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(drewdevault.com)
847 points kick | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.218s | source
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bloody-crow ◴[] No.21587405[source]
It's very easy to critisize someone else for not standing to some principles as long as you don't have to deal the the consequences of doing so. Think Blizzard for example. Sure, they could potentially publicly support Hong-Kong out of principle and immediately get banned in China. The consequence of this would be

- Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. Their lives become unequivocally shitter.

- Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.

- A lot of Blizzard employees lose their jobs, stop paying taxes and participating in economy at the rate they could afford while being employed by Blizzard. Seems pretty shitty for them and their communities.

- Millions of consumers all over the world miss out on new Blizzard titles, stop buying their games and participating in events organized by Blizzard because company ceases to exist or can't afford to maintain the quality of their products due to less budget. This is a significant impact on the economy as a whole when a huge company generating wealth out of thin air ceases to exist or loses its steam.

- Chinese goverment is not affected by any of this and keeps doing whatever it's doing.

Overall, seems like the move will hurt everyone involved, except for the Chinese government. Remind me please, why we keep demanding Blizzard to punch themselves in a dick for no benefit whatsoever?

I'm not necessary defending Blizzard here, really. I'm just pointing out that the situation is a lot more complicated than shallow takes like in the one in the linked article tend present to it to be.

replies(1): >>21588871 #
1. hkmaxpro ◴[] No.21588871[source]
It’s the outrageous penalty that upset Blizzard supporters. Initially announced penalty to Blitzchung: [1]

(1) banned from the current tournament (2) forfeit any prize money (approximately US$4,000 by that point) (3) banned from other Grandmaster tournaments for one year

By contrast, Overwatch League player Josh "Eqo" Corono made a racist gesture and said "I am Korean" on a stream, and was suspended for three games and fined $3000. [2]

Not that Blizzard cannot penalize Blitzchung. Just not out of proportion.

> Millions of Chinese people (lot of whom have nothing to do with HK or goverment or human right violation) instantly lose access Blizzard products. Their lives become unequivocally shitter.

Judging from China’s ban on NBA’s that lasted only two days, China’s ban on Blizzard may be equally short-lived. [3]

> Blizzard loses a ton of money and have to downsize significantly firing half of their staff. They can't affort investing in new projects at the scale they used to. Their products become cheaper and lose in quality. Maybe the company even have to shut down due to not being able to sustain itself. It's pretty shitty for Blizzard on all fronts here.

Only 12% of Blizzard revenue comes from Asia-Pacific, which includes China but also South Korea, Taiwan, etc [4]. Some sources say only 5% comes from China [5]. Even if Blizzard loses Chinese market completely, I don’t see why they need to downsize significantly and fire half of the staff.

The same goes for your remaining claims.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

[2] https://www.usgamer.net/articles/blizzard-is-in-an-internati...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-basketball-nba/exci...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/dfezlv/activis...

[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/dp1py7/blizzard...