StarCraft related subreddits share similar feelings. I agree the majority seem to still want the game and community to continue on as is.
Gamers aren't very loyal. And Blizzard has certainly not been defended by its gamers here - it's been heavily condemned by the whole gaming community, which is why we're hearing so much about it and blizzard is issuing a PR statement. Just look at reddit's r/blizzard right now, it's a shitshow. Pages upon pages of posts protesting against blizzard's handling of the events.
I don't think this is totally inaccurate, though there are probably more puppet accounts than sincere Blizzard apologists.
I'd be more worried about the influence that propaganda machines can have, and what's freaking me out is that you actually have to look to spot those sorts of posts. Most people don't look.
Reddit has to make a lot of decisions, some were soon after she joined. Not sure CEOs of social media company get involved in making that decision personally, rather than name people who would -- Pao might be an exception, though.
From all the subreddits that were closed, I’d be hard-pressed to name one that I felt contributed to free speech.
I don't know enough about the situation to take a definite position.
However, it seems to me that free speech is intended to protect the expression of unpopular viewpoints. In that case, I think that we should protect people's right to advocate that suicide, shoplifting, or advocating watching people die should be legal.
However, as long as those things are not legal then it doesn't necessarily violate free speech to restrict the practices themselves or information on how to engage in the practices.
Actually spent quite a while going through the list of banned subs to eliminate contentious ones, gotta make commenters work for it :)
They are a US based website subject to those laws, even if those words posted on their site didn't violate laws, it's entirely legal for them to censor at will for any reason they deem ok.
In most cases, the subreddits openly advocated for crimes, often violent, which I understand is the type of speech that isn’t protected by even the most relaxed definition of free speech.
> The actions that we took over the weekend are causing people to question if we are still committed to these values. We absolutely are and I will explain.
Is basically saying, "What we did actually exemplifies our values", or maybe saying, "Well actually, our values..."
Combined with the complete lack of acknowledgement of wrongdoing and not addressing their initial online response at all, I don't expect this will smooth things over at all.
I dunno, I'd understand a one game suspension or a warning or something. I am sympathetic to not wanting to turn winner's interviews into soapboxes. I'd expect a bit of training for the casters -- here's what you could have done differently.
It’s extremely irresponsible for blizzard to host a massive platform for speech and pretend that platform exists in a vacuum outside of current events. (Read: politics.) In the same way that public platforms are dangerous when used for hate speech, they’re also dangerous when those advocating for positive change are banned from them.
Whatever Blizzard set out to do, it’s exceptionally naive not to acknowledge that demand changes a public technology.
… but of course we know what this is about. We know it’s about not wanting to cut off a large revenue stream.
I’m surprised to quote FIFA as an example but on that point, they have had fairly exemplary approach [0]. Players occasionally try to make political statements, and Fifa has a progressive take on infractions. An unexpected outburst after a victory is usually met with a stern conversation, possibly leaked to the press for good measure; repeated offence, something egregious acting after being explicitly warned not to lead to symbolic fines. You’d need to really cross a line to get near the sanction that Blizzard thought was appropriate for someone expressing a widespread sentiment in his home country.
Blizzard dosen't give a shit about it being political speech, what they care about is that it might upset the Chinese Communist Party, and their profits in the process.
I didn't know that as I'm not up on soccer, but I'm not surprised. This is liberal ideology at its most pure, and it leads to a great many of the social problems we have today. Some know taking a moral position will disenfranchise some subset and reduce their income, and some know that society would recoil (usually rightly!) at their views if they were forced to spell them out.
Are you perhaps using "liberal ideology" in a way that's different than what I'm used to? It seems that Blizzard's decisions were made in service of Capitalism which is a belief system that I associate more with conservative rather than liberal ideology.
> We now believe he should receive his prizing. We understand that for some this is not about the prize, and perhaps for others it is disrespectful to even discuss it. That is not our intention.
It's a little weird that they say they "believe he should receive" his prize, rather than saying that he actually will. It's hard to think of a reason they would word it that way, except to give the false impression that he's getting the prize he won.
Wow yes that really is odd, thanks for pointing it out. Not proud to say it, but their statement fooled me (made me skim right past it thinking what they wanted me to think) the first time.
False equivalence. One group is oppressing the other group, and the oppressed are told to shut up because the oppressor's feelings will get hurt and will make the Blizzard's community feel less diverse and inclusive .. facepalm ..
It's a soft peddle statement drafted by the PR department hoping the mainstream media would pick it up. There are too many contradictions between:
a) what was said in the statement, and Blizzard's statement made on Chinese social media at the time, and
b) the lack of discipline on American tournament players who also protested.
Furthermore a written statement is nothing compared to a video, where vocal intonation and body language communicates a lot.
Bottom line, releasing this statement will only intensify criticism that Blizzard is "Lawfully Evil".
The irony is that Blizzard's fanbase are 'heroes' who overcome evil in their games. Blizzard's actions are the very antithesis of their player bases' psychology.
This isn't over, and with Blizzcon around the corner, I predict escalation and Blizzcon being a total PR disaster.
Digusting.
If that had happened in the context of any other unimportant country, where no launch of a mobile game is planned, and which is not in a habit of crying and shouting down foreign press and companies, then Blizzard would have done nothing.
In fact, the language used here, about openness and 'feeling welcome' (cf hurt feelings) comes close to the CCP phrasebook.
CCP, to remind you, has publicly stated that opinions on China affairs from foreigners and utterings that make people feel unwelcome ot hurt feelings, are not free speech.
HK people are fighting for their freedom and their lives. They need public support in the West to have a chance. Blizzard sanctioning them or others for this shows abundently clear on which side this company is!
> One of our goals at Blizzard is to make sure that every player, everywhere in the world, regardless of political views, religious beliefs, race, gender, or any other consideration always feels safe [..] playing our games
Thank you for sharing this. That is... What an incredible thing to think about. For > 6 years, the CCP may have been using _WoW_ to _literally spy_ on it's citizens and Blizzard would've been _completely complicit_. What's maybe most surprising to me, sitting here today with the benefit of hindsight, is how much that simple comment says about the rest of the 2010 decade that proceeded it. How it all _looks_ true and how the veil seems to be lifting so quickly (on how far reaching the CCPs influence is).
No idea if he is, but thanks for that. Here it is in a more readable format, or least, in a not-on-Twitter format :)
-------------
This hurts. But until Blizzard reverses their decision on blitzchungHS I am giving up playing Classic WoW, which I helped make and helped convince Blizzard to relaunch. There will be no Mark of Kern guild after all.
Let me explain why I am #BoycottBlizzard.
I am ethnically Chinese. I was born in Taiwan and I lived in Hong Kong for a time. I have done buisiness with China for many years, with serveral gaming companies there.
So I think I have a valid perspective here, having been a Team Lead at Blizzard and having grown up in Asia.
I have watched China slowly take over as the dominant investing force in gaming and movies over the years. It’s a shame US companies never believed as strongly as China and Asia in investing in games, but this allowed China to have unprecedented influence over our media.
Chinese game companies have grown huge not just because of market size, but because the government subsidizes them. They get free land, free offices, and huge infusions of cash.
This cash was and is used to do expand and buy up stakes in US gaming companies.
I’ve seen firsthand the corruption of Chinese gaming companies, and I was removed from a company I founded (after Blizzard) for refusing to take a 2 million dollar kickback bribe to take an investment from China. This is the first time I’ve ever spoken pubically about it.
I’ve also seen how American company reps in China have been offered similar bribes to get licenses for large AAA titles. Not everyone refused like I did.
Chinese companies tried to ruin my career with planted press stories. Money is often paid for favorable press in China and some of that money flows here to the US as well.
Unfortunately, money talks. China has succeeded in infiltrating all levels of tech, gaming and more.
Unfortunately, US and European companies are loath to take risks and invest in game companies legally as much as China was. China remained one of the few places mid tier studios could get funding.
So again, China influence grew. I’m sure this is the same for movies as well.
But now we are in a situation where unlimited Communist money dictates our American values. We censor our games for China, we censor our movies for China.
Now, game companies are silencing voices for freedom and democracy.
China is dictating that the world be authoritarian.
Of all the companies in the world, Blizzard is the LAST company I ever expected to give in to China’s demands.
Blizzard was always about “gamer first” and “don’t be greedy.”
At least, it was when I was there.
It’s one thing to keep politics out of games, which I am still a proponent of doing. It’s another to unfairly and harshly punish voices that speak out against corruption, against abuses of human rights, and freedom.
I take a huge risk by saying this. China monitors all social media and I know this means that we will probably never get an investment from China for my new MMO, and probably never get a license to operate there.
But enough is enough. I stand with Hong Kong, and I oppose Blizzard’s obvious and laughably transparent fear of China.
It’s time for Blizzard to grow the spine it used to have, and to do what’s right for gamers once again.
Gamers, rise up.
And yes, this means I will be refusing any deal for Epic exclusivity. The money comes from Tencent. Em8ER will never be an Epic game store exclusive.
This might mean we never make a dime, but more is at stake now than just games. A line has to be drawn, and I’m drawing it now.
Why would Blizzard bother to lie about this? I guess they're trying to recover from all of the negative press, but it looks like they're just digging themselves into a deeper hole.
The lies are weird. They're claiming they would have snapped off a 12 month ban for saying any political slogan, which is...insane. Wildly disproportionate. Not even a little plausible.
There's no explanation for Blizzard's actions that does not include feared pressure from China, and it's just insulting for them to claim otherwise.
Maybe it's to sway people who are on the fence, if such a demographic actually exists. This statement might be enough for them to think "See, Blizzard isn't that bad, from now on I will assume the people still complaining are the wrong ones, and I will say 'Blizzard apologized, what more do you want?!?'.".
Maybe the CEO even thinks "you can't make everyone happy, at least I did something.". And in the back of his head he probably thinks "but make sure China is happy!".
Wow so many lines of PR fluff to basically say we have to make sure everyone obeys China's view of the world. blizzard, that post was completely useless unless you wanted to reinforce the impression you have no values other than big profits.
Reads like a typical corporate response. Sanitized by lawyers, PR, and executives. It says nothing substantial. It's trying to ride the middle ground but it's just flat out contradictory in the face of their actions these past few days.
Very sad. Whatever piece of the original Blizzard may have been left in Irvine is surely on life support from the beating that Activision has been giving it for the last decade(s).
I just don't think there is any of the original Blizzard left, except maybe the artists. WoW has tanked in gameplay, the Diablo franchise has been starved, and then forced into something it's not... Heroes of the Storm has been killed off, Starcraft has been starved. Classic WoW (old IP), Hearthstone (lets be fair it's a casual mobile game) and Overwatch (just another shooter) are pretty much it sadly.
The grammar in this post seems really awkward. It's almost like they cobbled together 3-4 different people's statements, didn't proof read it, then released it. Strange considering they waited so long.
> Every Voice Matters, and we strongly encourage everyone in our community to share their viewpoints in the many places available to express themselves. However, the official broadcast needs to be about the tournament and to be a place where all are welcome. In support of that, we want to keep the official channels focused on the game.
One of their core values is "every voice matters" and with this paragraph they are trying to twist it from what it actually means, to supporting their decision to suppress dissent
That piece is for sure loaded with weasel wording.
But on the other hand, blitzchung might have said or done many things during his segment. And just about everyone who is upset about Blizzard booting blitzchung here would demand that they boot him for at least some of those. Say, if he had ranted about gender issues, for example.
As always, perceptions depend on whose ox is getting gored.
I support Blizzard's decision, it kept the bottom line. I feel ridiculous, in order to support the riots in another country, some people were so passionate. I think this people are affected by anti-China sentiment.
I write a post, tell everyone what happened in Hong Kong and try to persuade everyone not to make political opinions so easily, especially if a place is very far away from you.
The content may make you uncomfortable because it is different from the reporting position of some Western media. But looking at the problem from multiple angles will give you a more comprehensive understanding.
I agree with you that in the discussions of these issues on the Western internet sites, anti-China sentiment dominates and often blends with ignorance and prejudice. Unfortunately, if you post like you just did to HN, using inflammatory language like "I saw the hypocrisy of the Americans", you're guaranteed to take the thread further into nationalistic flamewar, and of course such language will be downvoted because it breaks HN's guidelines too (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
So if you're going to continue to post on HN, can you please make sure that your comments stay factual and neutral, and don't pour fuel on the fire? We ask the same of every user here.
I have a question, what if he was to thank his mom while on a broadcast that would not be about the content of the game either will he be banned for that? Talk about foot in your mouth Blizzard now we can all count down to Blizzcon and watch the fireworks I am sure there will be.
> The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision.
Needless to say, this line has generated a very large amount of snark on social media.
This part really sours the whole statement. Blizzard fans WANT to forgive them, and instead of coming clean Blizz spit in their faces.
Also, changing the suspension period of the casters is a joke, they will clearly never work with Blizz again regardless of the 'official' length of the suspension.
I don't see any way they could have addressed that without the hysteria still spinning it negatively.
Because it's not like they mention that out of nowhere: They are directly referring to accusations that they were pressured into shutting that particular player down by the Chinese government.
There's a whole lot of people out there who will not be satisfied with any answer contradicting that narrative.
Heck, even if Blizzard went out there and would fully admit "The Chinese government pressured us to shut this particular player down", then people would complain how Blizzard could ever buckle to those demands in the first place.
The reality is that nobody needed to pressure Blizzard because its competitive scene has already seen quite a number of bans, some controversial, many not, over players using the spotlight to share their particular political messages.
It's nothing new and just like they explain in the statement: They do this regardless of the political views being aired, they just consider it not a platform for that.
Very comparable to how the Olympics are supposed to be an "unpolitical event", at least in theory.
> Heck, even if Blizzard went out there and would fully admit "The Chinese government pressured us to shut this particular player down", then people would complain how Blizzard could ever buckle to those demands in the first place.
No.
There are two fan axes here: agreement and respect.
Companies (and your comment) seem to focus on the former, while being completely oblivious to the latter.
If Blizzard had said "Our Chinese economic interests pressured us into doing this" they would have faced intense disagreement.
But, they would have retained as least a modicum of respect.
Instead, they forfeited both.
And really? Putting out equivocal PR fluff in response to an issue in 2019? Activision-Blizzard's entire Communications department should be sacked.
How did they forfeit both? Do we have any evidence for Blizzard being pressured do this?
We absolutely have not, all we have is a bunch of social-media hysteria were this claim originally came from, in complete ignorance of the fact that Blizzard has banned plenty of pro-players before for voicing "negative speech" [0].
In that context your response is exactly what I was referring to: People are not interested in what actually happened, people only want to hear what they THINK happened, even if there's zilch evidence backing it up and it never actually happened.
Again: What evidence is there that Blizzard was pressured into doing this and as such debunking their reaction as a straight-faced lie? There is none, while there's a long list of other competitive players who've been banned for exactly the same reason.
I do not even understand why this is so controversial on HN out of all places. This whole comment section reads like Reddit, lots of appeals to emotions, very little sticking to the facts at hand.
> An email or recorded conversation from the CCP about the actions they would take if Blizzard didn't keep the ban in place?
How about anything concrete that isn't just sheer hearsay and speculation out of the social media sphere?
And yet you consider it outrageous that I take Blizz statement at face value? I already explained my reasons for that: To me this ban is very in line with other previous bans Blizzard issued.
That does not mean that I condone them or that I agree with them, but it gives precedence to the situation, precedent that had absolutely nothing to do with China.
We have precedent for Blizzard having banned players over political statements before, we have no precedent for Blizzard having been pressured by the CCP to do so. So what is the most likely thing that happened here?
The fact that Blizzard has banned people for making political statements before does not mean that there were no ancillary motivations in this instance.
You may feel otherwise, but I don't think a pattern of previous behavior unambiguously resolves the motivation behind an action.
Blizzard's construction of "unpolitical" is itself very political. The notion that people should hide who they are and what matters to them except as it's compatible with profit maximization is stridently political. Ditto the notion that even if people are killed six inches outside the venue for political reasons, everybody inside the venue should pretend everything's fine.
I do give points to Blizzard for the amount of Orwellian doublespeak here. They were just compelled to punish and deplatform because of their values of "Thinking Globally, Leading Responsibly, and Every Voice Matters!" Certainly nothing political about that!
> The notion that people should hide who they are and what matters to them except as it's compatible with profit maximization is stridently political.
Yet that's exactly what most major publishers have been doing with their crackdown on toxicity.
We've created these "safe spaces" where anything that could be interpreted as even remotely controversial is off-limits and ban-worthy because profit maximation is the only actual goal for a company like Blizzard.
> I don't see any way they could have addressed that without the hysteria still spinning it negatively.
> There's a whole lot of people out there who will not be satisfied with any answer contradicting that narrative.
> Heck, even if Blizzard went out there and would fully admit "The Chinese government pressured us to shut this particular player down", then people would complain how Blizzard could ever buckle to those demands in the first place.
Exactly. They did a shit thing and now there's shit on their face, of course it's going to be a negative outcome. There isn't always magic words they can say to make everything better again.
> The reality is that nobody needed to pressure Blizzard because its competitive scene has already seen quite a number of bans, some controversial, many not, over players using the spotlight to share their particular political messages.
Please share some examples. I vaguely recall stuff over the years about the Olympics. But I don't follow gaming.
A list for Overwatch can be found here [0]. They've banned people for "unsportsmanlike conduct" and "negative speech", as a separate thing from "toxcitiy" [1] which they have been trying to clamp down heavily on for years now, like most major publishers.
As somebody following gaming, this has much more to do with "safe space" culture than Blizzard being pressured to do anything by external actors. These are massive corporations, they do not need an external force pushing them to keep everything they do as "uncontroversial" as possible.
Having your sponsored event be the spotlight for political statements is the exact opposite of that. Something too many people here completely ignore because they happen to agree with that particular political statement.
But I doubt these same people would support similar freedom of speech, in that situation, if a player used their spotlight to prostylze for a religion, or tell the world about their personal views on things like homosexuality.
"Our goal is to help players connect in areas of commonality".
If you only keep the intersection of all "cultures", you end up with a very small subset.
I feel like the original decision was so harsh and the optics of it was incredibly bad that this "meet in the middle" resolution still doesn't cut it. It's like when a post-mortem only contains: "In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly." and they don't elaborate more on the inadequacy or the hastiness.
Maybe I just want blood but it feels pretty unsatisfying.
Question for all of y'all: what would happen if an Olympic athlete expressed or signalled a strong political view (beyond just "my country good, your country bad") during an official Olympic ceremony?
Then they would have worked their whole lives for something larger and more meaningful than their own individual abilities, and in the process, shown two forms of strength instead of one.
It has happened multiple time before —almost often in Football Association— and the official reaction are generally to treat those with mild disapproval for “outbursts”. The message is clearer: athletes are welcome to advocate away from the pitch, but until they leave the podium, they should focus on the sport.
Sanctions are typically adapted: symbolic at most for something unsurprising (a Black athlete campaigning for racial equality, an athlete defending a popular political movement in their home country) and stronger for something heinous (a football made Nazi references).
They still aren't listening to a PR expert, and this is only going to throw gasoline on the fire. This blog post [1] counseling Burning Man back in their dumpster fire of pain when they switched to a lottery system is very instructional, Blizzard should be following it to the letter if they intend to get out of this hole.
> They still aren't listening to a PR expert, and this is only going to throw gasoline on the fire.
Of course, if they had listened to a PR expert and written a first-rate apology letter, then we'd be calling them out as insincere and saying it was just PR fluff, a la the StackExchange letter recently.
It depends on the expert, I suppose. I know comms people who will very sincerely argue for actions to go with words. Just like they do in the real world, really. But for to work you need executives who aren't just trying to put lipstick on a pig.
They dragged someone's name through the mud and didn't even try to apologise for that. They said they were sorry to the community but at same time gave the community no extra time to influence the decisions. It was a well crafted apology but insincere. I don't think we gain anythijg for applauding that.
That's mistaken. Everybody called out the first Stack apology because it was like this -- not an apology. The second Stack apology was much better recieved because it was actually written as an apology, even through their actions didn't change at all.
Something to remember is China was a much different place 10 years ago when Blizzard started being distributed there.
I don’t see this as being about the money as much as it is about really freaking complicated relationships. You can’t turn off a billion dollar business in an afternoon.
Perhaps their PR experts have decided not apologizing will cause them temporary pain in the short term, but people have short memories and a new generation of gamers with no recollection of the past will latch on to some future bright shiny thing from Blizzard.
To use your example, Burning Man still sells out within minutes, and few current burners actually remember the ticket lottery of 2012. There have been numerous fiascos including the Ticketfly data breach, tickets getting lost in the mail and sent without signature confirmation, and cancellation scams. Volunteers being denied the staff tickets they were promised. Yet for every jaded burner who stops attending, a fresh virgin (first-year burner) takes their place.
I'm surprised that you're surprised. Even ignoring Blizzard game players who don't follow the news, and ignoring (presumably Chinese) players that actually support the Chinese government over the Hong Kong protest movement, some percent of players are going to react by saying, "I don't agree with what Blizzard did, but I still like playing Overwatch/Hearthstone/Warcraft."
FWIW: Am a Masters league Starcraft 2 player and haven't wanted to log in since this news.
I'm sure there are people who "don't want politics in video games", but it seems like this kind of complete moral indifference is about the bar you have to hit to not be upset about this at the moment.
(And I don't find tonight's explanation sufficient.)
Here's my real account saying: I'm continuing to play Overwatch. The Overwatch developers aren't responsible for this mess. And I'm trying to get good enough to make it to at least the semi-pro level, which means taking time off for all of this to blow over and people to forget means I'm severely hampering my efforts to achieve that goal. (even a week off is going to harm my gameplay disproportionately) I can't just play something else, other games aren't interesting enough to me to try and make it to a high level of play.
I can only hope that Blizzard somehow unwedges the shoe from their mouth that they're madly chewing on and figure out some way to handle things better.
Yes, one of them said something like "go on and say those eight words then", referring to the slogan that Blitzchung then said while wearing the mask, and both were generally sounding amused.
However, it appears they had no idea he was showing up to the interview in a gas mask. Production for the event could have told them -- or simply canceled the interview any time after realizing -- and didn't. So the casters had to improvise, it's not fair to blame them as if they shared intent, rather than just wanting to keep a surprising live situation light-hearted and on the rails.
Frankly, I believe that following your advice would be completely counterproductive for them. If Trump and recent politics have proven anything to me it's that when you are the focus of media attention, admitting fault and apologizing is always the wrong thing to do from a PR point of view. Apologizing never wins anyone over, but it does alienate your supporters.
It's unfortunate, and it's counterintuitive because it's not what makes sense in everyday life. But a media circus is not everyday life.
Apologizing can, in fact, win people over _if_ authentic and followed up by appropriate action.
One recent incident I've been tracking jumps immediately to mind.
Recently, a D&D streamcast, Critical Role, decided to participate in a Wendy's promotion, to the horror of their fanbase which largely eschews big corporations and their _marginal_ (in all senses of the word ;-) ) food products. A vocal contingent of the community felt this promotion was not at all aligned with the progressive values of the streamcast and community, and they let the org have it!
Within 24 hours, the Chief Creative Officer (and general face of the stream) apologized, and the org announced it was donating all its profits to a charity supporting farm workers.
Sure, there were a couple of angry people who were still not satisfied, and there are probably unpleasant longer-term consequences with potential future advertisers that they will have to deal with. But, in large part because they pay careful and compassionate attention to their community, you could see that the bulk of the community immediately jumped back on board.
Do not let Trump erode your sense of what is right for your product, company, and community. The dark side, after all, is not more powerful – only easier and more seductive.
You can argue Blizzard puts profits over free expression (every company does
to varying degrees). It's absurd to say the kid's obtuse outburst, if left
uncensured, saves lives.
That is where the problem comes in, it isn't a single censored outburst by a single player and not a single company doing the censoring. China is using that uncaring greed to ensure that these protests are censored on a larger scale.
> The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision.
"We don't want to lose money from the Chinese market, but we also don't want to lose money from the American market, we're not really sure what to do and have no moral guidance on the situation, will you accept this double-talk and continue paying us?"
I wonder if protesters supporting Catalonia, Cuba, Venezuela, Kashmir, Sudan, Indonesia, or Palestine did this, if it would get more attention than a single article or thread?
Heck, 100 people have been killed in the current Iraq protests and there are less articles and outrage compared to this. Maybe future protests will focus on getting punishments from large companies? Perhaps this is the start of a new type of activism.
tl;dr
Our top analysts have determined that the amount of money lost by people being upset about this is still less than the amount we would lose by losing business with China.
They didn’t. They didn’t receive any punishment, they were immediately moved on to the next match.
So, Blizzard is not acting any anything resembling consistently on this matter. Some voices matter more than others; in this case Blizzard’s business with China has proven to matter more than allowing someone to “share their point of view”.
#boycottblizzard still stands.