Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

So we are at the point where American video game developers are banning people from e-sports competitions for their comments over a domestic issue in a foreign country? Because the Chinese government probably didn't like his comments, that counts as 'public disrepute'? This is just wild to me.

It is wild, but it's also part of their own rules: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGVTuRlXkAA0ovF?format=png

Honest question: Can we call this unfair if it was already laid out as part of their rules?

That's a generic catch-all rule that means basically nothing. No one can determine ahead of time what is allowed and what's not under that rule.

He didn't say anything "offensive" or "disreputable" to anyone other than authoritarian regimes, and if that's the standard Blizzard is going by they can fuck right off.

That's vague wording on purpose to cover anything they want. So what we've determined they want is to avoid any public show of support for the people of Hong Kong. I don't know if I'd call it unfair so much as showing their true intentions.

Yes. You presuppose that all rules - via their nature of being rules - are automatically fair. They aren't. Especially not if they're not arrived at by consensus, but unilaterally laid out.

Yes. Humans are not suddenly owned because they take part in a contest or work for an employer. We should be allowed to point out literal genocide and authoritarian beatdowns without losing our jobs -- especially when it's an entirely different country.

They're trying to silence the people by pressuring companies to punish those people. Any companies that bow to this pressure are straight up saying that they'd rather support genocide and the right for China to detain and treat protestors however they feel like --- rather than let someone who won a contest to have a personal opinion about it.

It's part of the new push by corporations and organizations to subvert the law to appease their own ideologies. Despite there being no legal precendence or requirement for things to happen, those in authority positions are more than happy to silence those that disagree with their expectations. It is a direct result of cancel culture and deplatforming - if everyone assumed the best of intentions until explicit circumstances demonstrating otherwise, we wouldn't be in this mess - everyone would go about their day as normal as there are no laws requiring you to do or penalizing anyone for the things people are deplatformed over in this day and age. But when power comes into the mix, and as our culture has inflated the value of ideologies, those with power stand more to gain by taking the nuclear approach.

Let's highlight the absurdity of the presupposition with an extreme example that they might understand: what if there's a rule that says "Black people are not allowed to play"?

They're saying we should just assume it's fair? What kind of idiotic notion is this?

He didn't make some off-hand comment about Hong Kong. He made a deliberate political statement complete with props and all. That very obviously falls under the rule.

It’s not a “new push”. Hippies for example have never been tolerated in business, outside Vermont.

It’s just that some ideas that were considered normal in the corporate world are being questioned for the first time in a long time.

The idea that “everyone used to be able to say whatever they wanted without consequences!” is a little absurd if you think about it for a minute.

Creating rules by consensus is actually a terrible way to ensure that those with views counter to the majority are treated fairly.

There's nothing inherently offensive and disreputable in making deliberate political statements complete with props and all.

The rule as written very obviously (at least to me) does NOT prohibit making public political statements in support of particular political groups and processes, actively and instensively advocating for or against certain policies or parties, using props to do so, explicitly condemning policies of certain governments, being a politician or candidate or pundit opinion-maker yourself and expressing strong political agendas to others, etc. It does seem to cover certain forms of expressing these statements (e.g. profanity and insults would fall under the prohibiting language) but not the political opinion as such.

An explicit prohibition against "offending certain groups of the public" is inherently assumed to include demographic groups but exclude political opinions, governments and individual politicians; so shouting "Government of X is horrible and their leader Y is evil" does not violate such a rule in any way whaotsover; that's legitimate political opinion; it's unalienable right of everyone to believe and communicate such things if they want to. Criticizing and insulting policies and political organizations simply can't be offensive in the way that insulting individuals or groups of people can be; if someone says that a statement of "stand with Hong Kong" or "stand with united China" hurts their feelings, then that's probably their (valid) opinion but it doesn't make that statement offensive or insulting no mater if someone claims that, statements of such format simply aren't offensive no matter what political group they support. "Fight for faith, stand with ISIS" or "Fight for man-boy love rights, stand with pedophiles" are justifiably unpopular slogans which would/should raise some eyebrows but they aren't offensive or insulting.

It works better than fiat rules. That's kind of why we have democracies. (Well, not in China. So maybe that's the point)

What makes you think this has anything to do with "cancel culture"? Corporations have been punishing people for speech like this for decades.

I never said I thought the rules were fair, I meant the banning.

Their product, their rules, you break the rules, then you accept the consequences.

That would also imply essentially any kind of public figure who makes a strong political statement would not be allowed to play this game.

It looks to me that it was written with stuff more in line with white supremacy advocation and stuff like that in mind.

Except they are not. They are nebulous catch-all clauses applied on a whim.

Then do not accept them. Who is forcing people to become pro gamers or playing games of a company they don't agree with the TOS?

He did this during a post-match interview on the Hearthstone stream. This wasn’t some personal political statement outside of his participation in the game.

Ah, that old chestnut, yes.

The day you can hold a corporation accountable for breaking their own terms of service is the day I will come around to this argument.

As things stand, they can have an obligation to keep your data secure, have system with massive security holes, loose your data resulting in you being a victim of fraud, and the company will not pay a penny.

Correct. It was a personal political statement made during his participation in the tournament. And I agree with jcranberry and PeterisP: the rules do not prohibit that.