It’s probably because they are preparing a “sry not sry” statement and want to stop the bleeding until they’ve put it out. It’s interesting that they’ve discovered a way to stop people from boycotting them.
Next we’ll be getting emails from paypal saying they won’t cancel the WoW subscription because they know we’re weak-willed piles of flesh and bone that will just resubscribe in a few days anyway.
Games Workshop’s just gonna figure out what army you play and charge your card every month, sending the minis rush shipping on your dime.
“But…I’m not sure I…”
“Shut up. The Emperor demands it.”
“I’m sorry you’re offended”
I don’t think that’s a good idea when people are already organizing to flood them with GDPR removal requests, but that’s why I’m not a entrepreneur.
WOW! This campaign must be doing some damage then!
I know that our spineless captured regulators won’t do shit about shit, but I can’t imagine that the soulless EU bureaucrats in charge of removing fun from the world and reminding me about cookies are going to take a great and happy view of this latest shit.
Man. Fuck this whole company. I mean, I knew? But now I really know.
We really know.
And go go grey faced euro bureaus!
This thread made me wish I still subscribed to something Blizzard so I could cancel it. Unfortunately, I already preemptively canceled everything (that was due to me not really liking their games as opposed to any sort of principled stance. Boo).
I often feel that way about the NYT. ;)
I kind of avoided Blizzard after the Real Money and Real Name crap, but I liked D2 a lot so I watched it for a bit, though D4 might bring me back.
I don’t generally have a problem with company’s saying you can’t use their platform for anything non-game related. TBH, I if I was in charge of these things the rider for the events would be limited only to discussion of the game event: strategies, thoughts, etc. Hell, given how political everything is I wouldn’t even be inclined to let people “give a shout out to their mom” who it turns out is a political prisoner or something. Just the game and events.
That said, how Blizzard is going about this after the fact just seems dead wrong. I also think the rule they cited is too vague.
That headline is misleading. All the article concludes is that it’s no longer blocked/disabled today, but it was yesterday.
EDIT: Maybe misleading is the wrong word. They are jumping to a conclusion, though, that because they were able to do so today then Blizzard must not have disabled it. It’s equally likely Blizzard changed course.
There was some debate on twitter over whether the deletion issue was deliberate Blizzard policy or a technical problem (some kind of system overload or whatever). Perhaps the Polygon article is meant to imply that their experience supports the latter interpretation.
But who knows what’s really going on behind closed doors in Irvine…?
Completely agreed. Without an official statement from Blizzard (which isn’t likely), it could be deliberate or not. Either way, it’s not good and I’m glad to hear that Blizzard customers can now cancel their accounts. Regardless of one’s stance on the political aspects, everyone should agree that being unable to delete/cancel is unethical and possibly illegal.
I’m going to disagree with some people here regarding regulation. I think the market is doing what it’s supposed to do – it’s optimizing. If it does something we consider immoral, it’s our job as consumers to do what we’re doing now and act out. Blizzard will have to decide if it wants to preserve its precious Chinese market or to keep its American one. The more outrageous the immorality, the more people will align on one side of the matter, and what we’re seeing currently is an outrage that aligns just about everyone in the west against this company.
Trying to regulate something like this is going to be incredibly difficult. We’re just going to make conditions that will cause unexpected consequences in other circumstances.
What I would like to see regulated is when China boosts its companies with state money. This is a well known tactic in China (aside from wanton IP theft), and results in companies like Huawei dominating competitors by providing the cheapest alternative (and sometimes even an alternative that comes with free money) only because the Chinese government subsidized them. I think such companies should have extra tariffs placed on them. The same applies to every other state-subsidized business, as these are effectively negative tariffs on favored products.
Blizzard makes about $1 billion in China annually, and that’s not even counting Activision. As soon as enough people in the West cancel >$1 billion+ worth of subscriptions I imagine they’ll act.
Leaving aside the implicit (and probably justified, mind you) assumption that global business is, in effect, neo-liberal business and little to nothing else matters, the problem I see with punitive tariffs against companies that receive unfair subsidies is, well, definition. Are we going to admit that American defense contractors in effect are subsidized? Our auto industry? Aviation? Trucking? Agriculture? All get substantial direct or indirect assistance, which functions exactly as a direct subsidy only without the name.
Trying to get everyone on the planet to agree to one paradigm for global business, and to subordinate national considerations to gods of the invisible hand seems far-fetched.
I think it’s ‘fair’ for any particular country to single out an industry with strong state support and place a corrective tariff on it without starting any kind of trade war. In the case of defense industries, every one of them has ‘state support’. This isn’t surprising, since the primary client of those industries is the nation’s government. This shouldn’t be the case for other industries where the government is not involved.