>And reddit in general was up in arms about this.

For two days.

>Many of the blizzard related subreddits are staffed by mods that remove posts about China. And when you post something in /r/wow you see a big "no politics" banner. Not seeing that many posts about this there means nothing about how the players feel.

Activity level is pretty much the same.

I'm sorry, but this is just the latest outrage target and in two weeks it will be something new entirely.

reddit is not representative of sentiment. I don't think the topic will go away so quickly, esp since NBA and Lebron have brought so much heat on them as well.

There was a bigger outrage about EA during the lootbox fiasco. The most downvoted post in Reddit history belongs to an EA representative.

EA doesn't seem to have suffered.

EA changed their lootbox strategy in multiple games and thus lost millions over that. The whole industry took a step back, regulations were announced or at least threatened in several countries. The outrage against EA had a huge effect. It didn't destroy EA, but that also wasn't the goal nor feasible.

Semi-political outrage can not destroy a gaming company (not until politicians carry on). Each year there are new 10-year old kids going into stores/the first time onto Steam and buy something flashy they want to play. And in countries like Germany a third of the population plays games. Those buyers are not unified politically nor culturally.

But: If the opinion that a company does harm to gamers or people in general becomes prevalent, that's a huge danger for the company in the long run. It dampens its success, how their marketing is received, what they can do and what they can say. They lose access to the core group. Stuff like this is important enough.