Nobody has anything to say about Blizzard?

"

xMustard wrote:

players are contracted etc, and in such they represent the franchise/organizations they're with - in this way they need to act appropriately and one logical and reasonable thing is to not get political. you don't take sides because the franchise you represent doesn't want to take sides.

its the same thing if you're a sports player and act inappropriately in a bar or something, you get fined or suspended by your team, because what you do reflects on them.

blizzard came out with a statement basically saying the reason why they punished the dude was because he got political and they want to squash that happening, essentially.

people constantly say they want politics out of their video games (especially right wing type people) but then when blizzard does this and says they want to stop it from happening, the same people cry and whine saying "bullshit bullshit you're just bowing to your chinese overlords". its hypocritical. its like they do want politics all over, just their own opinion on politics.

GGG is the same. the censoring they do isn't because they're backing china or because they're owned by tencent. its because the rules are to not get political in order to avoid all of this conflict.

so don't get political. when you get political (regardless of the view expressed) and you get censored, you cannot cry you got censored because of GGGs or blizzard's own political view. thats stupid. you'd be stupid if you did that.

i agree to a certain extent but i think the way bliz handled it kind of says its about a little more than just the fact something was said, but actually what was said was also an issue.

the guy won $10k in the tournament, they took all that money away, banned him for 2 years and sacked both the presenters who were interviewing him. then they released a statement in china...

"We are very angered and disappointed at what happened at the event last weekend and highly object the expression of personal political beliefs in any of our events. As always we will defend the pride and dignity of China at all costs."

an american team in america did exactly the same thing the next day and they did nothing at all.



if he had said something on the issue that was pro china instead do you really think they would take $10k off him, ban him for 2 years and then sack both the presenters who were interviewing him at the time?

i dont.

i get the not using their events as a political platform thing, for sure, but i think the way they then handled it had everything to do with the particular political message he spoke about and their relationship with the chinese government. I think if anyone else had made any other political statement about any other situation in the world right now the repercussions would have been so tiny in comparison.

"

Heli0nix wrote:

Btw Blizzard showed support for various political causes in the past and this during their own events should Blizzard employees responsible of this should be fired up as well? Where is neutrality here?

Blizzard as a company cannot stay outside of all politics. However, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Blizzard doesn't input its political messages in the middle of its events.

The shoutcasters should've instantly denied any connection between Blizzard and Blitzchung's message and made it very clear that all of his opinions and stances are his personal ones and in no way represent or are supported by Blizzard. Failing to do this, they fucked up big time at their job so it's only natural that they'd get fired.

"

xMustard wrote:

players are contracted etc, and in such they represent the franchise/organizations they're with - in this way they need to act appropriately and one logical and reasonable thing is to not get political. you don't take sides because the franchise you represent doesn't want to take sides.

its the same thing if you're a sports player and act inappropriately in a bar or something, you get fined or suspended by your team, because what you do reflects on them.

blizzard came out with a statement basically saying the reason why they punished the dude was because he got political and they want to squash that happening, essentially.

people constantly say they want politics out of their video games (especially right wing type people) but then when blizzard does this and says they want to stop it from happening, the same people cry and whine saying "bullshit bullshit you're just bowing to your chinese overlords". its hypocritical. its like they do want politics all over, just their own opinion on politics.

GGG is the same. the censoring they do isn't because they're backing china or because they're owned by tencent. its because the rules are to not get political in order to avoid all of this conflict.

so don't get political. when you get political (regardless of the view expressed) and you get censored, you cannot cry you got censored because of GGGs or blizzard's own political view. thats stupid. you'd be stupid if you did that.

Since when are people saying they want politics out of their games?

Do you remember the last century of games? 90% of them revolved around politics, from age of empires to tiberian sun and red alert and onwards.

People never cared what was being discussed in their games, gamers have had a "anything goes" attitude as if in a old cowboy bar for as long as i can remember and as far as i can tell ingame in non-global censored chats, they still do.

Don't bring this "especially the right" or "especially the left" group think into this.
It's baseless.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Lachdanan wrote:

● Discuss inflammatory topics, such as Politics or Religion
● Personally attack or cause harm to the reputation of Blizzard

Technically speaking, we´re not allowed to write anything eitherway.
We could draw pictures ?

Also ^this.

The hypocrisy is glaring.

Arbitrarely implementing rules sort of denies you the ability to call them rules and makes people confused as to what they actually represent.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

"

Lachdanan wrote:

● Discuss inflammatory topics, such as Politics or Religion
● Personally attack or cause harm to the reputation of Blizzard

Technically speaking, we´re not allowed to write anything eitherway.
We could draw pictures ?

Also ^this.

The hypocrisy is glaring.

Arbitrarely implementing rules sort of denies you the ability to call them rules and makes people confused as to what they actually represent.

Peace,

-Boem-

But its intentional.

Blizzard (or any other of a of number of companies) have "rules" that typically fall into the the grey area, or a vague, to give them flexibility in their enforcement, and largely to protect their interests.

They don't have to enforce them if they dont want to, and its basically irrelevant if it creates confusion. Sure it can be extremely frustrating, but beyond that, there isnt really recourse.

I've appealed temp bans and moderation here before, and basically the response is the equivalent of tough shit, regardless of what I think about the situation.

Its probably better to view some of these rules as guidelines (contracts asides as those have legal ramifications), with the creating body having discretion on enforcement.

"

Heli0nix wrote:

Btw Blizzard showed support for various political causes in the past and this during their own events should Blizzard employees responsible of this should be fired up as well? Where is neutrality here?

This is different, Blizzard itself doesn't try to be politically neutral nor do they ever claim to be. However they won't let you use their platforms and broadcasts to promote your agenda. For instance that's the entire problem the NFL has with Colin Kapernick, they've made people do all sorts of things to stop non pre-approved messages. Heck I got in trouble with the department of energy because the experiment I work on did the ice bucket challenge, and that was promoting a cause that they didn't approve, which implies they promote it, which then implies that they don't promote other things that haven't been talked about.

As for the American team thing, the penalties assessed for being an amateur college team and one of worlds most premier players is pretty reasonable right? Also the situation is kinda different since the Americans did their thing after Blizzard was already suffering backlash.

The punishing of the broadcasters really depends on if the broadcasters knew in advance and let it happen or stopped it, and there are conflicting stories there. If the casters knew and let him go on, well then they weren't really doing their job and did something that could really be damaging to the company and you wouldn't really want them back right? As opposed to when the Americans did it and the feed was cut immediately.

The thing is Blizzard doesn't punish their players/casters/employees for expressing opinions on their own time, and that's a major difference from what a lot of other companies who are also bending over to China. So while the penalties assessed to Blitzchung were very heavy, it's still not super clear to me that anything would have changed no matter what his message was. The bans were long, but I'm honestly surprised he got the money back, he broke the rules of the tournament he was playing in and still got his winnings.

Giving away 10k is literally nothing to Blizzard. Hell, they'd probably dish out 100k without thinking twice if it reduced the backlash they got.

Don't like it - don't support them.

When their "discretion" based on which they decide to penalize rule-breakers is too arbitrary and/or self-serving - it stinks too much for me.

"You guys don't have mobile phones" fiasco already put them out of the running for my gaming money so not too surprised they're involved in another controversy.

Thanks Blizzard, don't come back, you're actually rubbish now.

We don't care if you fix your mountain of issues. You've soiled our fun in an irreparable way. The only way we come back to Diablo II is to play with our half-brother - IF HE SO DECIDES TO CONTACT MY MOM TO CONTACT US, OR DECIDES TO CONTACT ME DIRECTLY (he knows my email address.) NO EXCEPTIONS.

That is all.

No names will be provided for any reason. We aren't that dumb.

"

Boem wrote:

"

xMustard wrote:

players are contracted etc, and in such they represent the franchise/organizations they're with - in this way they need to act appropriately and one logical and reasonable thing is to not get political. you don't take sides because the franchise you represent doesn't want to take sides.

its the same thing if you're a sports player and act inappropriately in a bar or something, you get fined or suspended by your team, because what you do reflects on them.

blizzard came out with a statement basically saying the reason why they punished the dude was because he got political and they want to squash that happening, essentially.

people constantly say they want politics out of their video games (especially right wing type people) but then when blizzard does this and says they want to stop it from happening, the same people cry and whine saying "bullshit bullshit you're just bowing to your chinese overlords". its hypocritical. its like they do want politics all over, just their own opinion on politics.

GGG is the same. the censoring they do isn't because they're backing china or because they're owned by tencent. its because the rules are to not get political in order to avoid all of this conflict.

so don't get political. when you get political (regardless of the view expressed) and you get censored, you cannot cry you got censored because of GGGs or blizzard's own political view. thats stupid. you'd be stupid if you did that.

Since when are people saying they want politics out of their games?

Do you remember the last century of games? 90% of them revolved around politics, from age of empires to tiberian sun and red alert and onwards.

People never cared what was being discussed in their games, gamers have had a "anything goes" attitude as if in a old cowboy bar for as long as i can remember and as far as i can tell ingame in non-global censored chats, they still do.

Don't bring this "especially the right" or "especially the left" group think into this.
It's baseless.

Peace,

-Boem-

Since when? Probably when it actually translated into the real world. The whole NFL fiasco had a lot of people claiming they didn't want politics in their past time, granted at the same time the reason it constantly became a thing was people wouldn't stop bringing it up.

But when money is involved, politics do get touchy, especially given the different markets and cultures. Like with Fallout 3, they removed the Megaton quest that offered to set off the nuke and name changes and so on out of respect for it's Japanese market.

With Blizzard, I think they were in a bit of a rock and a hard place - because of the Government any business getting established their has to play by their rules. In other words, it was risk the backlash for punishing the player or risk the backlash of a government.

The player community backlash largely depends on the press and hard to quantify. On the other hand, the losses from losing access to an entire market is a lot more predictable - I'm not the fan of Blizzard I was during the orignal D2/SC years but you really can't blame a business for acting in it's financial interests.

I mean all you folks with your iphones don't think about the folks working for Foxconn and most have probably already forgotten the suicides.