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408 points seapunk | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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vogre ◴[] No.21203423[source]
What if someone would say: "god hate gays"? Would the same Blizzard actions be justified?
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wlesieutre ◴[] 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. rjf72 ◴[] No.21204511[source]
Let's imagine that this issue did not exist, if you can. And let's further posit an acceptance of companies advocating for some set of values, as you have. Now whose values do you think it would make most sense for companies to advocate for? Employees, management, chief executive, the board, customers, somebody else? Perhaps this is a bad assumption but I would assume the vast majority of people would say they should stand for their customers, if for no other reason than the fact that a company cannot exist without its customers - and so pleasing them (and keeping them) is always priority #1.

And this is where things get tricky. For decades, the entire life of many of us, the US has been dominant over the entire world. But that dominance is ending. Gaming is just one particularly clear example. China, for instance, literally has more gamers than the US has citizens. [1](2014) And while the US market is still #1 in terms of revenue, that's ending imminently - literally perhaps next year. We're currently at $36.87bn compared to China's $36.54bn. [2] And that's with an untapped market of hundreds of millions in China. And their rapid economic growth means all players, new and old, are going to be able and willing to spend more money. Within the next two decades, the US gaming market will likely be a fraction of the Chinese market.

That creates an interesting little micro-paradox in this situation. Customers in the US claiming they will boycott Blizzard over this situation are precisely why Blizzard is motivated to act in this fashion. Because there would be a mirror situation in China with a much larger customer base. Until people (around the world) can accept individuals behaving in a way they find deplorable, we're only going to end up in a world where the biggest wins. And as the geopolitical status quo changes, that's no longer simply synonymous with USA.

[1] - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-number-of-chinese-game...

[2] - https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-countries-by-gam...