Blizzard Sponsor Bailed After 'Free Hong Kong' Gamer Ban (thedailybeast.com) 122
After gaming giant Activision Blizzard banned a pro gamer who expressed support for Hong Kong protesters, the company has taken heat on all sides. Players boycotted Blizzard games. Employees walked out of work. Lawmakers lambasted the company for caving to pressure from China. And Blizzard faced another problem it didn't reveal at the time: a sponsor pulled out of its pro gaming league amid the controversy. From a report: Two days after the company announced that it would ban Hong Kong-based professional Hearthstone player Chung Ng Wai, Mitsubishi Motors Taiwan ended its sponsorship of Blizzard's esports events, according to Erica Rasch, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi.
I did not expect this. (Score:3)
Re:I did not expect this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not so much honor as a sense of self-preservation. Taiwanese? They have to be thinking, "If you'll screw over Hong Kong to appease the PRC, then we're next in line."
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Mitsubishi is a Japanese company though.
So of course it has honor. They are bound to Samurai code.
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I'm impressed. Hadn't seen this until now.
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I think "new youk city" is my new favorite term.
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I was always partial to "New Orc City", which was actually used in a rather pun-filled fantasy boardgame.
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Definitely stealing this for a campaign.
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Yeah, but he always comes through. "It's up to you, new orc, new orc!"
Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:5, Informative)
What were they even thinking?
Abundantly cautious in trying to avoid controversy. Sometimes you can be so risk-adverse that you create new risk. Blizzard's attempt to side-step controversy and be apolitical forced it to appear to choose sides, and it chose the wrong side according to popular opinion.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't avoid picking a side. Every action or inaction is picking a side.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Interesting)
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The IOC has a no politics policy because they're generally on the wrong side, and sleazy as hell.
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Or... they're on the money side. (Which is what I think you meant.)
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Anyone insisting that "politics" should be avoided, is deploying a dishonest argument trying to stop a conversation they are on the wrong side of.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Insightful)
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How about fuck you, you preening, religious jerk. I won't be bullied into taking sides on some issue I don't care about because some asshole like you thinks I'm on the wrong side of a conversation.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Interesting)
Blizzard wants you to think they didn't pick a side, but they did:
https://www.reddit.com/r/heart... [reddit.com]
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This is not a post by Blizzard.
This is a comment that was posted by the NetEase PlayHearthstone account on the Sina Weibo platform in response to the ruling by Blizzard Taiwan. Blizzard does not operate in China. They partner with Chinese companies who bring Blizzard's products to China. The "our country" part is a dead giveaway.
https://m.weibo.cn/u/3229779100
This social network and this company are based in Mainland China where the Chinese government controls the media. In the comments you will mostl
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A no politics rule takes the position that competitors should not use their voices to support people who are being oppressed.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Insightful)
A no politics rule takes the position that competitors should not use their voices during the competition to support people who are being oppressed (or support their favourite dictator, or voice support for climate deniers or against immigration, or, or, or...), but any other time is fine
FTFY
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Also known as the position that supporting HK protestors and supporting climate change denial are comparable.
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They could just say "opinions are those of the speakers, we don't endorse any of them". But they want to keep China happy, which is also a political statement.
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The IOC one is funny since two of the most iconic images of the 20th century was Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics and the 1968 Olympics black power salutes.
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If you don't support gay marriage, I will serve you.
If you do support gay marriage, I will serve you.
If you go out to protest in favour of gay marriage, I will not join you.
If you go out to protest against gay marriage, I will not join you.
Whose side am I on? I suspect you will say something along the lines of there are always more than two sides and that I am on one of those sides, thinking you are being clever, but you will only come across as an elitist douche.
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All the angels who refused to join the war still got kicked out of heaven by the winners.
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Whose side am I on?
Is it a side or apathy that you're describing?
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Re: Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive respons (Score:2)
Well aren't you clearly against gay marriage? Just not against enough to go protest about it nor stop doing business with gays. When good men do nothing, evil triumphs. The gays are the oppressed minority.
Unless you say you are for gay marriage, one must assume otherwise. If you say such and leave it at that, we can assume you aren't so much for it that you will go protest for it nor so much that you will stop doing business with those against.
But as long as you don't take a side, you empower the status
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And this is why Trump won.
Because I don't give a shit about gay marriage, it's completely outside of my sphere of interests, but far-left nutcases will label me a homophobe for that. And I don't want to enable these nutcases.
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Support freedom over Communism in China.
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Would people then be calling for a boycott of Blizzard because they didn't punish the winner? Because that puts them into an impossible catch-22 situation. They can't prohibit political statements for fear
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Punishment may be a bit much, they could just say "we don't support that sentiment".
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They could even strip his prize money, you want to promote your views - not on our budget. But they decided to completely unperson him. Unquestionable victory in tournament, he won the title fair and square. Politics doesn't change that.
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Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Insightful)
So, this is about religion? Because phrases like "borderless equality of all humanity" sure sounds like religion to me....
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't know what "Universal Human Rights" are. It's easier to comprehend what was originally intended if you include the whole phrase Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). With that missing bit we can understand that it has been declared, in a sense similar to the word propose, that there are rights that should be applied universally. Universally in the sense that there are not special exceptions. Signatories are expected to promote the ideas presented to their citizens and throughout the world. It
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Without stating a claim either way about the universality of the human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I think that the Westerners that were involved in the creation of the nation-state called the United States of America varied in their beliefs yet were able to state philosophical positions that can still be understood today. Although practically all them paid lip service to "God" or the "Creator", there were those among them we now label as Deists who did not subscribe to the expect
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Religion - one of the most misused words of 21st century.
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Careful - that's wrong-think (Score:4, Interesting)
Another word that might fit better than religion is dogma. The world's vocabulary is shrinking, as time goes on you'll find the meaning of words less nuanced. Maybe it's changes in education. Maybe we're careless in the fast paced communication of social media. Maybe no word has a stable meaning, and people use words based on how it makes them feel rather than what the words mean.
It turns out when don't need Big Brother to create Newspeak for us, we're creating it collectively to force our thinking along a certain path. In some ways it'll be the opposite of Newspeak. Words will have double and sometimes contradictory meaning, and each group will interpret the meaning according to what they want to hear rather than what the speaker intended to communicate.
Once English is hacked and full of mental malware, we'll have to throw it away and re-install.
Re: Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive respons (Score:2)
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The American Founders, however, argued that people have rights regardless of whether they are able to put them into practice. This is why they called these rights “natural.” They are part of what it means to be a person. They could be denied and violated, but only under carefully limited circumstances could they rightfully be taken away. Governments were legitimate to the extent that they protected rights. Those that arbitrarily took them away possessed no moral authority.
https://www.docsoffreedom.org/student/readings/equal-and-inalienable-rights
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Yeppers. It comes from the Declaration of Independence - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Note that phrase "endowed by their creator". Which certainly suggests religion....
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"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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This is about a greater and higher authority than popular opinion. This is about Universal Human Rights and the borderless equality of all humanity.
Gee, and for a minute there I thought we were still talking about a for profit corporation focused on revenue.
Carry on, Pope Warcraft. Far be it for business acumen to get in the way of this apparent religion.
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They chose to do something that any smart businessmen should be able to realize is a very unpopular move. That was unbelievably stupid. It doesn't matter how much they did it "for profit, not for [insert any other reason]", what does matter is what their customers, supporters and stock owners feel about that. It's a part of pretty basic business strategy to not anger the customers - you'd have to be a big fool to do that.
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They chose to do something that any smart businessmen should be able to realize is a very unpopular move. That was unbelievably stupid. It doesn't matter how much they did it "for profit, not for [insert any other reason]", what does matter is what their customers, supporters and stock owners feel about that. It's a part of pretty basic business strategy to not anger the customers - you'd have to be a big fool to do that.
Simply looking at aggregate numbers, there are over 300 million potential customers in America.
There are at least four times that many in China.
Perhaps those smart businessmen were thinking about the bigger picture here. Yes, I would agree with you that it is a very unpopular move, but unpopular with whom? Having your products being banned in China isn't going to do you any favors with the Board either, and is likely will create a much larger financial impact than any American "outrage" that we both know
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"Sometimes you can be so risk-adverse that you create new risk."
Executives should have that tattooed on their foreheads. Backwards, so they can read it in the mirror.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:5, Funny)
They have reflections?
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We do see them crossing running water, eating garlic, and even on occasion in the daylight. They probably have reflections.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the effort to appear apolitical made them appear political. It had the opposite effect that they wanted. They didn't "choose wrong". They just made a choice that had political side-effects.
The funny thing was, if they ignored it, they probably would appear apolitical. But by doing what they did, it got picked up by the news and suddenly people were examining what happened. You know the standard Streisand Effect.
And about being ignored? A US team did the same thing. It took Blizzard two days before they got banned. And that was only after the team blogged about what they did, and really just seeing if the policy was going to be enforced equally.
It was one of those if they simply looked the other way, no one would've noticed - most of the press don't know what a Hearthstone is, nor would they care, nor would they even care that that there was a champion, who it was or what happened. But they didn't, poked the hornet's nest, some gaming press picked it up, and all of a sudden it explodes because Free Hong Kong is something in the news and now even the mainstream press is interested. And politicians
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To be fair, it wasn't actually an attempt to appear apolitical. It was an attempt to appease major investors. As you say, if they had just looked the other way, no one would have noticed. But then, the hosts would have had to look the other way first. Instead they dove under the table. Then activeturd tried to throw all of them under a bus.
If they really wanted to exercise control, they could have pre-recorded. They abdicated control when they failed to do that. Then they had to take an explicit pro-China s
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Actually, instead of not choosing sides and do nothing they very much chose to ban that player and chose a side. Instead of not taking sides by simply not including any political views in the game they chose to ban player expressing political views - limiting freedom of speech in their game is not apolitical, it's what China does.
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What were they even thinking?
Abundantly cautious in trying to avoid controversy. Sometimes you can be so risk-adverse that you create new risk. Blizzard's attempt to side-step controversy and be apolitical forced it to appear to choose sides, and it chose the wrong side according to popular opinion.
This is true, but the quickness with which the NBA abandoned their virtue signalling principles in this case suggests it is less about the principle than the profit of being in alignment with those who can hurt you financially.
Which everyone knew all along, but refuse to admit it until it is thrown in your face like this.
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The answer to all those questions is "money."
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This isn't making them money.
They didn't need to ban him. They could have just taken the prize money and implemented a stream delay so they can make sure it doesn't happen again. Winnie the Pooh might have liked to see him crucified as they did, but he would almost certainly have settled for this.
Would have cost them less money.
Re:Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive responsi (Score:5, Insightful)
You're looking at this with the benefit of hindsight. The original motivation was still money. Or, more precisely: Don't piss the Chinese government off, or we might be cut out of that massive and potentially lucrative Chinese market. They slapped down that player and those streamers ridiculously hard, because they thought that would appease the Chinese government, and no one believed that bullshit about how they would have done the same thing for any similar violation.
Blizzard and other companies (including Hollywood filmmakers) have been sucking up to the Chinese government and censors for years now. The mistake they made (aside from the obvious moral failings, of course) was misreading Western sentiment that previously only grumbled occasionally about this sort of thing. Instead, this unexpectedly turned into a flashpoint event, releasing a lot of pent-up anger over perceptions that the Chinese government is heavily influencing US companies, and those same companies' willing acquiescence to this economic coercion.
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People like seeing freedom supported.
Not another brands full investment in a Communist nation.
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The US has had a trade embargo with Cuba for a very long time (although being relaxed a bit now), North Korea isn't anything worthwhile as a market, and we fought a cold war against the Soviet Union for many decades, with very few significant economic ties to them. How are/were any of those about "money"?
If anything, China is the exception to typical US policies. It was an experiment in attempting to normalize economic ties with a communist nation, with the hopes that doing so would encourage liberalizati
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All that matters to these corporations is $$$
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Re: Hopefully Blizzard fires the executive respons (Score:3)
How poor must your judgement be to adopt a position on the wrong side of history in a battle against our liberal democratic way of life?
This, all the fucking way.
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What were they even thinking?
"Potential loss from short-term reputation impact plus one or two sponsors cutting out, plus revenue lost to boycott for a month or two... vs. banned from the chinese market for a decade. Let's take option #1 and sit out the shitstorm."
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Corporations are immortal, and so are their earned bad reputations
Bad reputation depends on the lifetime of those having that bad impression in their head, it is not an attribute of the target entity. Case in point: If you've ruined your reputation, you can just move cross-country where nobody knows you and it will not magically follow you.
I don't see how they're going to live this one down.
They won't. They'll just sit it out and count on people to forget.
People are still upset about things IBM did in the 1930s,
Since I was born after that, I have no clue what you're even talking about, and a few isolated cases don't make a difference. If the market in general forgets, then the r
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I applaud your positivity and lament your naivety.
The general public has a very, very short memory.
Support Mitsubishi (Score:3)
I don't have one of their cars, but I might just go out and buy a key-chain with their logo on it, just because.
Thumbs-up for Mitsubishi.
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I don't drive a Mitsubishi, but my car has Mitsubishi parts and software in it anyway.
So who knows. Thanks to the weird agreements between car manufacturers (I think it turns out some of most popular Toyotas in the US are made in the US in a Subaru factory by Subaru employees), maybe you are, in fact, driving a car that's at least part made by Mitsubishi.
Good (Score:1)
Another Tech Company with a Footgun (Score:2)
and giving themselves a kneecapping.
Well done to all involved in teaching Blizzard a lesson,
Mitsubishi... (Score:3)
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Was looking forward to CoD MW4 (Score:1)
For me and my house (Score:3)
If you think they support a cause, you're a fool (Score:1)
Difficult situation (Score:4, Informative)
The situation they were in was difficult. Asia is a very lucrative market for video games. If I were running the business, I'd do my best to stay out of any controversy.
My thought is that any contestant at a sponsored tournament would have to sign an agreement to leave religion, politics, social unrest... etc out of any statements made while on tournament grounds. I would also call out specifically the punishment in this agreement for breaking the rule. I think a 2 event suspension would be appropriate for a 1st time offender.
Anything said by a contestant on their own time, not my concern.
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I don't see any way that this is realistic. Blizzard already takes sides on political issues like promoting LGBT and women gamers. You may or may not agree with them doing it but it is political. Most of what we do is political in some way. Even the stories they create in their games are political.
Blizzard doesn't really care about politics, they just don't want to take positions unpopular with the chinese government that will likely get them in trouble.
Taking a pro LGBT stance is easy for most western comp
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They are really going out on a limb, there! I think it's unfortunate that people care enough about how others live their lives (with no impact to their own) to make these types of statements necessary.
Taking a pro LGBT stance is easy for most western companies since gamers on average skew more accepting and so this is likely to make them more money than it costs. If it has been a western team making a comment on brexit, trump, freedom of the press etc they would have done NOTHING.
You are projecting your opinions into something that has not happened, so we have no idea how the company would react.
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It's questionable whether you're defending activeturd, but you're definitely opposing free speech when you promote punishment for expression.
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I use to do fantasy sports with friends. They started making rule changes and increasing the participation fee of the leagues. It got to a point where I no longer wanted to participate, so I didn't.
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* My thought is that any contestant at a sponsored tournament would have to sign an agreement to leave religion, politics, social unrest... etc out of any statements made while on tournament grounds. I would also call out specifically the punishment in this agreement for breaking the rule. I think a 2 event suspension would be appropriate for a 1st time offender..
Contestants do, so Blizzard called him out on breaking that agreement - by banning for life and taking back earned prize money.
The harshness is what caused the most controversy, if they had prevented further participation for that tournament and a couple more the backlash for breaking the terms of their contract - and only that - the backlash would have been much less.
Old News (Score:2)
After the shit blew up, Mitsubishi demanded their logos be removed from the streams. The logo on the backdrop behidn the casters was conspicuously absent, and the logo on the monitors they were using were covered with black tape.
One China says my Aunt Fanny (Score:2)
Thank you (Score:2)
There is something wrong with western media (Score:2)
Posting here but it applies to any story covering Honk-Kong protests and China.
The opinions here are so one-sided that it makes me uncomfortable.
- Hong-Kong protesters are heroes. All kind of disruption and property damage they caused is either glossed over, or presented as totally justified.
- Communication from the Chinese government is always propaganda and fake news. Information going the other way is always taken at face value.
- The Chinese regime is nothing but oppressive. Absolutely nothing good must
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Obeying local laws is fine, in dictatorships, if your country's elected officials are supporting economic engagement with the dictatorship.
However, that rotten behavior stops at the border. They should not help export censorship outside the dictaorship's borders. Yes companies may not be equipped to fight this. That's what your elected officials are for -- to counter-twist arms of the dictators and their supportive elite.
Remember dictators keep their money in stable, free countries like the US, out of fe
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Exactly which local law do you imagine Blizzard was following when they banned gamers who expressed an opinion? The online-game-companies-must-ban-users-with-opinions law?
Re:INT COMPANIES NEED TO STAYOUT OF POLITICS!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard didn't avoid politics, it took an active stance. Staying out of politics would have been "The player is not our employee and is free to take their own stance which is not necessarily reflective of our own." Instead, they banned the player. That is taking China's stance.