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

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408 points seapunk | 3 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.607s | source
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curiousgal ◴[09 Oct 19 12:35 UTC] No.21202530[source]▶
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.

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fesoliveira ◴[09 Oct 19 12:44 UTC] No.21202608[source]▶
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.
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1. stunt ◴[09 Oct 19 13:29 UTC] No.21202977[source]▶
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.

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2. fesoliveira ◴[09 Oct 19 14:00 UTC] No.21203298[source]▶
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..
3. bcrosby95 ◴[09 Oct 19 16:07 UTC] No.21204512[source]▶
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.