Blizzard has removed the player Blitzchung and 2 casters from the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament, for shouting “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!”. As a result Blitzchung will not receive prize money for season 2 and will not be allowed to participate for 12 months.
Below is the rule that he breached.
Blitzchung released a statement acknowledging what he did during the live broadcast where he wore the typical gas mask and goggles that you see Hong Kong protesters wear. He stated that, “I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it’s my duty to say something about the issue.”
Subsequently the comments on the blizzard press release have been disabled.
The morning the news broke, an update for Hearthstone was available on my phone. I uninstalled it instead. I haven’t played Hearthstone in months, but it was a symbolic act for me.
I’ve also uninstalled Hearthstone from my PC, and uninstalled the Battle.net launcher. Once again, this doesn’t do anything about my set of Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 Collector’s Editions, nor do I think it will have any kind of significant impact. It’s really just a symbolic act for me.
I thought about it and came to the conclusion that the blood and sweat of many people who do not agree with Blizzard’s current stance went into those games and the packages they came in.
I’ll see how this develops and maybe I change my opinion, but for now I’m not convinced.
Now that is good PR. Whoever gave them the advice on penning that piece did excellent work.
It’s still codswallop, though. Blizzard’s showed its true colours not just in the action it took, but how it took action against Chung. Act first, apologise later.
They claim they would have acted in exactly the same way had their platform been used to express the opposing viewpoint, but there’s no way to know that.
Maybe they would have come down on someone who said, “One China (two systems)! Hong Kong is China! All hail Mao! President Ji 4 lyfe!” But would the reaction have been quite so immediate?
If Blizzard can speculate on how they would have acted had the opinion been reversed, so can I… Based on its external behaviour, I speculate that Blizzard would have taken a day or two to “investigate” complaints against the pro-China activist, and let them off with a stern warning. Maybe the player would have been put on probation. They would not have been banned, and certainly their winnings would not have been confiscated.
