Ex-World of Warcraft developer's thread about China and the gaming industry

For some reason, gamers appear to care about Hong Kong but didn't bat an eye when other gaming companies shut their servers down in Syria/Iran in order to comply with the U.S..

If a large portion of Blizzard's players hadn't been Chinese they wouldn't have reacted that way. So to me, Blizzard is the victim here, they were put in a lose-lose situation.

Regardless, I don't see how a company refusing to have its events politicized is considered so bad.

If people are so adamant about sticking it to China, they should boycott their actual products instead.

Because China dictating what can and can't be done affects them, the Syria/Iran embargo didn't.

I dont think Blizzard are in a lose position at all, they've already made a ton of money. Worst that will happen is the gravy train is a little thinner.

If I am not wrong, the situation in Iran/Syria was due to sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, not by censorship demanded by those countries. See the recent situation with Adobe and Venezuela for something similar going on.

Are you asking why Americans don’t care about what happens to Iran?

It's censorship demanded by the U.S. government though.

No, it isn't. It's cessation of economic activity that is demanded.

That's why, following the very-broken "vote with your wallet" mentality, I'm asking for a buyer's remorse refund for everything I've ever bought. SC1, brood war, Diablo 2, SC2, Diablo 3.

I don't expect to succeed but it'll be one voice in a chrous, and some $ in some internal "potential lost money" metric an MBA is frantically trying to compute.

Indeed it isn't a fair comparison.

What companies can do about it? They have to comply with trade control laws and we can't boycott companies for complying with the law.

In the other hand probably some pro government Chinese could argue that was incitement or act of encouraging violence. So probably it depends who you are asking.

I think in this case we could argue that Activision Blizzard is an American company and it is obliged to follow U.S. trade laws, but not Chinese laws. A trade embargo is also something that multiple countries agree and abide to, so it can't really be seen as censorship in the same level as Chinese censorship. And while I understand the appeal of the Chinese market, that thirst for profit should not trump values that the company imposes on itself, which in this case are "Every voice matters" and "Think globally". Nor should the company go against the values of the country it belongs to, in this case the democratic values of the U.S..

I'm genuinely curious: Why do you think the "vote with your wallet" mentality is broken?

A system where power is dictated by a set period of every X years where, for one day, everyone biological person is issued exactly 1 unit of "voting currency" that is equal in value to the 1 unit of "voting currency" every time period before to determine that power shift; is not comparable to a system where biological people and non-biological constructs are continuously exchanging "voting currency" which itself has fluctuating value and can be accumulated such that a "later vote" is often unequal to an "earlier vote" which can lead to highly unequal power concentrated where there is high "voting currency" concentration, and there is never a set time where power is designed to shift.

It's a long winded way of saying "I don't believe the analogy holds up to scrutiny".

In this case: China will always have more money than NBA Fans or gamers.

The interesting thing is this occurred in Taiwan. So the answer of whether China has jurisdiction here is an intensely political question. Heck, you're not even supposed to call it Taiwan - it's Chinese Taipei.

If you have a market in both China and Taiwan, you're getting into politics. There's no way around it.

Very good point, I had failed to make the connection.

Very good point. On the other hand, I'm a somewhat passionate proponent of the mentality because it provides more frequent feedback loops and to me it seems to effect more actionable change in some situations. But you're right, I hadn't thought before that it's inherently much more flawed (read: unfair) than formal voting systems.