Blizzard Employees Walk Out, Fans Rebel After Company Bows to China

Loop242

Weaksauce
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The company behind “World of Warcraft” has been vilified by its fans and its employees have walked out in protest after it banned a professional gamer for supporting Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/t...loyees-walk-out-fans-rebel-after-company-bows

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It was not only the ban, it's the disproportionate level of response VS other political statements on interviews + boot licking Weibo post + sacking of the two casters that did the interview even though they hid in panic.

Also calling defense of basic human rights politics is a bit disgusting and their actions were against the company mottos
Think Globally
Every Voice Matters
The World Needs Heroes


So they made their bed and now they have to lie on it.
I personally applaud the HK resistance coopting Mei from Overwatch which has earned Overwatch a swift ban in Chinese internet.
 
Politics will never cease to be the center for so many people...

Basic human rights and being pro-democracy is NOT politics.

Politics are the things we disagree on once we have a democracy. The underlying fundamentals ought to be, well, fundamental and universal.

Honestly, it should be the goal of every free country to pursue regime change in those countries run by authoritarians.
 
so many times these corperations try to put on a progressive mask on the cheap wins and popularity contest. but when it comes down to their profit$ vs a country that literally kills its own people, they show their true colors. most of us knew this though, which is why we call disingenuous bs when they try to signal the other issues.

same with apple/amazon and their 3rd world slave factories. its all bs.
 
well, it's hardly the same kind of thing as shoe-horning social/political issues like gender identity into games.

What china is doing is leveraging money to control the actions of foreign companies even within foreign countries. That's something nobody should want to see gain traction. Even if it's the choice of those companies to do so.

You'd hope a company from your given country has a level of ethics where money is not the only thing that matters and that they stand for things other than not the technicalities of breaking the law.

Obviously that's a bit too optimistic for most companies.

While we can all agree, what Blizzard and the NBA and others have done is not illegal in catering to an authoritarian government's demands such as China,... We can all certainly be disappointed and angry about foreign influences over local laws/norms and when local companies bow to them for money. Especially when those companies profess to have a moral/ethical backbone.

F blizzard, the nba, etc for being greedy over right. This is not about taking the money to survive, neither organization is poor. Simply a choice to value money over all else.

Hong Kong is fighting a battle it certainly can't win without a regime change in mainland china. Which is unlikely. Anyone able to without the fear of being locked up should take any chance they're able to in order to make sure the entire world knows that what China is doing (and has been known to do to its own people for a long time now ) is wrong. We should all be very wary about allowing the things china is doing to creep into the lives of other nations, either directly or indirectly, and certainly not voluntarily.
 
Communism this, communism that, human rights this and that, blah blah blah.

Yet everyone still eats with forks and dinner plates & everything else made from China, even the devices from which you protest from. Didn't bother you before, why now?


I'm happy to pay more for things made elsewhere... tariff the shit out of them. Stupid companies are giving up intellectual property to have access to their market. This has to end.
 
These companies are putting profit over democracy. Apparently they forgot where they came from.
 
I watch a couple of channels like advchina and laowhy, or something like that. basically china is changing and going to a hyper-nationalism stage. The social bs is one part of it, but it also gets applied to chinese abroad who associate with non-chinese. The country is experiencing a lot of intense prosperity but a lot of it is just not sustainable. with population control they will probably suffer a population collapse in a few year. much economic growth was based on building new cities, now abandoned and crumbling. And... there are no building code standards... or standards for anything really. You can eat somewhere and not know if you are eating good food or food cooked in gutter oil. Anyway with hypernationalism the people tend to overreact to every imagined slight, punishing not only american companies but companies that do business with them... like tencent. So it isn't simple
 
The only amazing thing about the entire HK situation. Is that China thought people where going to be happy with the idea of a clock on their freedoms. We promise you we won't curtail your freedoms too much for 50 years. I am honestly shocked it took the young in HK 20 years to start making a stand. These 20 something protesters are now starting to realize they will be living in China China by the time they enter their 40s... if I was a 20 something in HK I would be more then upset with the previous generation that allowed the hand over to happen without rising up then.

In this case screw Blizzard. I do love a handful of Blizzard games but it isn't much to drop them. Blizzard is dead to me. Buy tech from Samsung... and shop local as often as you can. Its time to stop rewarding companies for dealing with China at all. We need to start treating cheap crap coming form that part of thew world in the same way we treat blood diamonds. Cheaper isn't worth your soul.
 
The only amazing thing about the entire HK situation. Is that China thought people where going to be happy with the idea of a clock on their freedoms. We promise you we won't curtail your freedoms too much for 50 years. I am honestly shocked it took the young in HK 20 years to start making a stand. These 20 something protesters are now starting to realize they will be living in China China by the time they enter their 40s... if I was a 20 something in HK I would be more then upset with the previous generation that allowed the hand over to happen without rising up then.

In this case screw Blizzard. I do love a handful of Blizzard games but it isn't much to drop them. Blizzard is dead to me. Buy tech from Samsung... and shop local as often as you can. Its time to stop rewarding companies for dealing with China at all. We need to start treating cheap crap coming form that part of thew world in the same way we treat blood diamonds. Cheaper isn't worth your soul.
Samsung products are usually assembled in China, despite being a South Korean company.
 
The Blizzards PR response is everywhere but do also read what the Chinese Blizzard page says about the same matter. There are translations around the internet. With a little hyperbole that is some treason level shit that makes you wonder if this was still an American company who wrote it.

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No, this is Communist Directed Nation-State oppressing free will and bribing and blackmailing the entire world for access to their market. That is NOT capitalism.

Capitalism is all about who can make the most money.

End of story.

If you want to interfere with ANY aspect of a person making as much money as possible, and if you want to REGULATE or GOVERN that person's income in any way, including but not limited to deciding who that person gets its money from, you are injecting socialism and socialist views.

So no, you are wrong.

Capitalism by its definition allows capitalist companies receiving payment from socialist sources. To not allow this would be a socialist restriction of capitalist rights.
 
Capitalism is all about who can make the most money.

End of story.

If you want to interfere with ANY aspect of a person making as much money as possible, and if you want to REGULATE or GOVERN that person's income in any way, including but not limited to deciding who that person gets its money from, you are injecting socialism and socialist views.

So no, you are wrong.

Capitalism by its definition allows capitalist companies receiving payment from socialist sources. To not allow this would be a socialist restriction of capitalist rights.

Your comments have nothing to do with my quoted statement. I couldn’t care less about your definition of capitalism - as twisted and malformed as it may be. Look up oppression and blackmail.
 
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I never thought I’d see the NBA and Blizzard linked together ever.

Blizzard is in for a ride on this one I suspect. Especially because their newer games have been suspect quality anyways.
 
Basic human rights and being pro-democracy is NOT politics.

Actually, basic human rights and being pro-freedom is not political. Democracy, which is the right of the majority to dictate to the minority, is very political but sometimes necessary to decide society's standards for conflicting freedoms, such as, "Can I drive my monster truck through town without a muffler?" In the West we've become so used to identifying ourselves with both freedom and democracy that we've begun to blur the two, and now both political parties in the US are using 'democracy' to remove freedoms from its citizens. Which is wrongthink, and frightening.
 
that’s not the way to treat allies. Trumps done some good and some bad. This really disgusts me.

Probably has nothing to do with Turkey being a NATO ally or the fact the US has a major air base there housing tactical nuclear weapons... Nah it's just Trump protecting his hotels . Whatever.

Guess NATO just exists to rip us US taxpayers. Along with the UN.
 
Probably has nothing to do with Turkey being a NATO ally or the fact the US has a major air base there housing tactical nuclear weapons... Nah it's just Trump protecting his hotels . Whatever.

Guess NATO just exists to rip us US taxpayers. Along with the UN.

Are you justifying the pull out?
 
Probably has nothing to do with Turkey being a NATO ally or the fact the US has a major air base there housing tactical nuclear weapons... Nah just Trump hotels . Whatever

Guess NATO just exists to rip us US taxpayers. Along with the UN.


Turkey is now buying Russian missle system that don’t integrate with nato and we now won’t sell them f-35s. Turkeys nato membership is starting to be in name only. So yeah, nato is a bunch of crap.
 
Are you justifying the pull out?

Yes. Turkey was invading Syria with or without US approval. Trump simply moved 50 US personnel out of the area; there is no Syrian "pull out". Which I disagree with. There is no reason for US troops to be playing referee over there any longer. That is supposed to be what the UN does. If a NATO ally along with the EU deems the PKK a terrorist organization , who is Trump to dictate their response? Syria is on Turkey's border, not on ours. We are 8,000 miles away!
 
These companies are putting profit over democracy. Apparently they forgot where they came from.
And thus, "Democracy" voted itself out of existence.
At least we can still vote with our wallets, though.
 
If a NATO ally along with the EU seems the PKK a terrorist organization

This is important, a lot of people don't realize it, and I wonder if the people complaining on this thread are aware that there isn't just one group (or subgroup if you prefer) of people called "the Kurds" as far as this goes. The PKK isn't the same people as the Iraqi Kurds.
 
This is important, a lot of people don't realize it, and I wonder if the people complaining on this thread are aware that there isn't just one group (or subgroup if you prefer) of people called "the Kurds" as far as this goes. The PKK isn't the same people as the Iraqi Kurds.

we are talking about the kurds in Syria that fought with our special forces against isis. Allies, yes?
Welp not anymore, apparently.
 
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I am working in HK currently and the protests here in HK has turned into riots. People here can do things that I wouldn't imagine back in New York (try beating a cop with an umbrella among others). The hot news the past week was a cabby running into the protesters and the news made it out to be some sort of China supported terrorist attack https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/...-protesters-receive-hk520k-pro-beijing-group/. I bought into it until I saw a different video:

.

If people want to support the cause they should come to HK instead of doing it thousands of miles away. Don't just blindly trust the news.
 
Your comments have nothing to do with my quoted statement. I couldn’t care less about your definition of capitalism - as twisted and malformed as it may be. Look up oppression and blackmail.

Blizzard is who I'm talking about. I'm not happy about them bending to china, but it's the ultimate late-game inevitability of capitalism: if you say 'they shouldn't be allowed to bend to china' you're literally saying they should be regulated, and regulation is directly against capitalism as it requires a strong government which is an inherently socialist idea.
 
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