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

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.

Because China dictating what can and can't be done affects them, the Syria/Iran embargo didn't.

I dont think Blizzard are in a lose position at all, they've already made a ton of money. Worst that will happen is the gravy train is a little thinner.

That's why, following the very-broken "vote with your wallet" mentality, I'm asking for a buyer's remorse refund for everything I've ever bought. SC1, brood war, Diablo 2, SC2, Diablo 3.

I don't expect to succeed but it'll be one voice in a chrous, and some $ in some internal "potential lost money" metric an MBA is frantically trying to compute.

I'm genuinely curious: Why do you think the "vote with your wallet" mentality is broken?

A system where power is dictated by a set period of every X years where, for one day, everyone biological person is issued exactly 1 unit of "voting currency" that is equal in value to the 1 unit of "voting currency" every time period before to determine that power shift; is not comparable to a system where biological people and non-biological constructs are continuously exchanging "voting currency" which itself has fluctuating value and can be accumulated such that a "later vote" is often unequal to an "earlier vote" which can lead to highly unequal power concentrated where there is high "voting currency" concentration, and there is never a set time where power is designed to shift.

It's a long winded way of saying "I don't believe the analogy holds up to scrutiny".