I want the U.S. Government to bring to bear the full force of its power so that I can continue to level my WoW Classic toons with a clear(er) conscience.
Not even joking, sadly.
A lot of people have non-refundable money spent for Blizzcon. At the least flights, but some hotels may be paid for by attendees as well. It would be a shit show, and would alienate their loyal fans.
As to protests, the easiest way is t-shirts and pins. Even just having something like red shirts that have Hong Kong printed on it, or FHK for Free Hong Kong is a good way to protest and show support that aren’t waving big banners around.
That said, most of the Blizzard workers there are just worker bees. Disrupting a Hearthstone panel may get the message across, but asking general game devs what they think about the banning isn’t going get anywhere. Honestly, the Blizzard people working those panels and the rooms are just people trying to do their jobs and are far, far removed from that decision.
The smart thing for Blizzard to do is get way, way ahead of this damage control-wise, but they seem to going in the opposite direction.
I haven’t been following this thread, but Wumpus’ bot says this hasn’t been posted. I thought this was pretty good.
Blizzard got called out by the NYT editorial board:
The answers to this (non-rhetorical in this case) question likely do belong in politics. But posing the question is valid here I think:
What is an “American Company”?
A company that was born in, is headquartered in, and likely does most of its business in America.
I would go as far as saying that the only the first two criteria are necessary.
It’s not a super hard criteria to figure out, really. Are there examples of major “American” businesses that picked up and moved their HQ out of the US and still considered themselves American?
Or businesses we consider American but really only have a tiny number of employees in the US while most of them are elsewhere?
I would say it’s mostly where the HQ is located in. I don’t think it has to start as a American company or do most it’s business in the US to be an American Company. Also, in this case, doesn’t really need to be American at all… just not Chinese, in this case.
What about the business that moved to Ireland, or the Isle of Man?
What difference does it make? Are you asking what the legal definition is or our definition?
Edit: perhaps you’re getting at tax inversions, which got a bunch of publicity in the last year or so.
There have been 100 of them since 1993 and 85 of those were US companies merging with European companies to reduce their tax burden. Most of them ended up in Ireland.
However, recent tax laws in both the US and Europe have started to address these sorts of shenanigans, and as Wikipedia notes, as of June, there have been no material US inversions since 2017, and in fact there were several companies that merged with Irish companies but their HQs stayed in high-tax environments.
So in theory this is starting to become a thing of the past, and most importantly for this thread, there’s no such thing as a US company merging with a Chinese company or even moving their HQ to China.
I guess a fair question would be to ask if Riot is a US company or a Chinese company. They are headquartered in the US, most of their employees work in the US, and were started in the US. But they are 100% owned by a Chinese conglomerate.
But again, I’m not sure what the point of the question is.
Lee only won one match today, but his Hong Kong protest support did not go unnoticed.
The only gaming company with substantial Chinese exposure that took a moral stand so far is Epic. Everybody else is pretty small potatoes or keeping as quiet as possible hoping to escape criticism. You don’t see EA chiming in.
Tencent owns 40% of Epic, but Tim Sweeney apparently just doesn’t give a shit, he already has more money than God. Not like Tencent is going to sell their shares while Fortnite is still #1.
Companies with >50% ownership by a single Chinese entity (typically Tencent) like Riot and Grinding Gear Games are Chinese companies, even if they’re headquartered and incorporated in the US.
GGG are Kiwi by origin, I believe. But yeah, they took the Tencent payout and I’m done with them :(
Why, did they censor anybody? Or are you boycotting anything with Chinese ties? That would make life extremely difficult. Probably everything you’re looking at right now came from China.
Consumer activism doesn’t require perfect compliance across the board. Think of environmentalist that still need to drive a fossil fuel vehicle, etc. It’s about realistic incremental demand change, which is hoped to result in similar gradual supply change.
Sure, so what has GGG done to deserve a boycott?
Nothing. PoE’s business model remains unchanged, content updates continue and to the best of my knowledge nothing out of GGG has prompted any community disatsifaction outside of actual game related issues.
I’m confused on this topic.
Does Blizzard allow political statements in their venues, but just not against China?
That would be wrong.
If they don’t allow any political grandstanding during their gaming focused endeavors, good on them.
OK? It’s a global company.
Edit: I image in their heads they are tying to be like the Olympics. I bet they have some pretty big heads! :)