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Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hong Kong Comments

(playhearthstone.com)
2525 points hownottowrite | 2 comments | 08 Oct 19 09:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.588s | source
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avar ◴[08 Oct 19 15:36 UTC] No.21193426[source]▶
We're increasingly at the mercy of private companies for what used to be considered civil liberties.

I'm sure I'll get someone arguing about private v.s. public oppression, but at the end of the day being a professional video game player in someone's walled garden is no less of a specialized or acquired skill than say being an expert cabinet maker.

So we're increasingly ending up in situations where people's hobbies or professions exist at the whimsical pleasure of private corporations.

If this guy talked shit about a foreign government 50 years ago and liked to play football as a hobby, and was a skilled cabinet maker that government couldn't pressure a private company to ban him from all football pitches worldwide, or exile him from cabinet making.

The answer isn't to boycott Blizzard, that's raging against the smallest cog in the machine. The answer is to eliminate these power relationships with a concerted effort of moving to free & open source software, and at the federated services when something needs to be hosted centrally.

replies(1): >>21193922 #
erikpukinskis ◴[08 Oct 19 16:21 UTC] No.21193922[source]▶
He’s not exiled from professional gaming.
replies(1): >>21198276 #
avar ◴[08 Oct 19 23:07 UTC] No.21198276[source]▶
Hence the analogy to cabinet making v.s. all of carpentry, he's been banned from something he's heavily specialized in.

But I think that misses the point, 20 years ago nobody would have been able to ban anyone from Quake III, because running the servers was distributed, today you have major game companies like Sony, Microsoft etc. that can ban you from entire game ecosystems.

In another 20 the whimsy of one company might be enough to ban you from all of gaming for all practical purposes.

replies(1): >>21198939 #
1. erikpukinskis ◴[09 Oct 19 00:59 UTC] No.21198939[source]▶
How narrow would the exile have to be for you to be comfortable with it?

Or, put another way, how big can my business get before I have to forgo my right to make my own decisions about who I collaborate with?

replies(1): >>21203080 #
2. avar ◴[09 Oct 19 13:41 UTC] No.21203080[source]▶
You don't have to forgo any rights. I'm not saying a mob should get between you and a customer, but that customers should be more picky about who they deal with.

A lot of people in this thread are calling for a boycott of Blizzard, I'm pointing out that this isn't a productive way to solve the problem at large while those people continue to subject themselves to the whims of other companies.