Blizzard bans Hearthstone player, casters for HK Support

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned enough is that “public opinion in China” is carefully constructed by CCP. Any kind of dissent on China’s social media quickly got taken down and wiped. So all that is left is government approved agenda.

That means potentially there are millions of Chinese who are not happy about NBA or Blizzard or Tiffany capitulating to CCP, but no one knows (except CCP). By the same token, there may be millions of Chinese who would support NBA or Blizzard or Tiffany more if they just have a little bit of backbone. (PS: I certainly think better of Apple when they said FU to FBI trying to create a backdoor for millions of iOS devices just to crack open one terrorist’s iphone.)

their bat signal goes out to mainlanders outside of China too.

The Soviet Union had their brainwashed masses when things were still working relatively well also. Same with North Korea. And generally repressive regimes. Most people would trade free speech and ideals for bread on the table.

It’s galling how they are still brainwashed when they are exposed to free speech / opportunities of the west and are cognitively dissonant about what allows them to recite the party line. This also applies to friends and family in Vietnam who until recently only got to leave the country if they were cronies or family of cronies or rich people.

Welp.

“We express our strong indignation [or resentment] and condemnation of the events that occurred in the Hearthstone Asia Pacific competition last weekend and absolutely oppose the dissemination of personal political ideas during any events [or games]. The players involved will be banned, and the commentators involved will be immediately terminated from any official business. Also, we will protect [or safeguard] our national dignity [or honor].”

I know of Chinese who aren’t brainwashed, but simply are too afraid to speak up because they still have family in China and they don’t want to get others into trouble. CCP has track record of punishing family of activists.

You ain’t kidding. A recent example of a Chinese international student in Australia who attended a protest here:

Speaking as an ethnic Chinese, I think we have one of the most destructive culture/mental modes in the world. Selfishness and Self-Centeredness. “Middle Kingdom” is a misnomer which don’t capture the true meaning of the word 中国. The country’s name is literally “Center Kingdom”, as in the center of the world.

I know of people who read and watch Chinese produced propaganda and treat the lies about the West as gospel. It’s disgusting how the Chinese portray U.S. after the US trade policies built up China.

Most Favoured Trading Nation. Technical Assistance. Advisors. For China. History that I lived through. All never mentioned.

Gratitude is always a virtue taught in the Chinese system. But that’s jettisoned in the name of nation building by the party. It’s disgusting.

Edit: The way they monitor people in the land of other countries reflects how they see the world. Like how they think they own South China Sea.

Scary stuff :(

I’m done with Blizzard. They’re basically a castrated goat at this point.

This is what a company operating in a fascist country would say. It’s actually scary reading it.

I wouldn’t find that sufficient. To me, the level of severity and how they handled it made their intentions clear. I’ll never be able to forgive them.

They crossed the moral event horizon in a way I can’t think any other gaming company has ever done. This is 100 times worse than supporting Trump.

Let’s not generalise. Taiwan Republic of China is a multi-party liberal democracy. CCP chose to run China as a totalitarian, mass surveillance state.

The Chinese forced organ harvesting market is the stuff of nightmares.

I’ll offer a chinese proverb that I grew up learning that translate like this:

“The master passes only 70% of his knowledge to his disciple, so that he is not surpassed.”

Self-fishness is deep rooted, any honest chinese would admit.

Edit: In case anyone thinks I’m chinese bashing. I’m not. I’m pointing out the inward looking/self centered nature of the Chinese vs the outward looking liberal nature of the West.

It’s very obvious when it comes to knowledge sharing. The West loves to share and propagate knowledge. Just look at the amount of papers and know-how shared and translated in the West vs the East. And may I remind everyone, the East has had a long tradition of centers of learning. It’s just that the East is very xenophobic in both the taking in and the dissemination of know how.

I don’t really think wide-swath cultural generalizations about East and West are particularly helpful or particularly useful in a discussion- especially with the fact that western companies complain quite often about Chinese companies using their IP and reverse-engineering things they’re asked to build. Obviously this ‘liberal’ tradition only goes so far.

Honestly, with respect to the rest of it, I think this is what happens when so much power in a country is concentrated in the hands of totally unelected, mostly unaccountable corporate entities, and it will get worse long before it gets better.

What’s happening to Uighurs and Falun Gung is Hostel level torture porn at a state level. Removing organs, eyes etc whilst alive is inhuman. Even in Iraq this kind of horror was limited to Udays red room and a handful of prisons by certain individuals. In China its systematic and institutionalised.

Wait wait wait, so Blizzard is banning blitzchung because it is a paragon of virtue? No, everyone is capable of being greedy or selfish. Chinese don’t have monopoly on that.

Reading the IGN article, it seems like Blizzard corporate doesn’t control that account. I am still waiting to see something from Blizzard corporate in Irving. If this account is from a embedded unit in China, then well, yeah, this is what I expect them to say.

I still don’t know what I am going to do. I don’t play WoW a lot these days, so cancelling my account would be symbolic at best. However, WoW is a near-perfect MMO for my styles. I did start exploring GW2 again to see if that fits the purpose.

I’m hard pressed to think of any other action Blizz could have taken that would have, in these polarized times, managed to bring everyone together so effectively (in hating them). Blizz sucks - finally something we can all agree on!