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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

(playhearthstone.com)
2525 points hownottowrite | 5 comments | 08 Oct 19 09:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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KaoruAoiShiho ◴[08 Oct 19 13:22 UTC] No.21191959[source]▶
Absolutely agree, it's time for American video games to stop publishing in China. It's not worth the Chinese influence on our society.
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ndury ◴[08 Oct 19 14:20 UTC] No.21192581[source]▶
These studio's should not stop publishing their games in China. The issue lies that these studio's happily comply with whatever restrictions a govt is willing to oblige due to possibly playerbase loss. Think lootboxes, forbidden skins in regions, exc... exc..

Companies as big as Blizzard should be prepared to lose 5/10/15% of their playerbase to defend free speech, the thing is they do not care about free speech. All these companies care about is revenue.

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1. wbl ◴[08 Oct 19 14:38 UTC] No.21192794[source]▶
Lootboxes are one thing. But I doubt an aircraft simulator with a Taiwan Straits scenario would be massively published, or a Wolfenstein set in a Xinjiang reeducation camp.

Would Amazon stop selling 1984 if China asked it to? Hopefully not.

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2. luckylion ◴[08 Oct 19 15:34 UTC] No.21193403[source]▶
Amazon will not only stop stelling 1984, they will even remote-wipe 1984 from their customer's devices, all you need is a copyright claim.

Jokes aside, I believe they would if China was a large enough market for them. They are complying with local laws, and often that means pulling a product world wide, because they don't want to go through the trouble of making sure it's only unavailable in the US. Since Amazon has never managed to gain traction in China, they likely don't care too much about China's wishes.

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3. netule ◴[08 Oct 19 16:59 UTC] No.21194348[source]▶
This exact scenario actually happened in 2009: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

Irony of ironies.

replies(1): >>21198694 #
4. mypalmike ◴[08 Oct 19 17:22 UTC] No.21194626[source]▶
Companies either abide by the laws of the countries they operate in or they risk being shut down. Most countries have appeal processes for these kinds of things, but just neglecting to follow a legal order is not something that works for multinationals.

Edit: a word

5. wbl ◴[09 Oct 19 00:19 UTC] No.21198694{3}[source]▶
I think GP knew that.