There’s a big difference between the company itself expressing its support and allowing their users and employees to publicly do so, without representing the company.
Do you expect to see Burger King and Nabisco putting out statements supporting the protestors? No, of course not. Why would they make a stand either way? The problem comes if they punish associated people that do.
Blizzard Phone Support is shutting down at 10AM West Coast time, according to their support page. Lol. Regular hours, my ass.
Epic isn’t going to ignore the Hong Kong protests because of Tencent. They are going to ignore the protests because they like China money.
Do you require all businesses to take a stand on this issue? Are you suggesting that silence is the same as consent and any company that doesn’t come out against China is pro-China?
OK. I’d like to see Tim personally show his personal, non-representative support for HK.
I would suggest and hope we would keep this thread focused on Blizzard and take the Epic comments to the Epic (or a more appropriate) thread.
Who else do you believe owes you, or the world, a comment about this?
In that I support the protestors myself, I agree. But it isn’t fair to put anyone on the spot like that. As long as they don’t punish those that express their opinion, I’m cool.
And yes, please keep Epic-specific stuff in the dedicated thread.
The two are related in a sense- Epic’s vulnerable to the same thing, and Tencent is an owner in both.
Personally, I think this might be one of the worst, if not the most craven thing a gaming company has ever done. I requested total deletion of my Blizzard account. If it was just silence, or slap on the wrist/minor suspension of the person who did it, that’s one thing- that’s just liking the China money. The scorched earth way Blizzard handled this was enthusiastic, and makes it a lot worse- to the point where not even an apology and full reversal would change my mind. They crossed the moral event horizon with this one.
There’s not a requirement to support the protests, but there is a requirement to not be so blatantly pro-China and so enthusiastic about punishing those who dare to criticize a genocidal regime (Uighurs)
This is worse than being an open Trump supporter in my eyes, and ironically, Trump’s trade war with China is the one thing of his I support, though for entirely different reasons than his.
My point is to call their bluff. It’s true that this specific episode concerns Blizzard, but I’m personally very concerned about a 40% stake by a Chinese company.
If Epic punished a Fortnite streamer, or told their employees and streamers not to criticize China even when they aren’t representing the company, that would be a reasonable stance. They have not done those things, so it’s just paranoia.
I wish you would stop with the false information… FYI, the Epic/Tencent investment was years ago and many things have changed since then. In other words, 40% made in 2012 isn’t necessarily that percentage now.
Sigh. Goddamn it.
Canceling my WoW classic subscription.
It’s not false information if no better information has been released. If it were less than 40%, I’d imagine Epic would be glad to point it out. Nothing would please me more than to correct the record on this matter.
I’ve played Hearthstone quite a bit, and some WoW as well. Rarely spent any money, though. Certainly I won’t spend any more unless Blizzard changes their moral stance here.
I’m glad that the company has retained the right to get rid of players and broadcasters, because I’d absolutely want them to exercise that right if someone started spouting white nationalism or incel bullshit or whatever. Using that power to punish support for the Hong Kong protests is very much a different moral situation, though.
你们不拥有手机吗？
Hmmm, to me, this is a bit trickier than just a black and white issue. It’s no question, that support for the protesters is the correct position on this, at least for me personally, but what if the player in question had gone on a diatribe about how great Trump was? If the player had done something easy to hate, there would have been a lot more support for Blizzard on this. This is Blizzard being incredibly ham handed, and trying not to be political, and ending up being 10x more political than they were trying to avoid.
I get the motivation by Blizzard on this, but this is handled about as badly as it could be.
To me, the solution for Blizzard here, would be some sort of statement that individual participants views do not reflect the views of Blizzard etc. Tricky situation for them I think, regardless of how they handle it. Blizzard is trying hard to not piss off large groups of people, but I’m not sure it’s avoidable in this situation.
There’s a clear moral right and wrong. Freedom, justice, human rights… those are Good things. Trump and his ilk, Evil things. I don’t think this is tricky.
I’m going to give them a day or two to reverse their action, then I’m deleting my account too. You could say I’m a Hearthstone whale, guilty as charged I suppose. It hurts to flush this account away, but on the upside I don’t have to pay for Hearthstone anymore.
I mean, I would think the player is an idiot, but I would not expect Blizzard to ban the player and take away their winnings. Very few people would. The reason that this became an issue is that the PRC can’t tolerate dissenting view points, and is forcing companies to choose between toeing the party line or losing out on Chinese business. And Blizzard chose the party line, and chose to anger it’s Western customers rather than the PRC.
Anyway, I’m wishing Blizzard the best of luck in the Chinese market. Hopefully they do well with their new friends; they’re certainly not getting any more money from this American.
The consequence for shitty speech (or unwanted political speech in general) is the platform owner disavowing/separation of concerns and then said speaker not getting a private platform for their speech in the future. Maybe a fine for being an ass. Oh, and the general social consequences/backlash to the speaker.
And I suspect this is all that would have happened if it was a diatribe about Trump’s greatness, though I could be wrong.
But this is related to China, so gotta kill 6 degrees of the family tree, pull out the roots, and salt the earth.
I think you’re right to do this. It’s hard, but the people of Hong Kong are fighting for their freedom- indeed, their very lives.
