Key differences:

* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.

* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).

I think you meant to write empathizing rather than emphasizing.

There's just not that much to empathize with in the Apple case, their decision to remove an app hardly inconvenienced anyone.

Censorship sucks and all, but in the end the actions taken by Apple didn't really harm anyone. Blizzard definitely fucked over Blitzchung.

The optics are different.

Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.

Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.

>Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much

HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.

Not many had it on their phones - it was only able to be installed by anyone for a few days because previous attempts at app store approval were rejected.

In the end nobody was prevented from accessing the map on https://hkmap.live/

Apple just removed an app. The equivalent would be if Apple removed the app, banned the developer, and sued to take back any revenue the app generated from the dev. That would've spun the story to be more individualized and there would've been a similar backlash.

On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.

Apple just complied with a law enforcement request to take down an app (which didn't even prevent anyone from accessing the exact same information using safari)

Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.

Completely different situations.

We have a lot of choices in entertainment and can easily abandon bad actors. A smartphone/computer ecosystem that is deeply integrated with your life is harder to step away from. The only smartphone OS competitor doesn’t exactly have a better record of standing up to China.

I'd say it was because of the nature of two of the three punishments. Taking away money from someone who had won it in a tournament was too far and "firing" casters (banning casters for either 6 or 12 months is basically firing) who may not have been involved was too far. I think the PR would have succeeded if they had only banned him, even if it was for a whole year, and if they had fined him a fixed amount.

I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.

IMO, it's mostly a popularity contest. Apple is well-loved and people want to make excuses for them whereas Blizzard has been getting a lot of negative PR for a couple years now and this new outrage is just a natural fit for Blizzard's already strained public image.

I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)

Apple is a more important political party and holds both social and financial leverage. On the other hand, Blizzard is an easy target that media can shame as an example for what will happen if other corporations choose to side with China in the US vs China cold war.

Gamers like being outraged.

Blizzard is multi-platform (see Hearthstone on Mac and iOS), while Apple is a platform.

Gamers are very different from your average customer.

Sorry, what does testosterone have to do with this ?

It increases agressive behavior. Since "gamers" are primarily young males, being more agressive could lead to them "hurting" blizzard the only way they can; posting non-stop about it on social media, organizing protests, etc.

You might be right, but I think it's interesting to note that the gender ratio of Blizzard consumers is more balanced than is typical in the gaming industry. Still not balanced, but more balanced.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/overwatch-female-player-c...

Yeah well I could argue that a sizeable part of these angry testosterone people are Apple users. What stopped them from "hurting" both ?

High school biology covers this. There is an observed increase in competitiveness commensurate with an increase in testosterone, within sexual arousal responses. see reference [46] within the testosterone wiki for whatever that is worth.

That's a reference from 1986. We now know that the increase in aggression is due to higher levels of estradiol due to aromatization of testosterone to estradiol. It's pretty well known that if you give a group of men exogeneous testosterone and an aromatase inhibitor, they will report being calmer and more relaxed.

This will blow over for blizzard as fast as it did for apple. After occupying essentially the top spot on many international new cycles for 20 weeks, people are getting tired and finding out abnormalities. Like how there are 0 verified direct deaths while other protest that are much more violent barely gets any coverage. Or that vandalism of subways and shops conducted by protesters never gets to news or are covered in a positive light.