
Major Rights Org: Blizzard Doesn't Respect the Human Rights of Its Customers - rahuldottech
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3a5xx/blizzard-doesnt-respect-the-human-rights-of-its-customers-major-rights-organization-says
======
jrockway
I am not sure how much HN cares about this story (it was mentioned twice, from
what I saw, but I've been following it on Reddit where it's been a fixture of
/r/all all week), but it's worth reading Blizzard's official statement:

[https://news.blizzard.com/en-
us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-...](https://news.blizzard.com/en-
us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-
tournament)

Honestly, my takeaway from this entire situation is that we can't really win
against Chinese influence. They use techniques that we find unimaginable and
are unprepared to take on. They have state media that tells 1.4 billion people
what to think, and if people have their own thoughts, they disappear never to
be seen again. There is no way we can fight that at the scale of "buyers of
computer games". Blizzard is a publicly-traded corporation, and therefore
their main goal is to make as much money as possible; throwing a "we got you
bro" over to China means that they have 1.4 billion more potential customers.
Nobody who can be held legally accountable for "breach of fiduciary duty" is
going to do anything to prevent themselves access to that market. If the
casualty is some player of some children's card game, or a Dali Lama quote
being deleted from Instagram, so be it. You can't go to prison for being a
spineless bastard, but if you tank a Fortune 500 company's stock by standing
up for human rights, you can. So it's not surprising what actions these
companies are taking. We can't compete with China's system, and we can't
resist a market that's 5x the size of the United States.

Where do we go from here? Two options:

1) Start your own game company. The inefficiency of large corporations is
impressive at times. It took Blizzard 3 days to write 1 page of meaningless PR
speak when their customers were about ready to burn down their headquarters.
Can you do better than that? Then there is money to be made.

2) Ask for our government to push back against foreign interference. China has
picked a good time to get aggressive with their agenda, because every country
has their own problems that seem more pressing. The UK can't say "hey, you're
violating our agreement about handing Hong Kong back to you" because they're
distracted by Brexit. The US can't say, "hey, micro-managing political tweets
is not OK", because our President is under investigation for seeking foreign
interference in elections. The organizations with resources to fight the
influence are busy with other things, leaving the future of our culture in the
hands of the PR managers of "brands".

I don't blame Blizzard for getting swept along in this current. They are doing
no worse or no better than anyone else. They just have a long history of doing
the right thing, and a splashy page of benevolent-sounding corporate mottos.
That's why we're mad at Blizzard, but we should probably be pretty
disappointed with everyone. Nobody is leading by example here; everyone is
willing to look the other way for human rights if it enriches their
shareholders.

Anyway, end of rant. Sorry.

~~~
perl4ever
"You can't go to prison for being a spineless bastard, but if you tank a
Fortune 500 company's stock by standing up for human rights, you can"

Oh come _on_. It might be true that there are various structural reasons no
CEO will do the right thing, or the right thing might not be to exclude China,
but saying people will go to prison for not maximizing shareholder value in
some specific manner is absurd.

When CEOs do things that tank the stock, which is almost every day, they don't
go to prison, they (and by they I mean the company) get sued. It's not
generally a big deal assuming they haven't done anything specifically
nefarious.

------
A2017U1
> the Blizzard controversy indicates just how badly the company has screwed up
> here, and the level of pressure that the community and anti-censorship
> activists are going to apply against it.

Got a good chuckle at "anti-censorship" activists. Last I looked that was the
alt-right. Free speech is a dirty word associated with Nazis for many people
today (especially outside the US). Find it terrifying how many of my
_enlightened_ friends consider blanket censorship and deplatforming a
legitimate way to deal with unpleasant types.

Guessing the author is aware of that modern anti-censorship fervour is almost
entirely isolated to a group of people not exactly popular with the audience.

Fixing negative connotations with a vague rebranding is the pinnacle of
marketing and the antithesis of journalism.

~~~
perl4ever
"blanket censorship and deplatforming"

Maybe the people complaining about this aren't in favor of free speech, they
just hate private property.

~~~
A2017U1
Just to clarify because it's a tad vague, you support Blizzard's right to both
remove a winners players prizemoney and future ability to compete because of
one sentence on a livestream?

Or perhaps less inflammatory and antagonistic, would you support private
property even if it were levelled against oneself?

~~~
perl4ever
I don't subscribe to the idea that property rights are primary and inviolable
as the basis of my thinking about what is right and what is wrong.

It's obvious to me that most people do not support private property when it is
"levelled against" them.

