"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 will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD [...]"

That's pretty close to "Blizzard can remove you from Grandmasters as soon as you open your mouth". Sad to see such a cowardice from corporations, although in the case of Blizzard it was kind of to be expected after all their visual modifications to Hearthstone in order to appeal to the chinese market.

Isn't this basically the same with all big corporations these days? If you say unpopular things on your YouTube channel, you will be demonitized.as a way of punishment. In short, either you please big brother, or you will suffer.

Is it a "big corporations" thing? Try saying e.g. that maybe Minsky was innocent, see how that works.

OTOH who knows anymore, maybe big corporations do have something to do with it.... it's certainly convenient. If you have money it's rather easy to summon a mob to do your bidding and silence inconvenient people, so they must love this new trend. Also if you have money and power, it's easy to get discretionary, arbitrarily-enforced rules to not apply to you. All these new trends are so much more convenient than the old "due process" thing....

I think we all need to boycott Blizzard and the NBA for putting money over freedom and democracy.

Big corps can't escalate things as a reaction or on a whim. They have much more to loose than a single protestor does. It has to be planned. Preferably with all other big corps in tow. Google tried and their market share went from 35% to 2%.

Now if they had got together with other corps, and drawn a line the story might have been different. That said, with each attempt comes learning and the next attempt wont go the same way.

The Chinese aren't immune to pressure (as the tariff wars show) and there are invisible lines in the sand, they can be pushed to step over that will unify opposition and escalate things.

Intelligent protest is about finding those lines.

I agree with your analysis, but I dont agree with the motivations. The issue is forced growth. Why exactly is it so important for Google to have a market share in China? As if they aren't dominating the internet enough already. And because everyone buys the "we need endless growth"-myth, it is suddenly OK if Google sides with China because all they are doing is trying to grow. Aha. I tend to see things differently. They use the market share as an excuse to not care. As long as we put bussiness over everything, we can't really be surprised about corporations working against citizen rights.

Yes, it is. I've heard many examples of youtube channels with mildly conservative political opinions getting ranked far lower than the youtube algorithm should rank them. Since youtube isn't transparent with its creators we have to speculate for ourselves. A lot of evidence points towards censorship.

I choose to believe that even big corporations can choose to have values.

I do believe we are entering in an age where reputation is going to be much more valuable to companies.

My ISP for 10 years is one that took some strong stances against censorship by doing things like mirroring wikileaks (back when it was cool) os supporting net neutrality.

I kinda put Google in a different basket for years because of their (initial? I think they changed?) refusal to censor search results in China.

And companies who submit to Chinese censorship, I want strictly nothing to do with.

Eh, it's pretty much a given that a company won't tolerate using their games as platforms for politics or propaganda. I consider this no better than annoying spam and I'm happy they did it. I don't want to see it if I'm playing their games. I didn't sign up for that, so get it out. I don't care if it's politics that I support or not.

Ironically refusing to speak can also mean that. If the rest of the players would refuse to speak at all (in interviews or whatever), they could still be banned for that.

Title is clickbaity. They did it for a political protest during an official Blizzard tournament stream, not for actions on his own stream or something.

He put on a gas mask and called for liberation of HK. I'm with him, but I definitely see why Blizzard has the rule in place, and it would not be right to overlook this - they would then have to be OK with others doing other protests. Blizzard should not pick a side.

This is the rule in question

> 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 will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.

The rule is not "political speech is not allowed" it's "don't make us look bad."

Choosing to ban this player is absolutely picking a side, and it's not with the good guys.

You have to ask the question as a company, to allow politics to enter your space.

Now it is supporting HK, next time it is against nazi's, next time maybe against Trump. Once you disallow one, you will "pick a side".

I'm not saying this ban was good or bad, I'm just saying it's more complex than picking side in that debate. Maybe they just don't want to get into the shit of any political debate.

But for the rest, all the support for HK. Maybe this ban brings it even more in the news.

The problem is, you also take a political stance by removing him from your tournament. Intended or not, people will read this as 'shilling' for China. Now I don't follow Hearthstone, but it's quite common to ask players personal questions like "How did you prepare for this match?" and I could see someone answering that with how the HK situation has affected that (less time, extra stress etc.).

This is not automatically a political statement, but just by bringing that up they could have banned and DQ'ed him for the same reason and it would've looked just as bad if not even worse. It would still look political in that situation.

I completely disagree. It isn't a complex issue and companies don't get to decide whether to "allow" politics or not. Politics are a part of EVERYTHING... Ignoring and trying to moderate that is just foolish.

What you're saying seems to be built on assumption that all "politics" is the same. It absolutely isn't. Evil (fascism, concentration camps, ehtnic cleansing, ...) and fighting against evil, are both political stances, but they are very different.

And "let's not interfere with evil because it would be politics (or affect our bottom line)" is definitely political stance - it's picking the evil side.

I would say this is a rather childish view of the world, to separate things into two categories, evil and good.

Sure most of the times its shades of grey.

But sometimes like in this instance it really is black or white.

If you consider concentration camps, gulags, or whatever as anything other than evil, I don't think I can convince you.

Such way of thinking seems really alien to me.

Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me, so maybe you have the answer.

At some point, the line of evilness becomes so thin that you will have to "pick a side" if you have done it before. Easier to just not go down that route.

But still, is Trump evil?

> Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me

Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps.

There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear.

If not this guy, who would you consider evil if anyone?

Ok I was wrong, you can actually divide the world into evil or not. It's not always as clear to me and others, so can you share if following things are evil or not: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Barack Obama.

>He's responsible for ICE

In what world? ICE was created in 2003.

I mean, yes, but

1) ICE is Executive branch and he's the chief of Executive branch (I guess the proper word would be accountable).

2) I'm pretty sure a lot of the way ICE is acting now (you know, the children in cages who are refused medical care and so on) is affected by the guy in charge being openly racist who considers non-white people subhuman, wants to build a wall and considers "good people on both sides" between nazis and non-nazis.

President is not just chief of the army and the executive branch, he's an ideological leader who represents the people and shows what kind of behavior is proper, and what is acceptable and so on.

At least he should be, anyway.

Sometimes you just got to voice your opinion [1]

Blizzard chose money over human rights and they will have to stand for it themselves. They've already picked a side, money. Now they lost my money though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...

Same here.

I wanted to believe that even despite Activision buying Blizzard, it would stay an awesome company. I should have known better.

Starcraft 1 was the first game I ever bought. I feel sad to have to boycott them now.

One less launcher I have to have installed on my PC at least.

And what's wrong about letting whoever won a tournament have their 10 seconds of free speech to pass on a message?

Are we so afraid of free speech that we must insist on compartmentalizing subjects in that way? Just have Blizzard make a statement saying "That person's opinion is only his own, not Blizzard's" and be done with it.

And yes, that means the next one may shout about veganism or white supremacy. So what? That will benefit or hurt the people speaking, not Blizzard.

They should have an explicit rule against political displays like they have in football (I mean soccer).

That way it's clear for everyone rather than having a catch-all rule that is arbitrary and does not tell players where the line is.

Then there would be arguments that a certain symbol or action is political. Then any hint of something that might, conceivably be a stance or salute. No patterns, pictures or logos of any kind, unless it's of our sponsors.

Like FIFA ludicrously deciding that a poppy on a Remembrance Sunday international is political. They deserved every bit of anti-FIFA vitriol the popular press and internet managed to come up with.

> Then there would be arguments that a certain symbol or action is political.

No because they would not allow anything.

> Like FIFA ludicrously deciding that a poppy on a Remembrance Sunday international is political

If you start allowing this sort of display to commemorate a war then you open the door to plenty of highly political displays because wars are obviously highly political and sensitive issues.

Even in the UK wearing a poppy or not is political.

Hardly, it's a symbol of remembrance of dead, not of a war. It's a hell of a stretch to call the use of a white poppy political.

Most remembrance ceremonies have veterans of both sides attending, and are used for reconcilliation - unlike e.g. WW2 anniversaries such as the now comically overblown D Day fun days.

War dead.

If they start to allow one country to commemorate their war dead then they have to allow other countries to do the same, and as said these can be very political and sensitive issues. And then if they allow that why not another commemoration? Thus it is sensible not to allow anything.

The poppy doesn't even commemorate people who died in the war as a whole. It's specifically about the soldiers who were fighting the war and killing for it, and that's why it's politically controversial - the whole thing has jingoistic pro-war, pro-military overtones and they seem to have become more dominant over the years, especially after we helped invade Afghasnistan and Iraq and the British Legion decided to to make it a symbol of support for our soldiers there. Perhaps the best symbol of what it has become was the time the British Legion decided that a photo of little kids in "future soldier" shirts waving huge inflatable poppies was a good representation of the values the campaign represented...

Pretty much the whole of Europe marks remembrance day. It is about reconciliation and as far as it can be made so, is apolitical. Politicians of all sides and nationalities, including the "other" side have and do attend different country events. Perhaps less so with this generation of politicians who will make a cup of tea political if they can, but that is not the act of remembrance.

Not to mark _a_ war, but all war. That point is important.

I don't understand what's the argument about here.

Commemorating war dead is a sensitive issue. FIFA has to take all situations across the world into account. It is sensible for them not to allow any display and to keep to it without exception even if the British think that they are special. No big deal, just keep football purely about sport.

> the British think that they are special

lol. You are aware that just about the entire developed world, and a fair proportion of the rest mark the same day, right? It's called Veteran's Day in the US, also on November 11th.

Not marking it would be the political statement.

Yes the world, at least the world that matters, is made of the western countries that fought WWI.

The poppy incident is an illustration of this arrogance and ignorance of the real world.

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle again. We ban accounts that do that because it's not in keeping with the intellectual curiosity HN is supposed to be for. Would you please take that spirit more to heart and fix this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Blizzard should not pick a side.

Not picking a side is siding with the status quo, which is Chinese oppression in Hong Kong.

Not picking a side is not allowing political discussion, no matter who you (or they) perceive to be right. Coincidentally, this is also the choice that makes most sense to a corporation which stands to lose a lot from picking a side. Players will likely respond to sensationalist reporting of this case, but forget about it soon after, while the Chinese government is not gonna go easy on Blizzard picking the other side.

But nearly every large company in America engages in political discussion when they talk about diversity, feminism, and inclusion. I think that's a good thing, but it's clearly not the case that these companies shy away from making progressive statements.

All they are doing is saying things which a certain audience wants to hear. Nobody really cares about inclusion or diversity. They just claim to do so, because in this day and age, they will benefit from doing so.

It doesn't cost large companies any money to make feel-good progressive political statements on social media.

However when it conflicts with their pocketbook, they stay quiet or internally oppose them (example: Zuckerberg trashing Warren for antitrust and privacy issues).

That player has forced blizzard to appear as though they endorsed the protesters.

Being protesters for freedom, they ironically did not respect another (unrelated) entity's freedom to choose.

The freedom to oppress is no freedom at all

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments/flamebait to Hacker News?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There shouldn't be room for such cowardice to exist in this world.

In other words they do pick a side - they side with Chinese government, because the communist party has a leverage on them.

But we have a leverage too!

If we manage to damage their brand and profit, they may decide that censorship is not to their benefit.

We need to be loud and clear - communism will not be tolerated. Otherwise, it will start to creep trough Blizzard and many other companies, and limit our freedoms too.

Which is exactly how sports leagues operate, be they FIFA, the Olympic Committee, the NFL, the NBA...

If you expect them to be the high water mark of social justice, you're going to be deeply disappointed.

(Meanwhile, various tech firms have been criticized for picking a side, or allegedly picking a side in social conflicts over the past few years... Damned if you do, damned if you don't, apparently.)

Blizzard is much more directly supported by money from its customers, it's very easy to boycott online games provider.

Didn't the NFL had an issue with kneeling a while ago? Did they fire the players?

I think to an American organization, it's far more relevant to resist fascism, bigotry, and violation of the rights of <Pick any of the following groups, that currently feel under attack: Women, religious and ethnic minorities, trans persons, native persons> in America, then to worry about how China administers Hong Kong.

But, ah, that former would be 'political', and 'picking a side', and 'controversial', because you see, ~half the country thinks (rightly or wrongly) that those things aren't a serious problem.

I leave considering what ~half of mainland China thinks (rightly or wrongly) about Hong Kong, and what we should do about widely held, but unjust political opinions as an exercise to the reader.

Blizzard is an international company with a ton of customers outside the US

> Blizzard should not pick a side.

You cannot "not pick a side" in a situation like this. Blizzard clearly picked Chinese money over human rights.

They behave rationally as a company, but I hope they will still lose on this. The fact this is a rule changes nothing - they created that rule.

It should be noted that before invading Poland, Nazi Germany and Hitler were not unpopular in the US, and even then public support only faded slowly, so that probably would've been a hotter take.

Hindsight is always easier.

During nazi Germany, the corporation indeed did not pick a side (ala, IBM's equipment was used to do data processing for the holocaust).

But, it's too far to say that they (IBM) was pro-holocaust.

> But, it's too far to say that they (IBM) was pro-holocaust.

Only because it's inconvenient.

Hitler wrote what he wants to do with Jews in Main Kampf. There were lots of exiles from Germany before WW2.

Supporting such a regime with hardware makes you morally at fault exactly like building a crematorium in Auschwitz. In fact - many people building stuff for Germans had no choice - help or die. IBM had choice and decided to help for money.

Pro-making money is not pro-holocaust.

Lots of people were selling information about hiding Jews to Germans for money or for saving their lives.

Was that "pro-holocaust" or "pro-money"?

A lot of people were working as guards, maintenance personel, etc at death camps. Were they "pro-holocaust"?

In the end if you helped to make death camps work and had a choice to avoid doing so - you're at fault.

> Blizzard has ruled that Hearthstone pro Chung "blitzchung" Ng Wai will been removed from Hearthstone Grandmasters, following the player's call for Hong Kong's freedom during a post-match interview. Additionally, Blizzard has stated that it will no longer work with the two casters who appeared in the now deleted broadcast.

https://www.pcgamer.com/blitzchung-removed-from-hearthstone-...

I am a huge starcraft 2 fan. But from now on, I'll refrain talking about it. Boycott Blizzard. They support Chinese censorship.

I am so sad. That was a company I really loved.

While I agree with the sentiment that is being expressed here (i.e. it's "wrong"). I can't help but think about the fact that he ... simply broke the rules. There is a clear clause in the ToS that states basically "You are working for us. If you say anything that can damage our reputation, we can cease working with you." Which, to me, makes a whole lot of sense to have as a clause.

How they choose to enforce the rules is completely at Blizzard's digression though. There's giving a slap on the wrist and then there is banning the player and the casters. That sends a pretty clear message. If a player had advocated for gay rights, that would've technically still broken the rules, yet somehow I doubt Blizzard would've cared much if at all.

Esports used to be entirely privately-run one-off events where authoritarianism like this wasn't possible. This new era of centralized esports hasn't really paid off for anyone but Riot and even they readily admit that their esports department loses money.

Unless someone is directly employed for social media PR, a clause that broad is not justifiable.

Probably, but that's not saying much. Anything a player does could in theory damage their reputation (e.g. something ridiculous like saying you like AMD over Nvidia can damage Blizzard's reputation with Nvidia fans). I think the fact that they're choosing to exercise their ToS right in this case does speak to their values rather than it being them just "enforcing rules".

He didn't damage their reputation. Blizzard shot themselves in the foot.

That's like, totally your opinion. Blizzard has a huge base in China that is largely invisible to us. As a large (gaming) company you want to stay as neutral as possible, or at least that's what I imagine what large PR firms would consult Blizzard to do.

Standing up for totalitarianism hardly seems like a neutral choice.

I’m sure allowing this wouldn’t do much for their reputation as a company that wants to trade in China. Not everything has to be a forum for political speech, and trying to force everything into being one is just a deceptive way of trying to force your views onto others.

Companies are spineless and will do pretty much anything for money.

We've seen it from the NBA, Blizzard, Disney, and the like. The fact of the matter is that if you want to do business in China, you have to be open to censoring things that they don't like.

South Park rules.

The fact they went so hard on this (and will no longer work with the two casters who tried to hide / not be associated) is part of what's particularly so insulting, and egregious.

They are implicitly making an example of this, thereby sending a political message.

Similarly, let's not forget the MtG deck Umbrella Revolution: https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/adriennereynolds-101714-whats...

That's really sad and stupid. Now magically all the tech giants are blocking the accounts of HKers.

Here you have the power and the dark side of the cloud: one click and it's game over

I am thinking about it from the angle of video games vs. real world.

Be a hero, a revolutionary, a pirate, feel encouraged to work hard, explore more, improve yourself, rebel, but only there in a safe artificial illusion, virtual world they built for you. In real life, do stay a passive compliant consumer, a source of money (or energy like in Matrix).

This chasm seems to keep widening with the progress in technologies like VR, and this way of organizing a society is very convenient for businesses and people in power. Welcome to Coward New World!

Ingenious next steps in this direction would be to seamlessly integrate our jobs into artificial reality, so that people can sustain themselves, make money for corporations and people in power - do all this staying totally immersed in the illusionary world. Get exclusive game currency, bonuses to your stats from your employer for a good work. Mmmm, I want to write a book about it :)

The cost of Tencent investment funds.

Not a surprise. If you still do not get, prepare for a world with no freedom of speech. Starting from Cathay, nba abd this.

You have to kill Winnie the pool per South Park advice. You have to ... there is choice when you have to no freedom.

I like how esports is so close to sports sports. This is the equivalent of “taking a knee” during NFL games while the national anthem is played.

What’s curious is that it now pits free speech vs China with Heartstone own Kaepernick. The NFL issue, I think, was two social groups (kneeler vs people upset by kneelers) with NFL/Nike/etc in the middle.

This new situation has a social group (players/free speeches/HK) vs a state (China) with Blizzard/etc in the middle.

It’s curious how Blizzard so quickly picked their side while NFL and Nike are still not going all in on one side (NFL didn’t ban, just no one hired player).

I keep tracking Blizzard cause I play Hearthstone from time to time. This company is unethical, it doesn't even care or respect their own employees and you can see it based on their previous scandals. They are treating both designers & developers like money making machines and they ruined almost every of aspect of their games. They spend millions of dollars in tournaments and always trick their costumers into buying more and more gaming content. It's the most greedy gaming company after EA.

They shouldn't have accepted to get bought by Activision. The only way they make good games now is by releasing old titles (sc remastered, classic, reforged)... And now this

Yeah and the irony is that Activision was formed by Atari employees who left the company because they were treated like sh!t.

At this point, Blizz must be hoping that the bad publicity is better than their current no publicity. Hearthstone is the #14 title on Twitch as I type this out and prominent players have noted how much less viewership the tournaments consistently get.

Also Tencent owns a portion of Activision Blizzard. That would be my guess for who is pulling the strings behind this specific incident.

I think Blizzard wants to make a statement and being strict about politics have no place in their games... Honestly i would be surprised if any gaming company would allow that, independent if the Player is right or wrong.

With respect to Twitch placement, since when Twitch is a benchmark for number of Players in a game worldwide ? HS lost momentum because of the greedy economy of the game and because other games surged.

Another source for the subject: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/10/in-post-game-interview-hea...

>I think Blizzard wants to make a statement and being strict about politics have no place in their games...

Meanwhile in Overwatch, they've made a point of a diverse cast and canonically made several characters gay/bi, upsetting plenty of far-conservatives. (all of which is excellent, of course) Hell, Starcraft literally features storylines about revolutionaries fighting a dictatorship.

I get that game politics are different than real-world politics, and they have to draw the line somewhere, but it's a little conspicuous where they've chosen to draw the line.

Very brave @blitzchungHS hope your message is heard.

NBA, Blizzard, who is next?

What next? I just checked how many game companies owned by Tencent. I don't think situation will going better. Especially these are popular esport games (Fortnite, LOL, PUBG)

https://www.pcgamer.com/every-game-company-that-tencent-has-...

You forgot Disney.

The act didn't bring Blizzard into public dispute. Blizzard banning the player brings Blizzard into public disrepute because it shows that they are cowardly whores willing to do anything for money.

>The act didn't bring Blizzard into public dispute.

Like most things these days, that depends on which "public" you're talking about.

Do you have any evidence that the free HK statement itself harmed Blizzard's business?

Do you have any evidence that leaving that statement wouldn't harm Blizzard's business?