blizzard

this has been a difficult situation to deal with, but we need to discuss it.

short catchup for anyone unaware: blitzchung (a hearthstone grandmaster - one of 48 pro players who plays in a broadcasted league weekly) went on stream during his winner's interview last week and said "liberate hong kong, revolution of our times" on air. the casters essentially told him "just say what you're going to say and then we'll cut" and hid behind the desk while he was saying it. about 48 hours later, blizzard removed blitzchung from grandmasters and zeroed out all of hsi winnings while also being banned from pro play for a year. the casters were also fired.

the outcry has been immense. this was about a day or two after the nba faced similar issues with the GM of the houston rockets tweeting to liberate hong kong. the nba apologized, the owner of the rockets apologized, all mentions of the tweet were scrubbed, but there were still major consequences. the nba commissioner later came out to apologize again but also said free speech is protected, and basically all of the chinese partners of the nba have immediately and completely severed their business relationships in the process. it's not an isolated issue, and china is squarely in the eye of the world politically. rightfully so - i'm not a politician or a reporter or anyone remotely qualified to talk about this, but there are active human rights violations happening in hong kong and we should all take the time to educate ourselves on it. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695

*why did blizzard do what they did?*
money. china has a lot of it, and blizzard wants/needs a lot of it. hearthstone in particular is huuuuuuuuge in china. there are more legend players than all other regions combined and netease (chinese company that runs blizz products in china) has made an actual tournament mode that had 25,000 people playing in it like last week. they chose to move fast to save face and to not end up like the nba - and in the process pissed off basically all of their western audience while valuing profit over freedom of expression.

*was this a bad thing to do?*
YES. full stop. it can be justified or rationalized - and, realistically, it is a symptom of capitalism - but it is still a bad thing and blizzard still did it. there is no getting around that and i don't want to get around that.

*would other companies have done it?*
yes. in fact they actively have. capitalism innately pushes corporations (and people) towards making decisions for financial reasons. honestly if blizzard took a stand and lost the entire china market, their shareholders would probably sue them and a lot of employees would almost certainly lose their jobs. plus, the entire china server may just be gone overnight and all the other chinese players may be subject to scrutiny or reprimand. doesn't make it right to do what blizz did - it was a bad thing.

*why does this matter more now?*
great question. games and entertainment are in the public eye more than, say, cathay pacific airlines - where two pilots participated in protests, were immediately fired, and then the entire executive team was replaced (which happened two months ago). in addition, the current state of political discourse in america is currently laser-focused on foreign influence. people are sensitive to it now and things have reached a boiling point - at least that's my theory.

*why did blitzchung do what he did?*
because he was brave and a martyr and was in the position to make a sacrifice that many people could not. losing the prize money hurts - it was estimated to be around $10k usd - and his position in hearthstone and grandmasters may have been over or may not have been. but he chose to give it up to make a statement, and he was likely completely aware of what would happen. but by baiting blizzard into action, he has dramatically amplified the reach of his statements - and honestly i doubt he saw it getting this far. us senators and international news outlets are picking up this story. he may have singlehandedly changed political discourse around china by saying 8 words on a hearthstone stream, which is unbelievable to think about.

*what should have happened to him?*
no idea, but less than what blizzard did. they want to keep politics off of streams for their game and that's fine - and i get that they need to find a punishment that is more than a slap on the wrist so other people don't try the same thing. but they ended his career in 48 hours. that's nuts.

*were people calling for a harsh punishment?*
well we don't know about the companies behind the scenes, though we can extrapolate from what happened to the nba - but we do know that public outcry from chinese citizens is actually somewhat significant. there are comments on blizzard's weibo page thanking them for acting quickly and there were comments on the original story talking about how justice needed to be served. (weibo is basically chinese twitter, and like much else in china, it is run by the state)

*but isn't the chinese media controlled by the government?*
bruh we are getting into territory i am not qualified to talk about. let's be clear, everything i've seen about hk indicates that there are reasonable protests and really massive human rights issues going on. i support hk liberation and condemn the actions of the chinese government towards hong kong and uyghur muslims and tibet and any other totalitarian oppression. however, chinese citizens expressing their own independently held beliefs has to be considered in at least some context. a hearthstone user tweeting from/about china has said that in their country, national sovereignty is a really really touchy subject and it is more valuable than freedom of speech - i don't think that's the right value system but i don't get to decide everyone's values.

*what's the reaction been like?*
fuckin bad. real bad. the blizzard world is on fire. people on the outside of our community are condemning blizzard completely - and tbh everyone who is angry is right to be. people who are engaged with blizzard games are facing a difficult personal decision of how to engage with the games/communities they've been a part of while remaining aligned with their personal moral compass. it's sucked and i hate it and i'm pissed off.

*should we boycott blizzard?*
that's pretty personal - when blizzard corporate made the choice that they did, they knew there were going to be expected losses from the west. obviously they didn't anticipate this kind of reaction and i'm sure there'll be some kind of pr statement released, but you knew that they were planning how many basis points of income were gonna come off the bottom line when they made the call. the problem here is that china is binary - revenue or no revenue - and a single point of restriction through the state. for the west, it's the risk of individual users choosing to abandon the service. even in relatively large numbers from our perspective, it's smaller than the entire chinese market being gone in an instant. so they are planning for your money to be gone, and their behavior is unlikely to change in the face of that missing revenue.

*so i'm helpless?*
no, but it sure feels that way, doesn't it? and that's where i personally think a lot of the turmoil is coming from. people with no skin in the game can be like "f blizzard i'm not playing their games" but people who are enmeshed in communities have a lot more to leave behind. and there's the grim reality that a disorganized boycott is... well, just a line on a graph moving a little lower. and moving the money to another company is likely still going to make its way to china, because they have their hands in gaming in a very major way. hell, mtg:a has a major partnership with tencent. kinda depressing. with that being said, a loss is a loss, and denying money in some amount is still a reasonable thing to do to express your displeasure. i recommend moving that money instead to amnesty international or another charity that supports the fight against human rights violations.

*so we just let blizz off the hook and pay for their games while grumbling?*
no. they're not off the hook, and they deserve a reprimand. because what another company WOULD do is not the same as what blizzard DID do. they made a choice. it might have been the only choice from a business standpoint at the time, but they did it. you get to respond to that. if you want to move on from blizzard, that is your right - make sure that if you are doing so for ethical reasons that you remain informed of the ties that other companies have. hell, that's kind of the requirement for all of us, right? be aware of where your money is going, be aware of the choices you're making, and be aware of what that means to you personally. BUT... in 2019, the best way to make a difference is to add your voice to the chorus. examine your relationship with your game of choice - could you cut back the financial contribution? could you use your influence (whatever it may be) to inform others of the situation and help them make choices that are hard? yep.

*and that means i should stop playing?*
here's the hard part - maybe. maybe it does. but it doesn't have to. the expectation to set is to be aware of the media being problematic and to be able to speak to your individual view. but a person should not be shamed for consuming content with a tangential association to a poor corporate-level decision with a political bent. the games are not political, and a dollar you spend in the US on card packs does not go straight to the pockets of evil.

*but how do i associate with a company that would make such an egregious decision?*
you can be critical of a thing and still understand that it is part of a whole. that is entirely possible. blizzard made the wrong decision here and i hate it - and i will be using every bit of my platform to say as such. but the game of hearthstone and the community around it was not built on an evil foundation, and the evils of capitalism on a geopolitical level do not have to make you immediately cut and run from a company that did something stupid and greedy. foxconn had employees jumping to their deaths and iphones are still sold in the us. hell, amazon has a ton of known poor labor practices and they are still widely popular. should we live without these things? probably, but in the day and age we live in, we can't really be safe from some level of amoral corporate influence at a layer of the supply chain. it sucks, but there is very little to be gained by forcing oneself to live by a perfect and inflexible ethical code in a complicated world.

we've made friends, built ties and communities, and connected through hs over many things. hearthstone could go away and those connections would still hold value, but the losses that would be incurred - personally for me, at the very least - would be enormous. i do not want to lose my podcast. i do not want to step away from my hearthstone "league-format series". i don't want to take a stand that requires my friends to either burn a bridge or be labeled a coward. the world is hard, and guilt over playing a game makes that harder. instead, i would ask everyone to become aware of what is happening, both here and in the world at large.

speak out and make your displeasure heard.
process this with your friends, whether they agree with you or not.
let everyone make their own decision for their own personal ethical alignment.
stand for what's right, but don't paint the world in black and white when there are so many shades of gray.
and be kind to each other.

**edit 10/10**
after a lot of thought, i also want to place emphasis on the nature of how this affects blizzard employees, because boy this is a big and important perspective. i would not be surprised if some blizz employees were looking for another job, and even if they're not, it is almost guaranteed that many of the employees do not agree with the decision from higher-up. there was a protest on the blizz campus, a petition going around, and the "core value" about everyone's voice mattering was covered up on the blizz campus statue. it's tough, and honestly if i was the ceo and was faced with the choice of standing up to china while endangering hundreds or thousands of jobs and my own company's livelihood vs disciplining a player in a way that would be politicized, i'm not sure what i'd choose. maybe there was a middle ground to be had where things were quieter or the punishment was less extreme, but this whole thing may have been unavoidable.

blizz employees are not evil for continuing to work for the company even if they disagree. just keep that in mind.