Corporations being tone deaf is a regular thing, but the evoking of "Every Voice Matters" so often after shutting down, and punishing, champions of their tournaments (it has happened twice! remember) for supporting a good cause is of historic levels.
Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.
When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:
It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard, which has been using things like LGBT in their marketing (showing their lead Overwatch character as gay [outside of China at least]).
You can't have it both ways. You're either progressive in marketing and action, or you're a hypocrite and deserve the market's backlash when you show your greed over ethics. It's why Lebron got pummeled so hard for his HK remarks.
Do people really expect blizzard to be ethically positive? At least among my friends (which admitted skews toward hacker types) Blizzard is notorious for being for the game industry what the RIAA or MPAA is for the music industry. The company has sued 3rd party implementations of games network protocols and engines, even when no assets were distributed. They even tried to sue Valve over DOTA 2. And to top it off now they've pivoted to a loot boxes monetization model.
DOTA started as a Warcraft mod, which used Warcraft characters. The suit resulted in some characters being changed to be less similar to the original Warcraft heroes (e.g. Leoric -> Skeleton King -> Wraith King).
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that "you cannot use our game world / universe" in your game? Valve and Blizzard came to a pretty reasonable arrangement.
AFAIK Skeleking -> Wraith king was a purely -China- ceremonial thing
Blizzard are the Apple of the gaming industry. They can pretty much get away with anything because the people that like them REALLY like them and those that don't are just not very interested. And due to this they can get away with some really, really shitty things, and have done.
=3= Mmmm, Nintendo's more "the Apple of the gaming industry". Super-closed, walled garden ecosystem, stubbornly oblivious of and draconianly IP-protective in response to online phenomena of game streaming (to the frustration of their more aware American branch), etc.
The vibe I get from the Nintendo direct showcase is at least straightforward and honest. You have some middle aged businessman in a suit who clearly doesn't play any video games. They shove game after game at you without too much fluff or politics. They don't explicitly say this but in my head I hear, "We want to sell a shit ton of games and make a ton of money from you, look at this game, this game and this game! Oh we aren't done check out nostalgia game 1 and 2!!"
I find that sort of honesty refreshing when companies like Blizzard, appear to champion social causes in order to gain a mass following to sell games, rather than sell a good solid game without the political fluff piped in.
I agree. I like Nintendo as a brand more than I like Blizzard as a brand. I don't like that I have to buy their hardware, but I do appreciate that they keep producing quality content.
(I do wish they'd left the old Wii online stores open, but that's another issue.)
Thats where we need people to have a conduit of accountability for the double standard. My ethnicity and sexual orientation is not their marketing soundbyte.
Exactly. What this should reveal to us is that the "wokeness" of corporations is mostly disputable. Yes, they sense the winds of change, etc., but look a bit more closely and you see that it's often cynically adopting the language of the majority culture to garner broad appeal, not real ethics at work.
So let me understand what you’re saying: Blizzard should not try to be inclusive or otherwise progressive because they are not always? I think we should acknowledge that companies try to abide by the norms of their market and that their main concern has always been to make money. Them displaying any kind of opinion is just a byproduct.
Blizzard should try to be inclusive, but consumers should realize that their progressivism is rooted in cynical self-serving greed much more than a sincere desire to improve the world.
If a streamer had said something, for example, anti-LGBT, Blizzard would have shut them down the same way and everyone would be applauding.
Depending on your personal politics, any given corporate action is either 'brave, standing up for principles' or 'obviously a sellout to the corrupt bad guys'.
You don't even need concepts of good or bad to make this argument. This is just consistent with Blizzard's already political messaging. They are supporting LGBT rights, of course, they would be anti-anti-LGBT
Except in China. Which shows that in reality they are pro-money and any bias toward or against groups like LGBT is only when it helps their bottom line.
Is it possible to want to work in China without merely being pro money?
I keep hearing that greed is the ultimate motivation, but if you want to work within China for any reason you must follow the governments ethical guidelines.
For some people within Blizzard, they want to work within China because it is their country or their ancestoral heritage.
I didn't think this was about what the player said, but instead about Blizzard leveraging their influence to shut someone up. I think that'd be wrong even if the player had said something "bad".
Now that I think about it, for most people it seems to simply be an issue of good vs bad.
It wasn't just Activision-Blizzard banning Blitzchung and confiscating his prize money. The official Hearthstone account on Weibo also parroted the Chinese government party line, "We will, as always, resolutely safeguard the country’s dignity" in Chinese.
Like if they said, in America, "Of course, USA #1, never forget 9/11, freedom baby", that would just be more boilerplate pandering and not really political.
Is the level of hostility that high that even such sweet nothings are treason?
I think it's instructive to realize that mainland Chinese people are being fed state propaganda about "rioters" destroying HK and demanding independence, thus their opinions should be weighted lesser on the issue accordingly.
The sparse examples I've seen of Chinese people actually being exposed to the reality in HK and being surprised, tells me the state media is being effective in its Ministry of Truth role.
Honest question: have you personally seen the "propaganda" of the other side? If you've only seen one side, how are you so completely sure you know which one is right?
I used the word sparse deliberately: I have only seen two news reports involving mainland Chinese citizens visting Hong Kong and commenting on their observations.
Both were surprised, almost shocked, that the rioting, damage to public and private buildings, and constant street fighting, with deaths on both sides,that they had heard about was completely untrue.
Both seemed to want to temper their comments but still were very surprised that the story they had been told was so different from the things they saw in person.
As a general rule, if millions of people are upset enough about something to take to the streets and risk being injured or killed by the police, it's a pretty safe bet that something in their government is fucked and in need of fixing.
If you apply this consistently, you should also be sure that Brexiteers, the yellow vest protestors, and the Catalonian independent movement show that European government is fucked. (If you do, I respect that, but if you don't, consider why you think some mass anti-government protests are more sympathetic than others.)
Are you asserting Brexit isn't a massive failure of the British Government? They punted a critical and complex problem to the citizenry, and then advertised outright lies as benefits, and even many British people now recognize they were in no position to make a meaningful judgement of that issue and vote on it.
I don't know what the yellow vest protest is.
Catalonian independence is something I agree with. They've been exploited extremely hard by Spain more or less since they lost their autonomy.
>you should also be sure that Brexiteers, the yellow vest protestors, and the Catalonian independent movement show that European government is fucked.
That's exactly what they show.
Whether these groups favored solutions to the fuck-ness are the correct solutions totally tangential to that. When people take to the streets something ain't right.
> Whether these groups favored solutions to the fuck-ness are the correct solutions totally tangential to that. When people take to the streets something ain't right.
This, exactly. It takes a lot to get people to resort to civil unrest. I wish it was respected as being that, the last resort of a populace losing faith in it's leadership, and not derided as it is so often as just people who disagree with something. Protests should be a sign of not just disagreement but profound disgust not just for what is being done, but for the processes and the system that permitted it to happen in the first place.
The one counter example by sibling commenter with the abuse protestors get is reprehensible. How do things like that not outweigh whatever minor inconveniences of disturbance are happening for the people you mention?
Many protestors have been disappeared by imprisonment, and presumably shipped off to the mainland. Quite plausible a number of them have died, and this fact is being hidden because it would cause global outrage. China has historically been secretive about their extensive use of political and ethnic prisons and their use of prisoners for organ harvesting.
Body of a 15 year old female protestor was found floating naked in the sea. Many speculate she was raped and killed by police.
We do have evidence of torture: HK police (or mainland military acting as such) posing with an individual in a 'tiger chair' and mocking their suffering.
To get a even more generic, but to what extent is all of our social morals based on the information society provides us? In 200 years, what will modern society then look back on us and condemn us for buying into the propaganda on issues that, if they were mentioned right now, would be seen as clearly having a right/wrong choice that is not influenced by propaganda?
I will admit I haven't gone researching for attitudes of people from the rest of China, and I'm rarely on any social media sites, so I haven't seen much except whats been posted in a couple of channels from a very few people in Hong Kong.
My two points of data involving Chinese residents visiting HK and commenting on the difference between the media stories they had heard, and what they experienced in HK personally, were the basis of my comment.
I am certainly aware that there are about 7 billion different opinions about this topic.
There is a difference between saying 'Freedom for X people' and 'X people are retarded' that has nothing to do with a subjective feeling of 'bad' or 'good'.
There’s also a difference between saying “freedom is great” and “violent separatism is great,” even though both phrases could be used by different people to refer to the same situation.
As for it being subjective, does that matter? Millions of people are also racist and feel racism -- their racism, anyway -- is A-okay. That doesn't make racism somehow less bad, just because it's technically subjective and some people are fine with it.
HK protestors are for democracy, which is good. The PRC is opposed to democracy, which is bad.
It's almost like some issues are more complicated and nuanced than others.
I don't need to constantly wring my hands about declaring Nazis to be evil asshats, just because they were humans with varying motivations or whatever.
More insightful and deeper analysis may be warranted at times, to be sure, but summarizing them as genocidal, evil maniacs isn't wrong in the least.
I can objectively say that Nazi policies had a deleterious effect on Jewish populations.
Similarly, I can objectively say that Beijing's policies have a deleterious effect on human rights as defined by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I can subjectively say that the Chinese government is bad.
Mainland Chinese customers cannot have a real opinion about anything as they are fed with constant lies and propaganda from a single source of information.
Honest question: have you personally seen the "propaganda" of the other side? If you've only seen one side, how are you so completely sure you know which one is right?
I have. Like how their government lies about the air quality index, but when you check the index as generated by any other country's embassy you get a much higher number. How the people are taught that smog and unhealthy air is normal, and are afraid to talk about it if you bring it up. Or how major world events don't hit the papers, and if they do are given massive spin. Or how huge swaths of the internet are blocked. I used to live on an international floor in college, and when one of the Chinese students came here and went to the library, he said he read Chinese history and cried because it was so much different from what he'd be taught.
Check out the recent Catalonia thread on HN, and tell me if mainlander rhetoric differs all that much from that of a couple of the Spanish posters in it.
I don't accuse said posters of being members of a 50 peso army. I assume that their (nationalistic) opinions are just that.
You should extend these same assumptions to China.
Yeah the truth is hard to access if you can't read in both languages. Though if I had to bet, I'd pick the side that didn't firewall most of the internet.
Allocation of public funds is politics. Tax rates are politics. There are tons of topics that are differing opinions about things, these are politics.
The right of LGBTQ people to exist is not politics, that's human rights. The people who support this are good and right, and the people who oppose it are bad and wrong.
If you don't want to be bad and wrong, don't hold those beliefs. It's very simple, really.
Look, I'm on your side on this issue, but to say that LGBTQ lack the right "to exist" is liberal hyperbole that ends up being excellent ammunition for smart pundits like Ben Shapiro to rip apart. We gotta be more precise in our language than that.
I don't think it's hyperbolic at all. LGBTQ people should be able to exist in our society the same as straight people. Anything short of that is discrimination and should be called out.
And I don't give a shit what gives grifters like Ben Shapiro "ammunition." He's proven well versed in turning literally anything into ammunition for his bad faith arguments. People like him do not need to be "beaten," they need to be ignored.
"Human rights" are guaranteed by the government unfortunately, because with a monopoly on violence they are the only entity legally able to enforce them. Human rights are politics.
I wonder if the number of deaths due to driving is greater than, equal to, or less than people who were saved due to ambulances or doctors driving fast to the ER.
You're pulling this moral relativism play. The point is that Blizzard is an American company, with a largely liberal employee base and has explicitly shown support for certain causes.
They should take a stand. You can't please everyone, so it might as well be those with the right values. And people who think that Muslims should be interred or that HK should cede all political freedom are wrong.
1) Corporations and their boards are not blood-bound to do everything in their power to maximize value. They can act ethically, and it is easily (and morally) defensible that acting with values is in the long term interest of the company.
2) The article specifically references employees, so I also added that angle.
> Corporations and their boards are not blood-bound to do everything in their power to maximize value. They can act ethically, and it is easily (and morally) defensible that acting with values is in the long term interest of the company.
Sure, but literally anything can be “acting with values”, depending on the value system chosen. There's no particular reason that would be determined by the political preferences of employees. It would be more natural for a corporation interested in sacrificing near term returns for some kind of ethics to do so based on the shareholders preferences than employers (or, if the gesture at ethics was intended as a long term business health approach, to do so based on what it was expected potential future customers would respond well to in the corporate story.)
This is a myth. There is no fiduciary duty to maximize profits. There is the duty of loyalty, which mostly means you can't embezzle from the company, and there is duty of care, which means you can't do anything grossly incompetent that ends up harming the company. Duty of care is a VERY high bar (e.g. neglect safety standards and end up shopping e coli tainted food) and is nowhere close to being able to justify the "shareholder primacy" idealogy parroted by conservative think-tanks.
Yes! What values do you hold? Aren't you disappointed when an organization goes against them? Much less, when they have previously stated they agree with you?
Fascism and the removal of political freedom should not be taken lightly. This should not be controversial.
Well yeah, because being pro-LGBT is one of their explicitly stated principles. If they act according to their stated principles, why would there be an outrage.
But if they go against their stated principles, like "oh yeah, let's erase all traces of our pro-LGBT stances we care sooo much about in games for Chinese and Russian markets, because uuuuuuuuh... reasons", you bet people would get upset.
Yeah that's why you need to be able to distinguish between the morality of supporting a democratic movement and shitting on a vulnerable minority. This is not hard.
The point is that there is political messaging that Blizzard is ok with, and political messaging that Blizzard isn't ok with. If you were a Polish streamer and made a comment pro-LGBT, that would absolutely be political in Poland because of the currently ruling right wing party that has called LGBT movement and "gender philosophy" a "cancer" and "rainbow disease" many times - but Blizzard would almost certainly allow it because it alligns with the political views that they are ok pushing. But then as we saw with Hong Kong, there are other political stances that Blizzard heavily punishes, and that's not ok.
They probably wouldn't be ok with it. But they also probably wouldn't claw back winnings. That person would just find themselves uninvited in the future.
Part of this fiasco is how blatantly it is implementing a government's crackdown on speech.
Its obvious what is good and bad here. But do some roleplay; Its 15th century CE, and you (and all the people) have been conditioned since your childhood that the christian god is one true god and that the christian god is good.
Now if a person declares something "blasphemous", everyone will think that the person is on the "bad" side.
Setting a precedence lead to ugly slippery slopes and keeping to the absolutes in the guidelines is generally more inclusive.
>It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard,
The only ethics corporations have are making sure their share holders maximize profit as much as possible, any other ethics they pretend to have exists because they think it will lead to that or they're forced to. Corporations are mandated to do this. If it's a choice between ethics and shareholder profits for a corporation, the latter will always come first because that's why corporations exist. Corporations never have and never will have ethics as long as they exist in their current form where their entire purpose is maximizing profits. I have no idea why people seem to forget this these days.
One reason is that it's not true. Corporations are limited in their ability to say "screw the shareholders", but they aren't required to be unethical whenever they stand to make a profit from it.
Even apart from that, it just seems like an overly reductionist perspective. Why couldn't an honest commitment to act ethically help the bottom line?
>Why couldn't an honest commitment to act ethically help the bottom line?
Well if it did you'd think corporations would act ethically, whereas reality says otherwise and they don't unless forced by government or public pressure. The world's totally fucked right now because of corporate greed.
Every day I read a new story about how some corporation is acting completely and utterly unethically. It
>There are two levels of corporate duties to shareholders. First, corporate boards and officers deal at arm’s length with outsiders, and here, their responsibility is governed by the so-called business judgment rule, which protects them against suits by shareholders so long as they follow appropriate procedures in reaching a decision and act in good faith to maximize shareholder value. This rule both constrains corporate insiders but also protects them from liability if their good faith efforts turn out less well financially than expected. Indeed, if officers had to make good on every loss that occurs when deals go sour, no one would take on such roles. And second, whenever corporate officials enter into any kind of self-dealing transaction, the standard of care is much higher, given the conflict of interest. For such transactions, insiders must analyze whether corporate shareholders received “fair value” from the transaction.
I'm not sure I understand the response. Certainly many corporations do behave unethically, but I don't see why that means we should never believe any company will be ethical.
Why should I trust entities that regularly prove they give zero fucks about anything other than the bottom line? Why should I give them the benefit of the doubt? That's like believing an abusive spouse will change.
Corporations regularly flout environmental protection laws, they regularly flout human rights, they spy on us, they do skirt any and all laws they can, they abuse tax systems, they're responsible for large environmental disasters and end up throwing money at things to make everyone shut up about it, they lobby governments to get laws changed in their favour, they exploit children and impoverished people, they go after drinking water, healthcare and the basic necessities of a modern civilization in search of more profit at the expense.of people. Fuck corporations.
There is no legal doctrine for corporations to maximize profits. This is largely think-tank idealogy that has successfully won over the public mind. "Legal or moral duty to maximize profits" was a rarely uttered phrase in the 60s and one would hardly call the United States "not as capitalist" back then.
Blizzard has done a crazy amount of virtue signaling over the past few years. It should have been obvious to most that this was just marketing to get people to buy their stuff, but it seems to work on a ton of people. You may or may not be surprised to know that they backtrack on a lot of their progressiveness in the Chinese market such as various characters being of certain sexualities.
The sooner that people learn that almost every company ever is only out to make money and is not your friend the better. This has been a more difficult realization for some due to it being a video game company.
I don't think awareness that corporations are out for profit and not your friend is incompatible with pushing back on corporations who are curating an image of support for certain causes and are then acting in ways at odds with that image. In fact, I think it is necessary in order to understand how to push back. They are not your friend so they don't care about your disappointment, but they are out for profit so they do care about the things you can do to affect that: personally boycotting, organizing boycotts, spreading bad word of mouth, etc.
Maybe your perspective is that corporations shouldn't do this image curation thing, and yeah maybe so, but in a world where they do, it absolutely makes sense for individuals to push back on them when they are then hypocritical. Otherwise they get the benefits of standing for causes without taking on the risks inherent in doing so.
But, a business does not make decisions. The people of that organization make the decisions. We must pierce the veil and hold the individuals accountable. Start picketing their house, where they eat, everywhere they go.
The folks that care should really be taking lessons from the anti-abortion people picket outside of a physicians home.
>Start picketing their house, where they eat, everywhere they go.
This sounds so obnoxious and short-sighted.
If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions. You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?
The intent is to be obnoxious. But I'm not seeing how it's short sighted.
>If I own a business that doesn't align with your values, it's one thing to boycott and protest my business. It's another thing to follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park to protest my business decisions.
The size of the organization matters. It's much easier to completely shutdown "Dave's Coffee Shop" after they find out Dave supports the KKK. But to seriously impact a multi-billion dollar company with millions of users would require a large coordinated effort....which is unlikely to occur. So as we've seen in the past, status quo will be maintained.
>You're disturbing the enjoyment of those places for other people who might have nothing to do with my decisions. I suppose spouses, children and even extended family should have to endure this as well?
If we want results, we must exploit people's weaknesses. You want it to stop? Stop the decisions people are unhappy with. No is forcing these executives to work. Don't like what you're being subjected, and you don't have the power to change it? Then quit!
It's short-sighted because breaking of mos maiorum for YOUR immediate political gains is how you legitimize the actions of the psychopaths who will break it further for THEIR gains 10 years down the line.
Eventually this process gets you to the Saturninuses of your world and the streets run with blood. You, who did not appreciate history, has just repeated it.
Depends. Do the ramifications of your business values follow me around to a restaurant, dentist, or park? Do they affect my family? If yes then yeah, people should be able to ensure the ramifications of them follow you there too.
My point is that everyone else, even people who aren't related to me, are now paying the price too.
Take the park example. A group is protesting against my business decisions, so they follow me to the park where I run at 6 every evening. All the other park patrons now have to endure with your protest even though my business has nothing to do with my run at this park. Or the patrons at a restaurant. Or at a sports/concert venue.
You might be protesting me to change my business decision, but other patrons are the collateral damage caught in the cross fire. You might be suffering for what I have done. Why do these other people who are away from my place of work have to as well?
>My point is that everyone else, even people who aren't related to me, are now paying the price too.
Right, but when people picket outside of a building or march down the street in protest....are bystanders there not suffering the same fate? Why is that not acceptable only when it's directed at a person? Do you think picketing outside of a large corporate building has much effect other than an attempt to raise awareness to others?
Eh... buisnesses are not just collections of people acting in a vacuum, though. The structure of the business drives certain decisions. I'm not saying it's a hive-mind, but pretending a business is just a bunch of individuals is too reductionist.
Also, since ActiBlizz is a publicly traded corporation, there are people in that organization that are legally or contractually obligated to make decisions in the best interest of ActiBlizz.
>The structure of the business drives certain decisions. I'm not saying it's a hive-mind, but pretending a business is just a bunch of individuals is too reductionist.
Also, since ActiBlizz is a publicly traded corporation, there are people in that organization that are legally or contractually obligated to make decisions in the best interest of ActiBlizz.
Sure, but at the same time executives in these organizations do have power. Twitter just walked away from that sweet political ad money for ethical reasons, for example. You just have to find the correct arms to twist.
>For not allowing a comment on their platform? Really?
Huh, I thought it was obvious to folks as to what people are upset about. It's not about preventing a comment on their platform.
And of course they can limit whatever comments they like. I suspect blizz_ack would also not want racist, or other discriminatory language, displayed on their platform.
>Go boycott the company. Make sure to make it clear that bad actions will have consequences.
It won't work. To make a dent in a company of that size, a significant portion of their user base would need to cease buying products. That simply won't happen.
>But please, do not go bully random people.
Oh please..these are far from random people. There is no place on this Earth for folks that place greed over the greater good of the people.
> punishing, champions of their tournaments [...] for supporting a good cause
Which makes this headline framing by the LA Times even more upsetting. I mean, yes, it's a PR disaster, but even in context that's not the important fact to convey here. They're dealing with outrage because of an expressly political act they took, not merely a mistake in the management of "Public Relations".
Some people would say, if a company sincerely took a political stance, it would encompass the CEO, purchasing, HR, hiring, service delivery, content and so on - rather than only being the purview of the public relations department.
If political stances are taken by the PR/marketing department in isolation, they risk finding the company's actions in contradiction of its words.
But those people who know better would say that it is the job of the PR department to coordinate the internal discussions regarding a company's political stance with the appropriate decision makers (which might include the CEO and board but would not include HR, or any of the other departments you've mentioned), and to coordinate the disclosure, dissemination, and followup of said stance once the decision-makers have weighed in.
And yes, in most companies, it is the PR department that determines the company's political stance, not the CEO, because the the people in the PR department have a much better understanding of the consequences, because it's literally their job to understand this stuff. In that respect, they are no different than than Legal or Accounting departments.
And like the Legal and Accounting departments, when it comes to PR issues, the head of PR gets to tell the CEO what to d. (This doesn't mean the CEO will actually do that, see Elon Musk, but at the overwhelming majority of companies the CEO will trust the expert.)
You're also not talking about a PR decision or political stance. You're talking about logistics, which is normally within the purview of the COO.
And yes, now that China is a political issue, you can bet that the PR department is involved in the decision to buy Chinese-made components and the COO will take their advice into strong consideration, since they're the ones that will be explaining the decision to society, and their choice of logistics structure could affect their future logistics mobility.
As a marketer here's the deal. A brand can be "woke" and be socially conscious. When they do that though, and this is where people get tripped up, they're opening themselves up to an incredible amount of scrutiny that most legacy brands frankly aren't prepared to deal with. So as a marketing strategy it works, but it doesn't work as ONLY a marketing strategy. The entire organization has to be aligned on that messaging otherwise someone can and will figure out where you falter and attack you relentlessly for it. It's why it works for someone like allbirds, but blows up in Blizzards face when they grand stand on something like gay rights but then kowtow to Chinese party lines. Another good example is Nike and Kapernick campaign while also using sweatshops in SE Asia. Nothing enrages anyone quite as much as hypocrisy, especially the kind of person that would choose to support a brand based on their social stances.
tl;dr when you posture as a pillar of morality people will call you out if you aren't consistent.
Just to point out: this is true for individuals as well. Standing for any cause or principle has inherent risks. Some people will disagree with your cause or principle and people who agree with it will expect you to be consistent.
I think society has shown that it only works sometimes.
The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Similarly with the NBA, player agents have indicated an overwhelming support by players to NOT speak out for fear of losing their endorsements from Nike, Adidas, Anta, and other firms deeply embedded in the Chinese industrial complex. Even with the Commissioner coming out in favor of voicing the issues, its the big stars the fans care about and without them there will be a significantly fewer repercussions.
Not sure I'd say the NFL won. If anything their reaction prolonged something that probably would have passed quickly on its own if they had let it play out. In the end they came out of it looking really bad.
The players didn't "win" necessarily, but I'm not sure if there was ever a criteria by which they could have won. The goals of the protest were too diffuse. I guess the main goal was awareness of police violence, but the people that needed to hear it the most immediately pretended it was about something else (the troops, patriotism, etc.).
I think with what's happening in the NBA, the truth is a lot of these "woke" individuals are only woke as long as it doesn't affect their business interests. It is what it is. This isn't a new thing.
>and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
We don't know what would have been the result if the NFL had simply ignored the whole thing and let the players peacefully protest. A lot of effort was put forth by the NFL and the president to get people angry about that before they shut it down. Maybe don't do that.
> The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Did it? I'm genuinely asking and seeing contradicting results trying to search. At least super bowl stats look like they've lost quite a bit. [anecdata] I know myself I quit watching football as a result of that and the injuries.
Ah today I learned that Lebron James is so big he counts as multiple players.
But seriously, where are the citations that multiple players support censorship, let alone NBA players in general?
Because the reporting on ESPN and CBS Sports is the exact opposite--players may choose the remain apolitical with respect to Hong Kong but want the right to speak out if they choose.
When I worked at Blizzard at the beginning of the decade, it was the first "corporation" I'd worked at where I sincerely felt and believed that the espoused values were authentically reflected in decisions and actions. The edges were starting to fray a little bit around 2012-13, as veterans of the original Blizzard slowly began moving on to other things (or retiring altogether).
There followed a steady trickle of Activision staff into the holes left by the departed, which IMHO was also reflected in gradual shifts in recruiting practices. Morhaime's departure was the final farewell. I can't say what Blizzard's culture is today, but I'm confident that Every Voice Matters isn't what it used to be.
I worked there from about 2008 to 2014, and definitely noticed the same thing. Once the core guys started to leave, and teams started to ballon in size, you could tell that the magic was gone. For me, Diablo 3 was really the turning point. Despite clear polish and triple A quality, it lacked the same soul that the predecessors had.
A couple months ago, a recruiter working for Activision-Blizzard contacted me about a potential job. I responded that when I was working for my CS degree, I had dreams of working for Blizzard. But then earlier this year they announced laying off 800 people immediately after also announcing record profits, and said that doesn't sit well with me and I have no interest working for them.
The recruiter responded with something about being able to understand that perspective. I probably burned a bridge, but I don't really care.
The old "Blizzard" has been gone for years, another company ruined by greed.
Yeah, as an ex-gamedev as well there's a large divide between the values a devshop tends to hold and the publisher that finances your project. I've yet to see a studio acqui-hire that doesn't eventually head south as the publishing culture seeps into the previously independent company.
You say that as if that is always a top down transformation, and not the result of entrepreneurial founders losing motivation or leaving after a lockup period. Regardless of cultural differences or how the transition is handled, the fact that a studio is no longer an independent entity affects how you view your work and how much value you can extract from a commercial success.
There are some high profile examples of studio acquisitions I’ve had insight into where the publisher has been blamed for perceived changes in a studio’s output post-acquisition. The reality on the ground was almost the inverse: the publisher gave the acquired studio a great amount of autonomy and runway, even more than than internal studios, and the acquired studio struggled in an environment where they had relatively more freedom than they did pre-acquisition. It let bad habits fester and poor managers calcify in roles they never could have survived in during scrappier times.
Transitions are hard, and I'm sure there's definitely that failure case.
However if you look at EA and the acquire/in-house cycle they go through every 4-5 years, there's no way you can hope to be stable under those circumstances. Ditto Microsoft and the 2-3 cycles they went through with similar disasters.
Fundamentally the two types of companies have different goals which drive their culture. Publishers exist to make money, pure and simple. They diversify risk by supporting multiple developers but at the end of the day they want to see growth and cash. A developer on the other hand may be happy staying mostly cash-neutral as long as it keeps them afloat to keep creating the art/experience that drives them.
I'd argue that those two cultures are at distinct odds(based on what I saw play out when I was in the industry) and trying to merge them leads to disaster.
They should be dreading it. For an American company, or really any non-Chinese company to bow down to China's censorship regime is unacceptable. I hope Congress doesn't let the issue die. It's an increasing trend that will be harder to curtail the longer it persists.
What's Congress going to do? The reason China has so much influence is because Chinese companies are willing to invest in (western) video game companies (or at least Tencent is). Most game developers aren't exactly swimming in money and if a Chinese company offers them more resources then many of them are going to take it even if it comes with strings attached.
Another reason is access to the Chinese market. Congress can't really do anything to stop companies from complying with the Chinese government so that they can publish their games in the Chinese market.
If China wants to enforce global censorship by using their market as a hammer, America should use their market to enforce global (or at least bilateral) freedom of speech.
It's an intl trade issue, it's impossible to expect every company to stand up to the CCP when they use access to one of the biggest markets in the world as a weapon
> If China wants to enforce global censorship by using their market as a hammer, America should use their market to enforce global (or at least bilateral) freedom of speech.
China has an interest in their global censorship, American companies don't have the same impetus towards free speech. China has roughly 4x the population of the United States, and, as their GDP per capita raises, they will increasingly start to fulfill the American role: vacuuming up trade surpluses. It would be a poor business decision for Western companies to not seek the larger, emerging market.
These companies don't have nations, they just have the pursuit of shareholder value. You're fooling yourself if they're going to express any sort of value system contrary to that stated goal.
As a European, I would like to see that, but I think the EU would have a problem with the US demanding free speech, let alone most of the other countries outside the west.
> I think the EU would have a problem with the US demanding free speech
That's because you reduce it to the word "freedom of speech", and then expand it again, to all sorts of other things. Call it freedom to criticize governments, totalitarianism, murder, and so on, and there will be no issue.
Most people don't want to be treated like this. So, either they are against it, or they don't get to speak anything on the matter, being hypocrites. A double standard is no standard. It really is that simple.
There was a plan to do that. Americans (including people here) hated it. The TPP, as many issues as it might have had, was the solution. Instead of supporting it, we voted for our wallets.
The latter is the reason why China has so much influence. Tencent only owns 5% of Blizzard. Heck, Blizzard only gets around 6-8% of their revenue from China. But they're looking at it as an avenue of future growth. Just like every other international corporation.
There are already regulations that dictate how companies must regard and comply with laws and regulations of other non-US jurisdictions. This could be a similar thing. Or maybe not, maybe there is a better way.
The point is, this is a long term issue of national security. US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid an comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
> Who is the "they?" The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
If you're referring to GP's comment "They should be dreading it" then yes, obviously. They are and absolutely should be dreading this event. I would be. Wouldn't you?
> I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
> The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
> No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
"Employees said they have fielded venomous backlash on social media and in emails and been confronted by passersby while wearing company apparel off Blizzard’s campus."
> No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
> Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
What do you think the Blizzard employees are going to "have to deal with" if not harassment at BlizzCon?
Why would it be harassment? I imagine they're going to have to deal with protests. They're going to have to deal with how to manage the many people who show up to the event who are visibly pro-Hong Kong without damaging their Chinese interests. They will have to deal with difficult questions, interrupted talks and a hostile audience.
None of this is harassment. You can't just use the word "harassment" any time someone challenges you or says something you don't like.
> What do you think the Blizzard employees are going to "have to deal with" if not harassment at BlizzCon?
They will have to deal with negative publicity and people not liking their events, and refusing to buy their games, therefore causes them to be less successful?
Why shouldn't they deserve to receive negative financial impact, as a company, for doing stuff that pisses off customers?
>Who is the "they?" The rank and file employees who had nothing to do with this decision?"
Yes, them. Exactly them. They're likely going to be faced with protestors and other types of pushback, and it seems rational to not look forward to that. They're at the event representing their company, and so they must face the conequences of those decisions.
They should not, themselves, be directly blamed, but it's their job to front for the company, and that won't be a comfortable thing to do right now. Now though, if they decide to keep working for the company, they are complicit In it's actions because now they know better. I wouldn't expect them all to quit at once, but if they don't start looking around for other opportunities then they share an increasing part of the blame.
We all face this in our work. Decisions we disagree with, we must decide if it's something we can live with it not. If we decide we can live it then some level of culpability accrues to us. Certainly this can be mitigated by working to change things from within, but it's still a factor.
Every employee tacitly uses their labor to support the actions their company performs. They obviously don't have 100% culpability for everything the corporation does, but it's definitely not 0% either.
I don't think this is something that needs regulation. The capitalist solutions of boycotts and protests seems to be sending a pretty strong signal to blizzard.
At the end of the day, while china is a huge market, it isn't the whole market.
That does mean, however, if you think that Blizzard's actions are immoral, then vote with your wallet. This doesn't work in every case (particularly where companies have practical monopolies on essential goods and services), but at the end of the day, Blizzard is a company that peddles luxury products.
Considering that Blizzard has not backed down from their stance that their actions were correct, I don't see how this is sending a strong signal. If they think current and potential revenue from China exceeds anything lost as a result of this issue, then they aren't likely to take any lasting message from boycotts and protests.
Wouldn't American boycotts only signal that domestic revenues are declining, making international growth seem even more appealing to maximize shareholder value?
I doubt shareholders will see it this way, when NA and EU make up a combined 88% of your revenue, with the whole Asia-Pacific region making up only 12% [0].
Clearly that it's my opinion that such behavior is unacceptable. There is no legally unacceptable behavior here. But private or not, why couldn't a company's behavior be regarded as unacceptable? There's plenty of things that, while legal, are not things people would be comfortable with a company actually doing. Plenty of people find Facebook's actions unacceptable. Are those not legitimate opinions, backed by reasoned arguments? Absolutely they are, even if there are reasoned opinions on the other side as well. What you seem to be saying is simply that you don't find unacceptable.
Also: This is a long term issue of national security, making the behavior of a company subject to a bit more scrutiny: US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid and comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
Firstly, ATVI isn't a private company (not that it would necessarily make a difference here). But just a company can legally do something doesn't mean that they should.
why is it immoral to play by the rules of a country in order to access that country's population? the country's people should decide for themselves how they should be governed. or do you think you know better?
Again, you're continuing to insist that morality and legality are equivalent.
In some countries, beating your wife is completely legal. Certainly you wouldn't argue that it's moral.
Laws aren't written by average people, they're written by politicians who do immoral things and get away with it. They allow immorality for their own benefits.
Its a company, and should only do business. It should have no right to dictate other people's politics, platform, governance policy and speech. They have no right to stop what other persons speak because they are not the government.
Businesses should have no power except to sell their products and services (Not even indirect power that helps them sell their products and services better)
* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.
* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).
Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.
Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.
>Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much
HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.
Not many had it on their phones - it was only able to be installed by anyone for a few days because previous attempts at app store approval were rejected.
Apple just removed an app. The equivalent would be if Apple removed the app, banned the developer, and sued to take back any revenue the app generated from the dev. That would've spun the story to be more individualized and there would've been a similar backlash.
On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.
Apple just complied with a law enforcement request to take down an app (which didn't even prevent anyone from accessing the exact same information using safari)
Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.
We have a lot of choices in entertainment and can easily abandon bad actors. A smartphone/computer ecosystem that is deeply integrated with your life is harder to step away from. The only smartphone OS competitor doesn’t exactly have a better record of standing up to China.
I'd say it was because of the nature of two of the three punishments. Taking away money from someone who had won it in a tournament was too far and "firing" casters (banning casters for either 6 or 12 months is basically firing) who may not have been involved was too far. I think the PR would have succeeded if they had only banned him, even if it was for a whole year, and if they had fined him a fixed amount.
I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.
IMO, it's mostly a popularity contest. Apple is well-loved and people want to make excuses for them whereas Blizzard has been getting a lot of negative PR for a couple years now and this new outrage is just a natural fit for Blizzard's already strained public image.
I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)
Apple is a more important political party and holds both social and financial leverage. On the other hand, Blizzard is an easy target that media can shame as an example for what will happen if other corporations choose to side with China in the US vs China cold war.
It increases agressive behavior. Since "gamers" are primarily young males, being more agressive could lead to them "hurting" blizzard the only way they can; posting non-stop about it on social media, organizing protests, etc.
You might be right, but I think it's interesting to note that the gender ratio of Blizzard consumers is more balanced than is typical in the gaming industry. Still not balanced, but more balanced.
High school biology covers this. There is an observed increase in competitiveness commensurate with an increase in testosterone, within sexual arousal responses. see reference [46] within the testosterone wiki for whatever that is worth.
That's a reference from 1986. We now know that the increase in aggression is due to higher levels of estradiol due to aromatization of testosterone to estradiol. It's pretty well known that if you give a group of men exogeneous testosterone and an aromatase inhibitor, they will report being calmer and more relaxed.
This will blow over for blizzard as fast as it did for apple. After occupying essentially the top spot on many international new cycles for 20 weeks, people are getting tired and finding out abnormalities. Like how there are 0 verified direct deaths while other protest that are much more violent barely gets any coverage. Or that vandalism of subways and shops conducted by protesters never gets to news or are covered in a positive light.
World of Warcraft is growing stale and they seem to not have a replacement (as far as zero leaks).
Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
That's fine and all but that's not going to be the cash-cow that WoW was for them. I was a dedicated player since launch but left after Legion and won't be returning.
I find it incredible that World of Starcraft is not a thing. (Starcraft Universe?) Blizzard is letting billions of dollars just sit on the table, refusing to even acknowledge the possibility of its existence.
My only theory is that they didn't want to cannibalize the WoW playerbase, but that's how you get stuck in a rut as a corporation.
About 10 years ago when I worked at Jagex, the creators of RuneScape, there was a sci-fi MMO project (basically sci-fi RuneScape) happening. I didn’t work on it, but a lot of people did, for 2-3 years. It was cancelled before release, I think because it just wasn’t fun enough. When you see a sunk cost like that or Titan (which notwithstanding the Overwatch pivot cannot have been cheap), you get a sense of how hard this is to get right.
I kind of wish there was a "direct to VHS" for video games. You hear about all these scrapped failures, but never get to take a peek.
An MMO might not work, but with regards to Blizzard, there is the example of Starcraft Ghost where they got to the point of releasing trailers and sending empty boxes to stores as advertisements for the upcoming release. I'm sure they'd have sold it if there was a way to do so without damaging the brand.
World of Warcraft was a success because it came out at the right time, during an upward trajectory of MMO popularity, and it was polished and approachable compared to the first generation MMOs.
Since then, the MMO market, to my knowledge, has shrunk, as other genres have become popular. There's no indication that a World of Starcraft released today would be anywhere near successful.
Compared to many other moneymaking genres, MMOs are expensive to build and maintain and difficult to get right. The vast majority of them are massive, pricey failures including one of Blizzard's. I can't imagine any decision-makers at any major game studio thinking not-developing an MMO is leaving billions on the table and, to me at least, it seems they're likely right.
I'm not sure people want OW2, especially with a PvE focus.
Their last Blizzcon was pretty bad ("Diablo for mobile: Don't you all have phones!?") and they somehow managed to make things worse right before this Blizzcon.
Things are looking grim for a company that used to be an industry game changer.
I've played OW with people who are absolutely terrible at shooters but loved the characters and skins.
Eventually they rage quit because they never actually wanted to get better at the game.
This same thing happened with Dust 514, where there was nothing at all for the person who couldn't aim, (unlike EvE which has some barely passable PvE).
I'm guessing that Blizzard is looking at these stats, and noticing that people log back in for the limited pve content in OW.
They could have just made a Diablo or StarCraft universe MMO (or both) and people would lose their minds and sell their kidneys to pay for a monthly subscription...
Calling WoW stale is a reach. It consistently appears among the top 10 highest grossing games every month. Millions of people still play it and come back every expansion. They have no reason to make a "WoW 2" as long as their subscription base is strong and profitable.
Also, keep in mind that they don't even use subscriptions as a metric anymore, since now they have the in-game store with micro-transactions and the WoW Token which sells for more than the price of a subscription.
>Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone. I used to always be interested in any new game Blizzard was working on, but those days are gone.
You are also older though. I don't know about you personally, but I was a fanboy all the same, but as I age the importance has decreased significantly, especially as I started to not enjoy the same types of games as I once did in my youth. My son however, he is just like me when I was 10, loves them. Likes waiting for them. Wants to be a part of the everything Blizzard.
I often find this problem hard to detect. Are things less interesting? Are films worse? Or am I just less interested.
ON the flip side when I was a child, we had no internet and I remember long boring weeks of Summer (In a rural area, meant I spent a lot of time alone). But as an adult I basically am never bored. Is this because of having more stuff to do? Or because of being older?
> I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone.
I don't think they lost their magic.
I was a WoW hardcore player for years. I won't play Overwatch due to it being a twitch shooter but I love the art direction.
Hearthstone is awesome. Can be played lightly, whenever, and is extremely well built for a "card game".
Hard to believe. That would be like one tenth of the world, excluding children and not internet connected. Even steam is a bit below that in active users and it has many more games and gamers.
I was definitely the target demographic for WOW classic: nostalgic as heck.
Instead with the Hong Kong dust-up, I faced the facts.
The blizzard I grew up with and loved is dead. Even with Wow Classic released, the world has moved on.
Instead I initiated a full Battle Net account delete, which nuked all my Wow characters, Hearthstone decks, etc.
Classic will never have the same revenue potential because players would revolt if they added in-game transactions.
Those transactions were a massive source of profit in later expansions and completely eclipsed subscription revenue. Even as the WoW playerbase dwindled, revenue grew thanks to things like game-time tokens, level boosts, mounts, cosmetic items, etc.
All of those things are 100% antithetical to the premise of Classic WoW.
Blizzard accidentally stumbled on the biggest business model of the 2020s-2050s: digital retirement homes combined with the GenX/Millennial equivalent of re-releases of Beatles albums.
I realized I was aging when I figured out that WoW Classic is Oldies Radio but for people in my age bracket.
I agree, but there is one person who's not in the market for an out of date game but is for a remaster: youth who were too young to play the original. Case in point: my kid.
I wonder how different this might have been if he'd instead shouted, "MAGA!". I imagine the next election will present some similar situations for companies to traverse.
Before people chime in with "but they technically didn't say that they would add the toy revenue on top", that is exactly how it is typically done by other companies in the same situation. They made a ton of money and didn't have to put up a dime of their own.
a lot of the blizzard developer interactions with players at blizzcon has been the developers acting like condescending, down-talking jerks to players during q&a.
let's see those egos take what they like to dish out.
put yourself in their shoes. you're in the games industry, so your pay isn't fantastic but you're doing what you love.
say this is the issue that makes you want to walk out. you'd have to accept that this might mean losing not only your dream job, but a job full-stop - games is a very competitive industry and you might have a long period of unemployment.
this would have to be a "I would give up my career in the games industry for this" issue. it is for some. it's not for others.
What's the alternative? It's not like Blizzard has given any meaningful apology or done anything to remedy the situation.
All customers can do is boycott and protest. Nothing else will cause any change in behavior. Unfortunately, employees will be hurt in the process.
Wouldn't it be better for employees to stage a big moment now, force Blizzard to backpedal, and resume being a game company sooner? A long, drawn out thing is worse for everyone.
this is the first seriously backwards move in 30 years of the company afaik. quitting immediately isn't the answer to your average employee.
and please reread what I wrote. I know many blizzard employees. as much as it hurts them to see what their company did, quitting simply can't be an option to them. not in a massive immediate show of support. not everyone can afford to be political.
It all returns to nothing. It all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down...
Blizzard had a good run. I don't doubt the company name itself will go on as a branding on a whole slew of rehashes and remakes, like a little label to be stuck on a reskin of an original idea from 15 years ago that's been crunched, mashed and reinterpreted as a mishmash of whatever individual elements are deemed popular and "the reason X was a success". But for me, it's over. Blizzard is no more. I would go so far as to say that the company should lose the Blizzard trademark given how far off they are from what that name originally stood for.
I'm at the convention center now. So far I havent seen anything unusual. Not even a Hong Kong t-shirt.
Tickets were sold out long before the controversy hit. Obviously there are a lot of us die-hard fans that are upset, but I dont think there's many people here with the intention of causing trouble.
The way I see it going horribly wrong is if Blizzard over-reacts. I fully expect to see people show up in pro-Hong Kong clothing/outfits or wielding pro-Hong Kong signs. Hopefully Blizzard exercises some self-restraint when that happens or it's going to blow up on social media.
However after the "don't you have phones" fiasco, Blizzard may be so out of touch that we'll see a video of armed guards dragging away some popular twitch streamer in a "Free Hong Kong" t-shirt.
I just find it disappointing that gamers are far better at organizing and pressuring a company than other product users. Apple and Tesla both have gotten a near free pass with Apple only raising some ire when they knocked down an app but it blew right over very quickly. Perhaps gamers just have more time and more outlets to get attention?
What will be interesting is if these people even get in and how quickly they are put out when they do. If they are silent, just in costume, will that provoke a response as well?
See what a little competition buys you? Activision players can always go to Ubisoft or EA. But the dirty little secret that everyone's wising up to is that they all suck and indie games are better than AAA in ways that matter to many people.
When staring down an existential crisis your clients can and will push you around for misbehaving, even if that misbehaving is out of a desire to get out of said existential crisis.
I discovered about 12 years ago that WoW was essentially a slot machine in it's construction (reward schedules, rest XP, etc) designed to keep you engaged without entertaining you.
I've had far more fun playing Battle for Wesnoth than I ever did playing WoW.
Avid gamers are probably already playing several games so it might be easier to lay of a few of those games and fill the empty space with the other games you are already playing.
To me the phone and computer are much more difficult to find a replacement for, if I were to boycott Apple. There's all the data tied up in iCloud, and there's a bunch of software on both the phone and computer that would have to be found alternatives for.
In short the sunk cost in games can be pretty deep, but not very wide. On computing platforms the sunk cost can be both deep and wide.
I see discussion all the time about rejecting pre-ordering, rejecting games that are beta-quality at release, rejecting microtransactions and predatory mechanics like loot boxes, rejecting companies that abuse their employees, rejecting games that move core features into paid expansions, rejecting pay-to-win, rejecting invasive rootkit-style DRM, rejecting single-game-store exclusives, and so on.
And yet, games companies continue doing all those things regularly - giving me the impression gamer boycott attempts don't have much impact.
I think that's just it. The vocal gaming crowd is very quick to talk big talk about action but they're a tiny minority of the actual customerbase. For all the bravado you see on Reddit about boycots there's wayyyy more people who just want the latest title from popular publishers or the most anticipated shooter; they're not even aware of the drama going on in the background.
Same here. I'm prepared to be sorely disappointed though. They're going to clamp down hard on people (although, this might even lead to a bigger storm).
IMHO that would be a serious tactical error and prove Blizzard's critics right (i.e. this is about China, Blizzard cares more about revenue from the Chinese market than about freedom of expression). If there's zero crackdown, the people in pro Hong Kong stuff will look a little goofy in retrospect. Like they were just overreacting to the initial ban like gamers are wont to do sometimes.
> If there's zero crackdown, the people in pro Hong Kong stuff will look a little goofy in retrospect.
If there's zero crackdown, then the protestors have won and they have a platform to show their support in a public setting for HK. I don't see the downside here. Isn't that what people want? To be able to protest the Chinese government and their actions in HK freely and without punishment?
> I don't see the downside here. Isn't that what people want? To be able to protest the Chinese government and their actions in HK freely and without punishment?
I don't think most gamers actually care about Hong Kong specifically. If they did there are more effective venues for protest than Blizzcon. My sense is that what really got people upset is the suppression of - seemingly virtuous - speech, and the perception of Chinese influence on Blizzard's policies.
For example, showing up to Blizzcon in a Winnie the Pooh outfit is effectively an attempt at trolling Blizzard and doesn't do much to inform or sway anyone on Hong Kong. If Blizzard responds, the troll has been proven right (Winnie the Pooh is offensive only in the very narrow context of CCP leadership). If Blizzard does nothing, it's just a guy cosplaying Winnie the Pooh and the attempt fizzles out.
Edit:
To reframe this a little bit, I think protestors are going into Blizzcon with a hypothesis: Blizzard is suppressing a certain kind of free speech because of its financial ties to China. So far, Blizzard's official position has been that this is not about China at all. While I'm sure many would like to help Hong Kong, what they really want out of Blizzcon specifically is for their hypothesis to be validated. For them to be proven right (I include myself in this group, by the way).
If Blizzard basically ignores the protestors, it lends credence to the official line that banning Blitzchung was a purely impartial, administrative action and the hypothesis remains unproven.
It would be a mistake to do that. The headlines would write themselves at that point: "Blizzard bans Winnie the Pooh outfits from BlizzCon". We're talking 'The Onion' level kinds of headlines here.
That's the real problem they're facing with this situation. They pretty much lose right now regardless of what choice they make. I do feel a little bit bad frankly, but at the same time, I'm also quite excited for some schadenfreude.
If it's a lose-lose situation for Blizzard then they could very well pick China over the West. Them making that choice will give them a bad reputation in the West, but it might provide them opportunities in China.
>They might try to straddle the US and China, on the basis that the US has no real teeth
That's the point. The US can't really shut out Blizzard even if they engage in this kind of behavior, because the US gives them freedom to make their own decisions. I'm saying that if it's a lose-lose sustain then Blizzard might pick appeasing the Chinese market, because there's a limit to what can happen to them in the US. The players might get mad, but plenty of gaming companies exist that lots of players are angry about (eg EA, Ubisoft).
The US can't easily shut them out of the US but it can shut them out of China entirely via sanctions. The US does with countries other than China already (e.g. Iran).
It's not clear to me how likely the US government is to do this, but it's something they have to be aware of given that whole bipartisan letter from congress thing.
You forget that the majority of profits still come from a core customer base that is located primarily in the NA/EU region. There is a serious risk of permanently alienating a large portion of this base that could have massive impacts on Blizzard's overall earning potential.
^this. As of the most recent quarter, only 12% of their whole revenue came from the ENTIRE Asia-Pacific region (which includes China, but a bunch of other countries as well), while US made up 55% and Europe did 33%.[0]
How hard can they clamp down really? Have a peaceful protest outside the venue in public and there is nothing they can do. (I'm assuming you have freedom of assembly and right to protest in the US)
Yeah, I guess in the context of a attendee that's "clamping down hard", I guess I'm just used to "clamping down hard" meaning something more than being excluded from a private event.
I mean, these are people that have spent thousands of dollars to be at the event. Diehard fans who love Blizzard. I'd say it is clamping down hard if they start kicking people out. I don't think it's a great look when your most ardent fans are staging protests inside your otherwise most celebrated yearly event, or what you might do to prevent it. Nobody here is talking about Blizzard arresting them or shooting at them.
Given their history of banning pro players for their speech, seeing more of these bans for high-profile members of the community who participate doesn't seem farfetched.
Guess we understand "clamp down hard on people" differently where not being able to participate in a tournament (private) seems very light, compared to what others can end up with when speaking out about something (see https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/spain-counter... for example)
You know, I vaguely remember HK protestors being glad that people were making the effort to make Blizzard accountable for punishing people for speaking out in support of HK. Is it suddenly a bad thing because the people trying to protest at a Blizzard event aren't being beaten?
No, absolutely not! I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I love that people are standing up for what they believe in. I just disagreed with the notion that whatever Blizzard will do, can be classified as "clamping down hard", but it might just be that I have a different experience of what that means.
And I might be wrong, maybe Blizzard will do drastic, irrational actions like involve riot police or something. Who knows.
It's important to see an idiom like that contextually. Of course there's going to be a difference if you're in Spain on the streets facing off the police or if you're going to a gaming event hosted by a games developer. Clamping down will take on different meanings depending on who is involved or where it's taking place, but I don't think it's wrong to use 'clamping down' in this context.
Initial guess? Highly "curated" list of attendees. Are they still saying the general public can come? Wonder if they don't limit the number and filter heavily.
They already curate questions asked from the public. I remember reading that the guy who asked Diablo devs if "it's an early April Fools joke" actually pretended to want to ask a different question.
What are you even trying to say? It absolutely was a political issue even before this happened, and the fact that it involves videogames does not detract from the issue.
Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.
When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...