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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

(playhearthstone.com)
2525 points hownottowrite | 4 comments | 08 Oct 19 09:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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tomp ◴[08 Oct 19 11:17 UTC] No.21190973[source]▶
China is very smart. They saw what was happening in the West - oppression of freedom of speech on account of "hurt feelings" - and applied the same principles for their own nefarious purposes ("hurt Chinese feelings" a.k.a. political censorship).

Literally noone could have seen this coming. /s

edit: XCabbage better explains what I was trying to say. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21191253

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johnday ◴[08 Oct 19 11:19 UTC] No.21190990[source]▶
This is utter nonsense. Political censorship in the East is not a response to modern liberal views in the West.

That is so completely obvious that it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

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1. jessaustin ◴[08 Oct 19 11:25 UTC] No.21191026[source]▶
...it boggles the mind that I even needed to say it.

Saying it didn't make it true. Do us all the favor of a more convincing argument.

Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

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2. johnday ◴[08 Oct 19 11:30 UTC] No.21191061[source]▶
You're asking me to defend me disagreeing with the original point - the burden of argument should really be on them, but anyway...

Tiananmen square is an immediate and obvious pick. People who publicly referenced the events of Tiananmen square were not allowed to interact with China on a business level. If Hearthstone had existed back then and the streamer had mentioned Tiananmen square, Blizzard would (I think) have taken exactly the same approach as they did today. There's no co-opting of Western politicking here.

> Besides, are we really talking about censorship in "the East"? Blizzard is based in California.

Blizzard is heavily integrated with Tencent in China. The actions they took are to preserve that relationship. Ergo the censorship of China is what we're looking at here - without it this event would not have occurred.

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3. jessaustin ◴[08 Oct 19 11:44 UTC] No.21191137[source]▶
They have some sort of partnership arrangement, but it really is a surprise to me to find out that a partnership like that has had the censorious effects we've seen here. It's hard to imagine that this would have played out the same way for a partnership with a firm based in e.g. Russia or UK or Brazil. [EDIT: Or even a firm from those nations that owned 5% of Blizzard.] I guess I'm saying that I didn't "see this coming". I suppose that you and thread parent did, but it still seems notable to me.
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4. monocasa ◴[08 Oct 19 11:55 UTC] No.21191219{3}[source]▶
Blizzard is partially owned by a Chinese company.