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408 points seapunk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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remon ◴[] 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 ◴[] 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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mwyah ◴[] No.21203060[source]
>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 are a professional player in a tournament, you should not use an official stream to spew political opinions... or opinions of any other kind.

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EpicEng ◴[] No.21203193[source]
>You are a professional player in a tournament, you should not use an official stream to spew political opinions

https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/news/23013827/

Blizzard was fine introducing politics into their competitions when it suited them to do so. In that case it made them look progressive and they sold a lot of pins and t-shirts. In this case, they could lose a whole bunch of money.

Their stance on this sort of thing isn't consistent unless you view it from the angle of "what will make Blizzard money?" They also went completely nuclear on this guy by taking his winnings and banning him for a year, not to mention firing the two commentators.

I said essentially the same thing in another thread yesterday, but the issue at hand here isn't whether or not Blizzard has the right to enforce some vague rule; it's whether or not they should have and what were their motivations. We need to be very careful about allowing China to dictate what we can see and hear in our media.

These companies are quite literally helping an authoritarian government to further oppress its people, and their only motivation is money. It's insane to me that so many people are arguing in Blizzard's favor because apparently the only thing that matters is the bottom line, integrity be damned.

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1. derefr ◴[] No.21203604[source]
A political opinion isn’t a political opinion anymore, once it’s spread to fixation. “Political” in this case—and most cases where it’s used in discussions like these—is a euphemism for “damagingly controversial to support.” Even an opinion on politics can cease to be a “political” opinion. (For example, “the US should not be a British colony” is an opinion about politics, but at this point, not much of a political opinion.)

But, I think it’s important to note, this doesn’t mean that these opinions that companies dislike espousing aren’t political in the literal sense. They’re a subset of what would be more objectively defined as “political opinions.” And, as such, it’s not these companies making this determination; for it really is considered a matter of civic etiquette—in at least Western culture—to avoid discussing “political” topics in any venue where something other than politics is trying to happen; and plenty of people really do get mad at companies just for the fact of their breaking this social more, even when the political statement itself is one they have no stake in either way.