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Blizzard bans Hearthstone champion and strips his income for offending a prison.

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WD_GASTER2

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good on southpark :P.
I am guessing the NBA has money at stake here and they were more umm "cooperative" i would assume?
As for Blizzard, looking up on it, it does look like they got quite the bit of backlash. Hopefully they will reverse their decision.
 
D

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Blitzchung quit after years of dedicating himself to the game.
He's being offered the amount of his prize money and a tournament spot by another TCG.

He gets good PR and another career opportunity while Blizzard and China get bad PR and no doubt blame it on the dissenting foreign anarchists who pay them for stuff.
 
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Viri

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Here is how South Park responded.
Blizzard deserves every bit of backlash that they receive for bending the knee and kowtowing to China. I feel pretty bad for the people living in Hong Kong, and sadly, I don't have a lot of faith that it's going to end very well for them.

gZzQ8E9.jpg
That's a pretty interesting cosplay rule...
 
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notimp

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This discussion is kind of silly.

- Corporations arent moral.
- If corporations tell you they are moral, they are lying.
- The corporate social responsibility of a company is a fancy term for PR.
- When Laurence Douglas Fink tells decision makers, that his investment firm will now value social impact of a company more - he does that to entice moving over certain societal functions into non independent action rooms.

- When you see your fake entertainment casters working for corporate or adbucks ducking away under the anticipated repercussions for their jobs. Yes, thats all that is.

- If you cant differentiate between a market/pr-racket being run by corportations to create 'perceived importance' of a f*cking game, and for example independent 'sports journalism' (whatever that is ;) ). You have a problem.

- ALL of what an influencer does - for living - is marketing (market making), and you LOVE them for it, because they got special access, or trinkets, or neat parties to go to and thats so cool.

- Which brings us back to point one. Corporations arent moral.
--

If you are a youtuber that protests, that in Blizzards community rules it states, that they alone are able to decide on who gets banned, without an impartial ruleset, or 'just' laws - please wear your glasses backwards from today on, because you are so dumb, it hurts. As a fan you are not participating in 'societal systems' here - you are within the designed entertainment experiences of a company.

Same goes for this forum - partly. So when a moderator closes threads in here stating 'too much flaming and conflict potential' he doesnt do it to benefit society at large. He does it, because it benefits advertisers, if people dont ask questions that are deemed too problematic for the economic development of said community.

Thats why you don't put bright people in those roles, but rather the ones with power fetishes, and an unfaltering believe in their inherent correctness.. ;)

(I'm agitating here.. ;) The other word for it would be trolling - and as we all know, by now - trolling is something exceptionally bad, because it messes with peoples perceptions in a way people that run a busines dont like.)
.

All your 'Major Nelsons' all your 'Geoff Keighleys' all your Nintendo Directs, guess what they are. :)

Thats something basic and yet fundamental - you ought to have understood at least once.

Also yes - taking your business away from those companies is the way to react to that structurally. But then the company already thought about that, and has understood that not following chinese political doctrine, might cost them more in the end.

Nobody in business fears an internet shitstorm anymore. Those get managed away nowadays.

Look - here is a free DLC hat. It limited. Enjoy.

;)
 
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Viri

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Woof, What a PR nightmare!

Don't worry, Diablo Immortal is on the way to save the day :rofl2:
Don't worry, they'll make 2 characters in OW gay this time. Oof, but this is a pretty bad time for them, so they might have to bring out the big guns. One of the OW characters is gonna come out as trans!
 

Dax_Fame

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Don't worry, they'll make 2 characters in OW gay this time. Oof, but this is a pretty bad time for them, so they might have to bring out the big guns. One of the OW characters is gonna come out as trans!
They're going to have to go bigger than that..

"Today we are launching a brand new server in World of Warcraft called Hong Kong. It will be restricted to citizens of Hong Kong and they will not be charged, so they have a place to be free... So please leave China alone. K, thanks."
 

notimp

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Here is the concept of Cost-Use-Billing.

In economics, contracts generally arent binding (as in sacrosanct).

Example.

If I promise you to sell you a medicament for 1000 USD, that you need, because you are deadly ill. And then someone else promises me to give me 10.000 USD for that medicament, I can do the following.

I'll not fulfill my contract with you. Pay 2000 USD in damages to you. And then make 7000 USD more in profits over honoring the deal.

That is business basics. So whatever corporations promise you to do 'on your behalf' the value of that promise is not more than that.

Why is it set up this way?

Because if you maximize gain, in old economic thinking, you lower the price of the good to be able to spread it more, eventually, making it more affordable for everyone - hence benefiting everyone. (Also with job creation and so on and so forth.)

So that you gain that much more on returns isnt even looked at, as long as you create a bigger pie for everyone in the process.

(Meaning, if someone offers you 10.000 for the medicament, you will scale up production that much faster in that environment, ultimately benefiting everyone faster (because ultimately you will want to come down in price to reach more people).)

China is bigger than Hongkong. End of discussion.

Corporations dont deal in concepts like freedom of speech, or democracy (as to how it is related to an individual). Thats like barking to a parrot. Different languages.

The services they offer, you have no legal repercussions over. In digital business models you make cents on a user per year. If you are good, maybe 40 bucks. On your average streamer that has invested 4 years of his life into becoming a f*cking posterboy, they may get 10.000 USD out of a year. Of which you maybe will pay 3.000 USD to them directly, and have them make the rest to stock up to living wages on the TWITCH streets. ;)

What a dream, for every young and aspiring youtuber... ;)

And then you have your 'Jim Sterling' youtubers that make 20.000 videos about 'corporations arent moral'. Well. No sh*t, Sherlock.

Any system where you have no separation of power, no 'judge' so to speak, is what? (Disney selling you an experience of a fairground fun ride, you have no rights in or over, whatsoever. In digital economies in general, you sign your rights away to be allowed to participate. Because you are worth so little to the companies, that if even an insignificant amount of people would sue them in court - legal expenses would clean out all profits. Thats why states made it legal, that in those configurations you have no rights. Its all just a funride. If you think that its more than that - than you believed in some artificial image.

A statue of an ork in front of the blizzard building for example.)
 
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Don't worry, they'll make 2 characters in OW gay this time. Oof, but this is a pretty bad time for them, so they might have to bring out the big guns. One of the OW characters is gonna come out as trans!
They already said once that a character is trans but they won't say who.
TBH, that's probably some of the most sensitive representation of trans people in video games because trans people don't like being outed.
 

notimp

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hey already said once that a character is trans but they won't say who.
TBH, that's probably some of the most sensitive representation of trans people in video games because trans people don't like being outed.
Its probably also the position the majority of people can agree to, because that kind of promise is an empty one. That makes people think, that you have done something, without actually having done something.

You have that part of your audience that cares believe in a myth. And the other part of your audience, not even notice it.

So that is the famed RESULTware the SJW movement brings in? ;)

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Stand Hong, With Kong
Upvote, because I believe, that that religious principle gives people hope. Upvote, because I think it benefits western economies, if the chinese have that problem to deal with for a bit longer. (Which eventually will even benefit them - once the boundries are 'argued out'. If they dont have to 'scorch earth' on that one.)

But then again, if you are thinking, that this is a struggle about the importance of democracy -

the western values and believes systems are on a decline. Economically, militarily, in terms of influence spheres.

The entire developing world already works after chinese blueprints. In europe you have a movement that wants to romanticize economic decline...

No one is taking that (grandstanding western values) seriously anymore. And even if we did, there is no one in the world that will make China change their mind on how to 'reintegrate' Hong Kong.

It already was over, before it began. But, you can have some extra rights, and some interesting and more valuable elite structures, coming out of the struggle. Or you can perish.

Still you don't take away hope from people. :)

Now take a guess, how much Blizzard is interested in all of this.. ;)

"But he did it because of nationalism, and democracy.." Barking to a parrot.
 
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Robika

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good on southpark :P.
I am guessing the NBA has money at stake here and they were more umm "cooperative" i would assume?
As for Blizzard, looking up on it, it does look like they got quite the bit of backlash. Hopefully they will reverse their decision.
Sadly tencent owns a part of shares in Activision Blizzard.
 

notimp

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Even without the shares. If your business model is peddling digital dependency, over manufactured culture models like 'esports', and your 'customers' have dependencies like 'i spent 4 years of my life to get better at the game you produced'.

What are you interested in more?

- Your future growth markets? (China)
- Stabilizing your current income structures, because of a decline in people with high moral standards - who cant separate those from 'the Disneyland they like to visit' (entertainment experience)

Think long and deep. ;)

Shares wise Tencent only holds 5% of the company I believe. (Someone else make sure I'm not reproducing BS here.. ;) )

Now its the hour where PR can shine. Make 10 smoke screens about how socially responsible the company is in other fields.
Here - take this as a random example:


 
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Clydefrosch

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this happens for the same reason neo nazis can't call censorship and freedom of speech when they're not allowed to make a propaganda speech on a popular cable program, because freedom of speech only protects you from government retaliation.
private entities can and will punish you accordingly if you go against contracts or their best interests.

that said, people are free to punish blizzard in return for their stance on china.
they decided to act like they did because they make millions in china, which is absolutely understandable from a business standpoint.
if that bothers you, you have to cost them millions in the us/eu then. cancel you WOW subscription, don't watch their feeds, don't buy their lootboxes etc.

you can whine on twitter and forums all day about how bad that seems and how bad it makes them look, but they're not going to give up chinese money for that.
 
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Xzi

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Well this is one boycott I've unintentionally been a part of for quite some time now, it's been years since I opened the Battle.net launcher. Blizzard has had a hard fall from grace since their most talented staff all left and they were bought out by Activision. I can't even look forward to the WC3 remaster any more, knowing that they'll fuck it up somehow (probably in several ways).
 
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