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

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408 points seapunk | 1 comments | 09 Oct 19 10:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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wlesieutre ◴[09 Oct 19 15:17 UTC] No.21204002[source]▶
I expect them to not kick someone for supporting gay rights, but I do expect them to kick someone for doing a nazi salute on stage. So there's clearly a line drawn somewhere; it's not their job to act as a platform for every opinion.

"God hates gays" in particular, yes, I think they would be justified in dropping the banhammer on that. Blizzard has gone out of their way to promote inclusivity and diversity with Overwatch (which has two canonically gay main characters), even though it pissed off some of their more conservative fanbase. Having people on stream coming out against that runs pretty directly counter to the politics that Blizzard has already been promoting.

What it comes down to is that I expect Blizzard to have a system of values guiding their decision on this, and I want those values to line up with mine - everyone gets human rights, democracy is preferable to authoritarianism, freedom to protest a corrupt government is an essential right, etc.

Some people would probably call it a double standard to let players support pro-democracy protests, but not support anti-gay ones. I'd just call that having standards. It's 2019 and we're talking about a game studio based in southern California.

Maybe that's a self-centered view of mine, expecting a corporation to support western values just because they're based in the US and composed almost entirely of American employees. But that's where I'm coming from.

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1. jgon ◴[09 Oct 19 16:02 UTC] No.21204470[source]▶
You expect them not to kick someone for supporting gay rights but even that might be a bridge too far for Blizzard. They made a big fuss about having the character Tracer be gay, but that only happened in a comic book and in Russia Tracer is definitely not gay. I believe the same is true in China, but don't quote me on that. Having characters with different sexual orientations is just some catnip for us Westerners to show that Blizz is totes woke guys!, not some sort of stance Blizz is taking because they believe in equality. I wouldn't be suprised if someone calling for gay rights at an esports tournament in Russia was subject to the same thing.

Blizz is just a faceless corp now, and any move they make that seems on the surface to be ethical is just window dressing for a calculated marketing move that will be undone the moment it looks like it might cost them some cash.