Do Blizzard Employees Agree with Blizzard's actions?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-08/blizzard-bans-gamer-rescinds-money-on-hong-kong-protest-support What are your thoughts on Blizzard going Pro-China in China v. Taiwan/HK?
No. Complicated situation. We should just pull esports out of China immediately. Unsafe.
I dont mind this since my job would be safe, but the couple thousand who'd be laid off would be regretting it after the fact
Definitely not thousands. I was on that team and we got fucking gutted already
lmao a company is made of hundreds if not thousands of people, theres no way everyone would agree on one issue. However, if pressed, I imagine most people at Blizzard would say Hong Kong deserves the right to elect it’s Chief Executive and legislature. They’d also say the situation with China is shitty, in multiple ways. Many would also probably say, without Chinese profit our workforce would have to be cut, so, there’s also that.
Def not! FREE HONG KONG
Personally I agree. We had rules in place before the guy said anything. It's not like he said stuff and then blizzard decided "wait you can't do that!". They didn't "side" with anyone, the rules were basically you can't just say shit that reflects poorly on the company. Our platform, our rules. The guy broke the rules and there were consequences. If he'd jumped up there and said "fuck the gays" or something similarly shitty he would have also been penalized. I think it's important that blizz continues to court the China market, not just for sales (which are important, it's a business after all) but also for the players/fans who love to play blizzard games. If China completely cuts out the company how many people suddenly can't play anymore? I would also be concerned what would happen to the blizzard employees in the China office. Hell, I'm concerned about the player and the casters. I wish the guy had done this on his own time or his own stream. He shouted and then left the company to take the fall for it. Worse, the conversation has shifted from "help Hong Kong" to "Blizzard wants China money". It reminds me a lot about the kneeling thing in football. The conversation there was supposed to be about police brutality but instead shifted to "is kneeling disrespectful?" which just hurt that cause. At the very least with South Park, the NBA and now this, everyone is talking more about China censorship I guess.
I agree with this. The amount of grandstanding taking place without thinking of consequences is too damn high. Ultimately is really hard to please two masters: money and freedom. Yes in an ideal world these two things shouldn't be mutually exclusive but here we are on earth. Also I get a sense of a lot of entitlement and imperialism mentality. Because we know better than anybody else! China has leverage (money, economic clout and military) and this is making a lot of people umcortable
I sort of agree with this too - except - if somebody had said “Gay rights!” Would they be penalized? Is it a political statement deserving of a ban and revocation of money, or does it slide because it reflects Blizzard values. If the latter, who decides what reflects our values and what bad values are? I think that hits more to the core of the argument.
I think that blizzard did what was in their best interest (business, and employees in China) No matter what this was a lose lose situation for blizzard. It’s easy for people to criticize blizzard and say what should have been done but I think most people don’t really understand what the impacts are for the company and it’s local employees. As @ALiO84 mentioned everyone seems to want to shine the light on Blizzard for doing business in China and not on how we can help Hong Kong.
Completely agree. Also this is a symptom of a much bigger issue: China has leverage and is a major actor in the world today. This makes a lot of people uneasy, with of course lots of valid reasoning. Coming from a South American country where political upheaval is your daily cup of tea, I can tell you that grandstanding and using these optics dont work
It absolutely works if the goal is to cause damage to blizzard. Which I believe is a worthy goal. At this point, I support a scorched Earth policy. People should just look for ways to cause as much damage to blizzard as possible, to make an example out of them. Sure, it won't change their stance, probably. But at least other companies will think twice before doing something like Blizzard did. This is already working. The Epic games majority shareholder, recently came out in support of allowing people to make political statements. So this wrath and damage against blizzard seems to be working!
Boycott Blizzard
Tag @Blizzard