Oh they absolutely are not. You should see the way people have always, and will always defend this company.

Scanning social media, I haven't seen a single gaming influencer say it's a sufficient statement: https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Averified%20https%3A%2F...

The contrarian viewpoint is "what were you expecting?" in which case the reply is "an actual apology."

Or even a hamfisted attempt at an apology like you get out of many PR departments. The only thing that remotely resembles an apology in the whole release is:

> In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly.

No explanation of how that happened. No discussion about what they are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's not even saying, "We made a snap decision and it was wrong." It seems to be saying, "We made all the right decisions, but we're going to tune the degree a little."

They did a much better job apologizing to China. https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dfkmp1/blizzards_...

Had they not done that they might be believable, but because of the way the kowtow to china, definitely hard to find any honesty/truth in their statement.

>> In hindsight, our process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly.

I'm not even sure here what "reacted too quickly" means. If the player did clearly violate an unobjectionable Blizzard policy, one would hope that the sanction would be swift -- it shouldn't take a week to (for example) ban a player for blatant cheating.

Any apology would then upset their Chinese customers, like the NBA.

Anecdotally, most those I know, while unhappy about it, are continuing to play. While I don’t think people are going to defend this, I doubt this will meaningfully affect them in the long-term.

It’s easy for companies, after some backlash by a loud yet small crowd on social media, to blacklist a certain high profile individual out of risk. It’s hard for that same group to make a difference against an organization as large as Blizzard. Most people still want their product.

I've been unable to play this week. I haven't outright deleted my account, but it made me sick to the stomach to think about opening the Blizzard launcher.

I've seen others in StarCraft related subreddits share similar feelings. I agree the majority seem to still want the game and community to continue on as is.

I plan to avoid their games with the exception of playing with a particular sick friend. I don’t intend to buy another for a very, very long time.

Can’t speak for other people though

Gamers aren't very loyal. And Blizzard has certainly not been defended by its gamers here - it's been heavily condemned by the whole gaming community, which is why we're hearing so much about it and blizzard is issuing a PR statement. Just look at reddit's r/blizzard right now, it's a shitshow. Pages upon pages of posts protesting against blizzard's handling of the events.

There are still multiple posts about it on the Reddit front page too, at least earlier

I don't think this is totally inaccurate, though there are probably more puppet accounts than sincere Blizzard apologists.

I'd be more worried about the influence that propaganda machines can have, and what's freaking me out is that you actually have to look to spot those sorts of posts. Most people don't look.

I dunno, the hearthstone subreddit still seems pretty angry...