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

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408 points seapunk | 2 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.412s | source
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remon ◴[09 Oct 19 12:44 UTC] No.21202602[source]▶
One of these again. I struggle to form a coherent opinion on this one. Yes the player broke tournament rules and yes you can argue that he should be banned on that basis alone. But oh my god. Even if they banned him just on the basis of enforcing that rule rather than pampering to the Chinese market (and that's a huge if) the visuals of this are so predictably bad.

What meeting can they possibly have had where the options were "Just reprimand him in private" or "Ban him, get into the news cycle and face weeks of public backlash" and they landed on the latter?

It's hard to imagine the decision wasn't almost completely fuelled by Tencent's part ownership of Blizzard and Blizzard's stated goal to expand their marketshare in China. If so, it devolved from a company increasingly known for just poor decisions and communication (mobile Diablo announcement anyone?) to a company that publicly and blatantly prioritises shareholder interests over ethics.

And let's be frank; there's not that much anyone can do about it. People can claim they're uninstalling Blizzard games. And I'm sure some do. But the next time they release an objectively good game everyone's back in.

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wlesieutre ◴[09 Oct 19 13:18 UTC] No.21202859[source]▶
>Yes the player broke tournament rules and yes you can argue that he should be banned on that basis alone.

The rule in question is

>Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image

Which is so open ended that it's impossible to not break it if you have an opinion and are speaking to a global audience. You could go up on stage and say "It's bad to murder people for being gay" and a portion or group of the public in some other countries would get offended about it.

But Blizzard wouldn't be banning people and taking their prize money for that. 100% this is about Tencent and Blizzard's access to the Chinese market.

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vogre ◴[09 Oct 19 14:11 UTC] No.21203423[source]▶
What if someone would say: "god hate gays"? Would the same Blizzard actions be justified?
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1. EpicEng ◴[09 Oct 19 14:13 UTC] No.21203435[source]▶
I would imagine not, but do you think those two statements stand on the same footing? At some point you have to examine what is actually being said. I understand that can get murky, which is really the entire problem with censorship, but "don't murder people for being gay" and "God hate[s] gays"? C'mon.

The larger issue at hand here is the motivation behind Blizzard's actions.

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2. BigJ1211 ◴[09 Oct 19 14:26 UTC] No.21203562[source]▶
I think: "People everywhere should have the basic human rights" is far less controversial than "God hates the gays". I imagine that the latter also would get punished the same way to be honest, and then we wouldn't have this discussion at all. At least in the west, as in the east they do not appreciate the acceptance of anything LGBTQ+ related.

Blizzard went all-in with the pride stuff in the west, but did not have that event at all in the east. Not even a toned-down version of it.