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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

(playhearthstone.com)
2525 points hownottowrite | 3 comments | 08 Oct 19 09:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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Aarostotle ◴[08 Oct 19 15:05 UTC] No.21193059[source]▶
This one is tricky. I always thought they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, so they have to tread that line as well.

Does anyone know how that fits into the picture?

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1. dmix ◴[08 Oct 19 15:43 UTC] No.21193495[source]▶
American companies have American customers, investors, and employees too. And European, Canadian, Aussie, etc.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/nba-china-hong-k...

Corporations have a strong incentive not to piss off the rest of the world to serve one country. They've been able to get away with it for a while but the demands from China will naturally keep growing and growing (as all censorship does once you give in to it).

The eagerness of companies to completely abandon free speech and differing opinions will eventually have real consequences.

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2. jimclegg ◴[08 Oct 19 17:12 UTC] No.21194502[source]▶
Thanks to the tremendous criminality and wealth concentration of the last 200 years, western corps generally only answered to western wealthy audiences. The game has changed, that's all....
3. munk-a ◴[08 Oct 19 17:19 UTC] No.21194582[source]▶
There is no such thing as an American company, if you're an American and you start a business and build it up then decide to retire and sell it off, it isn't guaranteed (and is actually rather unlikely) that all the production and business will stay in the US. People are American - not corporations.