Last week a Hearthstone tournament was held in Asia. If You are not familiar with Hearthstone I'm here to explain. It is a digital card game created and owned by a company named Blizzard. There was an interview at the closing ceremony, that was streamed worldwide, with one of the winners - a player named Blitzchung.
In the middle of the interview, he shouted "Time for Hongkong revolution!", while wearing a mask similar to those worn by protestors. Stream was immidiatly taken down and deleted from every possible archive. The day after Blizzard oficially informed everyone that Blitzchung was banned for a year, he won't be able to participate in future tournaments, and he won't be getting the prize - which is a lot of money! In addition to that, two interviewers who performed the talk was fired on a spot.
After that, Blizzard announced that, long story short, they will defend Chinese pride and won't let anyone to article any political proclamations during events hosted by them. Unfortunatelly I'm unable to find exact words that were used there because this post was immidiately hidden after it was raided by an army of furious gamers.
Users and gamers, then relocated their anger to unofficial subreddits, where they started an action to boycott the company, by massively deleting their user accounts and withdrawing their subscriptions from Blizzard's games.
As for now we don't know the ending of the story, but there are alot of fingers pointing on Blizzard's marketing and public relations teams which combined costed the company millions of dollars.
What is Your opinions on the topic?
Can You think of any different Blizzard reaction that could result in less messy situation?
In the middle of the interview, he shouted "Time for Hongkong revolution!", while wearing a mask similar to those worn by protestors. Stream was immidiatly taken down and deleted from every possible archive. The day after Blizzard oficially informed everyone that Blitzchung was banned for a year, he won't be able to participate in future tournaments, and he won't be getting the prize - which is a lot of money! In addition to that, two interviewers who performed the talk was fired on a spot.
After that, Blizzard announced that, long story short, they will defend Chinese pride and won't let anyone to article any political proclamations during events hosted by them. Unfortunatelly I'm unable to find exact words that were used there because this post was immidiately hidden after it was raided by an army of furious gamers.
Users and gamers, then relocated their anger to unofficial subreddits, where they started an action to boycott the company, by massively deleting their user accounts and withdrawing their subscriptions from Blizzard's games.
As for now we don't know the ending of the story, but there are alot of fingers pointing on Blizzard's marketing and public relations teams which combined costed the company millions of dollars.
What is Your opinions on the topic?
Can You think of any different Blizzard reaction that could result in less messy situation?
Comments
However the decision on banning the player and firing those interviewers in my opinion was exaggerated.
I don't think that they expected that their players might react to this in such a way as you described but the costs of their action might be enormous.
Blizzard cuts punishment for gamer as we can read in the latest news about the situation. He'll recieve the prize and will be banned for six months.
It's not the first time when speaking against China have impact on a big scale.
Lately two big broadcasters've announced that it would suspend airing Houston Rockets events on television after NBA Commissioner Adam Silver defended a controversial tweet posted by the Houston Rockets' general manager which expressed support for Hong Kong.
I know that it's all about income from China and understand they decided to distance from his opinion, but they probably shouldn't punish him by banning and not paying his prize.
entertaiment events (such as concerts, football matches, etc.) should never be places of political propaganda. The organizer should ensure that all controversial materials (including polictics related materials, banners, posters, slogans etc.) will be eliminated and perons who promote them will be fined. Similar controversies take place during football matches. Regardless of what banners promote, clubs or national federations are fined by the organizer of the competition.
I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the current situation in Spain, in Catalonia.
Local people fight for autonomy. Many political events occur during FC Barcelona matches. After the last arrests, protests broke out. And what is more next week FC Barcelona will face Real Madrid, who is identified with the Spanish kingdom. I am courious what happen on stands?
2. As I have written above, I partly agree with Blizzard reaction. I think firing reporters was unfair, because they only did their job. How they could predict someone's speech?
A participant should only be fined if he or she signed regulation.
I believe such tournaments should be stripped off from politics and here both sides, Blizzard and Gamers turn to the opposite barracks which is only waste of time and nerve.
2. Can You think of any different Blizzard reaction that could result in less messy situation?
Yes, simply being neutral if they had to censorship his words they could ban him from interviews for a year and take down the part with him saying that. The real tsunami of anger, at least how i see it, started because they decline to give him the prize, they ban him for a year from tournaments also firing two interviewers which are not responsible for this turn of events also proclaming how they love China. Yeah neutrality and reason is always the best choice. If they want no politics on such events simply hide that part, give a warning and that's all.
2. yes, and they actually did few days ago, as far as I know, they changed the original decision, Blitzchung got the bonus that he should have, and it was changed from one year of ban to six months, the original termination of cooperation of two interviewers has also become a suspension of cooperation for six months.
As everyone knows, this is today a very big business. And in every such business there is competition. I mean, maybe some of these may be involved in this matter. I do not know exactly what competitors Blizzard may have, but I admit that there are such.
I can’t judge from the side of the user, but I see the situation from the side in a similar way. I am personally very interested in whether I can be right.
Their reaction should be neutral and they should not choose the side. The punishment should be much lighter and be limited to reprimanding, a small fine or a ban on several matches, rather than almost ruining someone's career.
Recently Blizzard has shown us that they like to shoot themselves in the foot and they just managed to do it again with it. As I said before, Blizzard overreacted and I think that is what made people really furious. To me they should publicly say that they do not support expressing this kind of views in their official stream and ban Blitzchung for a symbolic period of time, like 1 or 2 months, just to make an example.
Blizzard has always made good games and his decisions in society were right.
I think what blizzard did was the only right way out.
In my opinion, they reacted excessively. However, to some extent I understand that they are a huge company and are afraid to duplicate this behavior. However, I am of the opinion that this could be solved in a much better, calmer way. Of course, in my opinion, both sides are guilty. None of them behaved properly. However, each of us makes mistakes.
2.Can You think of any different Blizzard reaction that could result in less messy situation?
They should answer in a more diplomatic way, as well as the punishment they set out, I think it should be milder, or should solve it in a different way. However, it isn't disputed for me that they shouldn't leave the matter without reaction.
China being in danger after this situation. No less than more i agree with punishing player for involving political matters in such event.
However, Americans are very sensitive regarding freedom of speech so he shouldnt be punished that much. The interviewers should have a private warning from someone in a company. Firing two employees from this incident was unfair and it low the moral of other employees of Blizzard.
2. Not really, because I think Blizzard did the right thing and in the right way, so I can’t imagine any other solution for this disagreement.
2. Blizzard could for sure have many other reactions which wouldn't make whole situation so messy. They probably shouldn't fire interviewers, because they didn't do anything wrong, it was solely Blitzchung fault, but since I didn't see whole situation, I can't be sure of it. Maybe they had some time before stream was cut to condemn his behavior or stop him in middle of sentence, yet they didn't do it? Like I said I don't know.
Rules are rules and you have to comply to them. However, I bet that if China wasn't the topic player wouldn't be punished so severly. Overall many western companies are supporting chinese political agenda because of how much money they can earn in China. Chinese government can easily pressure these companies because they have full control of who can or who can't enter their market.
Can You think of any different Blizzard reaction that could result in less messy situation?
It's hard to say. I don't think they had much of a choice. They are a company that main goal is to earn money. If they didn't react as they had they would probably lose more money than they lost from this PR damage.
No, as they are a company that wants to earn money, they’re making decision in business way. Was this decision cost-effective? We’ll see soon.
What might also be interesting, users may have problems while they’re trying to delete their accounts.
This player played a dirty trick on them and I’m totally okay with him being banned. This event was about games, not about politics. But firing the interviewers? That a bit too much, don’t you think? They never asked him about his political views if I got that right.
I guess they did what they had to. But interviewers should get their jobs back, this is really unfair to them.
Maybe in the future they should just make players sign some paper that forbids them to show their political views, at least in a way this guy did.
In my opinion the gaming world shoud stay away from politics - so Blizzard's reaction was logical, but unfortunately when you are such a big company you can't simply avoid it.
Nevertheless, why those interviewers got fired? Gamer's behaviour wasn't planned so they didn't have any clue about what's going on, I guess?
Maybe it was just a provocation. Or a planned action. In any case, I do not undertake to judge this incident as I do not know all the details.
In my opinion, Blizzard should just ban the Blitzchung without firing the employees.
They should publicly object that they do not support Blitzchung's behavior and suspensions for a symbolic period of time, or impose a financial penalty on him for charity.