If they keep cancelling events, if Blizzcon crashes and burns, if sales go way down, the stock will suffer.
If American corporations banded together to stand up to China the way they claim to care so gosh darn much about LGBTQ+ rights, they could send a powerful signal that some values are higher than profits. But who wants to be first?
It would take very little effort by protestors to destroy Blizzard's plans that they've been working on for years. The straw that breaks the camel's back could be that at an official Blizzard event, someone drops a banner that says: 光復香港 時代革命.
Even if the deal does not go through, it would severely harm Blizzard's leverage.
This hit is a pure hit against Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch marketing, and it’s brought the Switch port into the light of day. Sales of the Switch port will be watched closely by both sides.
And I doubt the cancelled subscriptions and closed accounts will have a significant long term impact. Especially since they mitigated account deletions by only allowing manual deletion requests with a submitted id; due to very conveniently timed and curiously persistent technical difficulties...
These public outrage storms quickly subside and people go back to playing the games.
It's curios to me though how so many companies completely bend the knee to China, even though Chinese only have a small amount of stock or revenue percentage.
I guess the market potential is just too great. And of course for companies like Apple they are at the mercy of Chinese supply chains.