Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

Then we have to boycott Hearthstone. While the current case is neither surprising nor substantially important, it is important because of principle.

Blizzard is not responsible for what players say in interviews. In our society, it still matters that people can tolerate other opinions.

The Chinese government tries to make it a new normal that entire people can have their "feelings hurt" (what?) by mere non-insulting opinions, and it tries to make it a new normal that all actors should censor any undesirable or potentially undesirable opinion.

If that is indeed the way, then our society and the discourse therein is no longer free, and the CCP has won.

We need to keep these firms in our mind. We need to keep a list of when this happens, and we need to sanction this as best as we can. Similarly, anyone standing up to censorship should have our support.

I can be pro HK, or I can be pro China, and I can voice opinions because doing so either way is an equally valid form of free expression. But it can not be that one side gets pre-emptively censored to appease the CCP, or any actor with the power to DEFINE the bar of what is reasonable expression of opinions.

Exactly this.

I hope that what people see is that we've been in a cultural war with China for 20+ years. Now that the Chinese market is big enough, Western companies are dropping any standards they have to keep access to the market.

Individual companies are not going to fight this war.

I don't like Trump as much as anyone, but when Trump adds some tariff on Chinese goods everyone goes batshit insane in the US. The Chinese government almost every day shuts some company or product off from access to the Chinese market for not doing something they say. But until the Hong Kong protests, it seems like no one cared. I hope now that it's LITERALLY, blantantly, and obviously about freedoms and human rights -- it's enough to get people to care. China should lose access to the WTO if it forces any company anywhere (including in China) to censor anything in order to gain or keep access to its market. End of discussion.