Just so we’re clear, they are applying these “rules” at the behest of an authoritarian, antidemocratic government.

Nobody is making anything up.

Authoritarian ant antidemocratic government is just as legitimate as any other

We have United Nations to handle the issues like this, and from their point of view you are wrong.

Or rather the UN has hurt their own legitimacy, eh?

Indeed. Murder is not government:

https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/storage/301/d5d23e36-3c35-11e8...

No, they are not.

I am not sure why everyone keeps believing this lie.

There was no rule that banned political statements.

Instead the rule was something like "we can ban anyone for doing anything that might make blizzard look bad".

It was absolutely not some specific rule about banning political statements.

Just to be clear, they have no rule about not talking about politics. Just a general "don't say anything that we determine offended someone" rule.

Which they weren't going to enforce against the Americans, until it was pointed out. Then they belatedly enforced it to show they were consistently applying the rules and that it had nothing to do with China.

most of the shitstorm revolves around the fact that no, they aren't doing that.

The pre-stated rules don't talk about politics but about offending users.

So, ok, let's say that political statements are offensive, which is a weird proposition.

This is not being enforced for other political views and statements, nor for all users, so clearly it's not applying a pre-stated rule.

I feel the backtrack blizzard did can be considered a fair excusation, and people could reasonably forgive them, but let's not lie to ourselves by treating this as "just applying the rules".

They are not. Right now, the #1 player on the Hearthstone Asia Wild ladder is named "HKisCHINESE". Meanwhile, you are prohibited from registering a battle.net account named "FreeHK".

That is imposing China's rules. There is nothing illegal or even offensive about naming your gaming account "FreeHK". (Battle.net has plenty of political account names; seems like half the people in my Overwatch games are named Trump2020, and they're probably not talking about the Starcraft/Hearthstone streamer.)

Edit: I did go to actually check, and this account is currently #2 and Asia and North America, and #1 in Europe. Clearly Blizzard is aware of it, though, and has chosen to take no action.