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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: 0.44s | 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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manfredo ◴[09 Oct 19 16:08 UTC] No.21204521[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.

Blizzard is an international company, and the line they draw is based on the sensibilities of all their customers worldwide. China, a country with a population 3-4x larger than the US evidently believes that support for Hong Kong protestors crosses that line. Blizzard may be a US based company, that doesn't mean it's going to draw up standards of conduct that always please the US customer base. I can guarantee you, the US and other western customers they stand to lose is they didn't cater to Chinese demands is a lot less than the Chinese customers they would lose if they were kicked out of China.

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EpicEng ◴[09 Oct 19 16:31 UTC] No.21204809[source]▶
This is just a remarkable line of thought. What you're really saying here is that the actions of a company are justifiable solely based upon whether or not the company is acting in its own best (financial) interest. Just... wow.

>China, a country with a population 3-4x larger than the US evidently believes that support for Hong Kong protestors crosses that line

The Chinese government, you mean, which happens to fall squarely into the "oppressive authoritarian" bucket as regimes go. Let's not pretend that the CPC is an honest representation of the people.

It's not only about "pleasing the US customer base", it's about integrity. Not every situation is some abstract hypothetical; it's pretty clear what's going on here, and I don't think any reasonable person would conclude that kowtowing to the Chinese im the pursuit of profit is a good thing.

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1. manfredo ◴[09 Oct 19 17:04 UTC] No.21205221[source]▶
What is surprising about this line of thinking? People stated, correctly, that companies should support gay rights and other progressive causes because it is in their their self interest to do so. Companies followed that advice.

The same calculus is at play here. If militia groups in Texas started marching in the streets calling for secession would we blame companies that want to distance themselves from that sort of political instability and unrest? That's how most Chinese see Hong Kong protests: a segment of the country that want to unlawfully remain independent. And China has a large market power. The negative consequences of alienating the Chinese market is larger than the negative consequences of bad press in western media.

It's valid to point out that the people's opinions don't always match that of the CCP, but it's erroneous to asset without evidence that the average Chinese disagrees with the party line on this issue. 50% of the mainland Chinese I've talked to have a negative opinion on the HK protestors and the other 50% don't really care very much. I haven't met any that actually support the protests.

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2. EpicEng ◴[09 Oct 19 19:56 UTC] No.21207273[source]▶
>What is surprising about this line of thinking?

I never said it was 'surprising'; I said it was remarkable.

>People stated, correctly, that companies should support gay rights and other progressive causes because it is in their their self interest to do so. Companies followed that advice.

Is that why they should support a cause though? Only because it is in their best (financial) interest to do so? I'm not insane; of course we're going to look out for ourselves, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that... until there is. At some point your profit seeking harms others.

This is exactly what I'm talking about; your argument presumes that a company should only take action when it suits their interests, i.e., increases revenue. You act as though the pursuit of profit at all costs is some immutable law of the universe. It's not.

>It's valid to point out that the people's opinions don't always match that of the CCP, but it's erroneous to asset without evidence that the average Chinese disagrees with the party line on this issue. 50% of the mainland Chinese I've talked to have a negative opinion on the HK protestors and the other 50% don't really care very much. I haven't met any that actually support the protests.

It's also erroneous to assert that your anecodotal evidence reflects reality, but I don't think it actually matters if the people support the CPC or not. Some things are just plain wrong, and people throughout history have supported foul actions because it suited them personally to do so (or because they're scared of the repercussions of not doing so.) Much of what China does is just wrong, I couldn't care less if their citizenry supports it.