#blitzchung

--Blizzard has announced the suspension of blitzchung from Hearthstone Grandmasters. This follows a post-game interview during which the young Hearthstone player called for Hong Kong liberation. Blizzard has also rescinded all of his prize money from the competition.

Rod Breslau weighs in here

I'm sure that there are posts that have worded this better and in a more timely manner than I have, but here's my post regardless.

A Hearthstone player from Hong Kong, known as "Blitzchung", won six matches of the game at an e-sport event on October 9th.

After one of his victories, Blitzchung appeared on a livestream wearing goggles and a gas mask in solidarity with the Hong Kong protesters. At one point, he said "liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" twice, at which point they cut his feed. This statement has been used by protesters themselves.

Blizzard kicked him out of the competition, stripped him of his prize money and banned him from their e-sports events until October 5, 2020.

Because of this, people are calling to boycott Blizzard.

If you're not in the loop about the business side of gaming, you might be wondering why Blizzard would do such a thing. They're an American-based developer who've traditionally been known for being one of the more benevolent businesses in gaming - franchises like Warcraft, DOTA and Diablo have generally held strong core audiences, with the DOTA series stemming from a game mod like Counter-Strike stemmed from Half-Life. At one point, Blizzard commanded a lot of respect.

So, what changed? What turned a hallmark company of American game development into the sort of megacorp that penalises players for supporting the liberation of Hong Kong?

The exact chain of events and deals leading up to the following information are outside of my understanding, but the point of interest is that Activision has been merged with Blizzard since 2013. The full title of this company is Activision Blizzard. Activision is one of the biggest game publishers on the planet, right next to EA - Call of Duty, FIFA, NBA, Madden, all of these yearly franchises are published by Activision. They make hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue worldwide, every year.

But it doesn't end there, because there's another company with its finger in the pie - Tencent.

Tencent is a Chinese company that has its hand in social media and video games, among a variety of different functions. This company has the fifth highest global brand value of any company in the world. They're the biggest video game company on the planet, and they own the social media platforms WeChat and QQ. They host servers for some of the biggest games in the world, and I think they have a hand in publishing foreign games with online connectivity in China. They have their own digital gaming platform in China called TGP (Tencent Gaming Platform), and it's almost twice as big as Steam is worldwide - 125 million active users on Steam versus 200 million active users on TGP.

Long story short, they're the company that you partner with if you want to publish your games in China.

Tencent has a 5% stake in Activision Blizzard. They also have a 48.4% stake in Epic Games (so watch out for that Epic Games Launcher and Fortnite, everybody!), complete 100% ownership of Riot Games (League of Legends), an undisclosed majority share in Miniclip, a 5% stake in Ubisoft and an 80% stake in Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile).

Tencent has to work closely with the Chinese government to ensure that its titles are appropriate for China. So for a company's games to sell in China, they have to play nice with Tencent and the Chinese government.

Companies changing their worldwide game releases to abide by China's code of conduct has been going on for a while now. A year or two ago, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Siege edited some level geometry and an emote that didn't pass the Chinese censors - so they changed it for every edition of the game worldwide. Global editions of games, bit by bit, have slowly began to change and exclude things in development to make certification in China easier in the long run.

If there's any reason why a Hearthstone player would be punished to this extent for supporting the Hong Kong protesters, I don't think it's out of the question to consider Activision Blizzard's relationship with Tencent. If they're making money on the massive Chinese gaming market, then they will most likely stop at nothing to keep their relationship with Tencent and China cordial.

So that's my perspective behind #BoycottBlizzard. But knowing this, it isn't enough to just boycott Blizzard. Test Epic Games and Ubisoft events, and see if other e-sport athletes are punished to this degree. Boycott the Epic Games Launcher, because any information gathered by Epic Games goes through Tencent, and that information can very easily be shared with the Chinese government.

J. Allen Brack went on stage and said like “actions speak louder than words” and then just talked about how they are sorry about the thing.

A few things they did not say, China, Hong Kong or Blitzchung.

It was once again PR speak apology that accomplishes nothing. There’s still uncertainty about their stance and people’s ability to voice their opinions.

They still have not reverted the punishment to either Blitzchung, the two casters or that team from America that also got banned.

There shouldn’t be a ban for voicing an opinion and the rules they keep pointing to that makes voicing opinions against the rules is just a vague “anything Blizzard doesn’t like”

Like nothing has changed and its gonna take more than a shitty non-sequel to Overwatch and Diablo 4 to make me forget that you cretins are cowards of the highest calliber.