Blizzard bans player for supporting HK

[ferretti 5,808]

So I play Hearthstone every single day, and have for the past nearly 6 years it's been out. If you don't know, Hearthstone is a digital card game based on the Warcraft universe created and operated by Blizzard.

TLDR: This weekend Blizzard banned a professional Hearthstone player for publicly supporting Hong Kong on stream the negative reactions have been severe and appropriate.

Longer story:

Grandmasters is the top tier competitive play circuit for Hearthstone. It’s 16 participants in each of three regions (Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific with a slightly different set up in China). Players basically have to do really well over a few years and make a lot of money to get into it. Then, they play in seasons of ten weeks and participate in tournaments and such. In the end, there’s about 3-4 million in prize money each year in Hearthstone.

This weekend, a Hong Kong player, Ng Wai "blitzchung" Chung, in the Asia-Pacific Grandmasters won a match and then demanded freedom for Honk Kong. Quickly, the feed was pulled and his matches were deleted online. Then, he was banned from Hearthstone for a year and denied all winnings. They even went so far as to fire the casters who were interviewing him.

Blizzard cited an official rule which states one cannot engage in any act that causes public disrepute or offends a large portion of the public. Anyway, as expected, the community has gone into meltdown, the subreddit (with over 1.1 million subscribers) has been switched to private, a rival competitive game has offered to reimburse the player and invite them into their next tournament, every gaming/tech site is taking about nothing else and hundreds of people are deleting their accounts and posting the screenshots online. It’s INSANITY and it’s making me very sad and so disappointed in Blizzard. It's worth noting that Hearthstone (and Blizzard games in general) operate in China and it's one of their most profitable territories. 

I wrote a very spirited letter to Blizzard and plan to stop spending money on the game (it is free to play, technically).

More info here:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/08/hearthstone-pro-calls-for-hong-kong-liberation-during-live-blizzard-interview

https://kotaku.com/blizzard-suspends-hearthstone-player-for-hong-kong-supp-1838864961

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/blizzard-bans-pro-hearthstone-gamer-for-statement-supporting-hong-kong/

[Seeka 12,372]

Wow. All gaming companies have went to sh!t huh? This isn't the first time I heard about Blizzard though. I think their most recent controversy was with Diablo online. 

[PatrickMonster 5,016]

It's really sad... I'm mad at Blizzard for a while, cuz I play Heroes of the Storm a lot, and they barely support the game at this point.

[weed 66,764]

damn! I hope they receive sooo much backlash, complete trash. even firing people who interviewed him?? sounds almost illegal

[joannesrats 26]

I know that this may be unpopular, but like...Blizzard is a private company. If they want to ban someone for an opinion that's their right

[Seeka 12,372]

Wow. All gaming companies have went to sh!t huh? This isn't the first time I heard about Blizzard though. I think their most recent controversy was with Diablo online. 

[ferretti 5,808]

5 minutes ago, PhillipBagshaw said:

I know that this may be unpopular, but like...Blizzard is a private company. If they want to ban someone for an opinion that's their right

They’re within their rights for sure. But it’s up to the fans and players who support Blizzard to let them know we think their choices are trash. At the end of the day, sadly, they follow the money. 

[River 90,472]

 

Blizzard sucks, just like Sony, EA and 2K, they are killing the industry.

Overwatch is coming to the Switch next week, this is really the wrong moment, I'm not gonna be surprised if the launch will be bad..

 

[katy666 99]

“Like the NBA, they too love money more than freedom and democracy.”

[FlopSlurper 34,336]

4 minutes ago, River said:

 

Blizzard sucks, just like Sony, EA and 2K, they are killing the industry.

Overwatch is coming to the Switch next week, this is really the wrong moment, I'm not gonna be surprised if the launch will be bad..

 

what did sony and 2k do  

[Ryusei 59,929]

I read this wrong and thought as they should but it's the other way around wtf. That's f*cked up

[River 90,472]

2 minutes ago, FlopSlurper said:

what did sony and 2k do  

2K is releasing unplayable ports of their games and their games are heavily dominated by microtransactions and gambling.

Sony just sucks in general.

[FlopSlurper 34,336]

Just now, River said:

2K is releasing unplayable ports of their games and their games are heavily dominated by microtransactions and gambling.

Sony just sucks in general.

which unplayable ports have they released?

and can you give me specific reasons why they suck, because saying they suck because they suck isn't very informative

[Chromatislaps 34,558]

1 hour ago, Seeka said:

Wow. All gaming companies have went to sh!t huh? This isn't the first time I heard about Blizzard though. I think their most recent controversy was with Diablo online. 

well the biggest gaming community for their games is in China...I guess they don't want to lose their clientele... that's capitalism for you

[River 90,472]

33 minutes ago, FlopSlurper said:

which unplayable ports have they released?

and can you give me specific reasons why they suck, because saying they suck because they suck isn't very informative

All the Switch ports are pretty much unplayable for example and the PC ports have a lot of frame drops and bugs.

Many reasons, it's Sony as a whole, how they treat artists, their workers at the movies studio and the actors/actresses and in the gaming they are harming the industry by refusing to sell or to give back the rights to the devs for many dead game series that are still exclusive to them since the PS1 and they are dead because of Sony.. for example Sly Cooper will never see a new game anymore because Sony is refusing a 5th game and they don't want to release the collection out of exclusivity.. unlike Microsoft who are open to give their exclusives to Nintendo (Cuphead and Ori for example) and to use characters in Smash, Sony already said that they will not give exclusive characters to Smash.. it's pretty sucks.