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On October 12 2019 21:23 Loisl wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2019 21:02 aSpeaker wrote: As for the so-called Chinese influence that you are worried about, don't you think Is the same for the United States and Russia? There is a severe difference in quality and quantity of said influence on the affair of others from US/Russia compared to China. So no, it is not the same at all. Maybe China should learn more from the United States and Russia and use more military power and economic sanctions to silence its opponents? Maybe they won't have time to gossip here at that time? These people are so just. Where were you during the war in Syria? Oh, you're probably blaming Bashar.
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On October 12 2019 21:28 FreakyDroid wrote: Seems like you either approve of Blizzard's actions and you are with China or vice versa. at least that's where most people sit on this topic. Well, I approve of Blizzard's decision, but I fully support Honk Kong in their conflict with China. I don't think these two things should be mutually exclusive. Blizzard has a rule and they enforced it, its as simple as that. Pretty sure they would ban a player saying 'Support China'. They want to have neutral position and that's the right thing to do for a game developing company. They will only tell you that you can only choose a side between human rights and China. To choose neutrality is to let China go.It's an accomplice against human rights.
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On October 12 2019 21:40 aSpeaker wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2019 21:23 Loisl wrote:On October 12 2019 21:02 aSpeaker wrote: As for the so-called Chinese influence that you are worried about, don't you think Is the same for the United States and Russia? There is a severe difference in quality and quantity of said influence on the affair of others from US/Russia compared to China. So no, it is not the same at all. Maybe China should learn more from the United States and Russia and use more military power and economic sanctions to silence its opponents? Maybe they won't have time to gossip here at that time? These people are so just. Where were you during the war in Syria? Oh, you're probably blaming Bashar. Oh yes my favorite troll argument. "The others are as bad, so we are fine." Yes, all super powers did horrible things. That doesn't make the PRC and the CCP less guilty of anything and it doesn't make Blizzard less guilty as well. Stop diverting the conversation.
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On October 12 2019 21:28 FreakyDroid wrote: Seems like you either approve of Blizzard's actions and you are with China or vice versa. at least that's where most people sit on this topic. Well, I approve of Blizzard's decision, but I fully support Honk Kong in their conflict with China. I don't think these two things should be mutually exclusive. Blizzard has a rule and they enforced it, its as simple as that. Pretty sure they would ban a player saying 'Support China'. They want to have neutral position and that's the right thing to do for a game developing company. Blizzard brought it on themselves. The only possible punishment for these kind of things while remaining neutral is a slap on the wrist. Both harshly punishing and not punishing at all, makes either sides think you're choosing the other side, even if you're not actually choosing.
That said, this kind of thing is China's MO. There's no doubt in my mind at all China's behind it, either directly or indirectly.
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On October 12 2019 21:52 Pr0wler wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2019 21:40 aSpeaker wrote:On October 12 2019 21:23 Loisl wrote:On October 12 2019 21:02 aSpeaker wrote: As for the so-called Chinese influence that you are worried about, don't you think Is the same for the United States and Russia? There is a severe difference in quality and quantity of said influence on the affair of others from US/Russia compared to China. So no, it is not the same at all. Maybe China should learn more from the United States and Russia and use more military power and economic sanctions to silence its opponents? Maybe they won't have time to gossip here at that time? These people are so just. Where were you during the war in Syria? Oh, you're probably blaming Bashar. Oh yes my favorite troll argument. "The others are as bad, so we are fine." Yes, all super powers did horrible things. That doesn't make the PRC and the CCP less guilty of anything and it doesn't make Blizzard less guilty as well. Stop diverting the conversation. No, you're wrong. We're not ashamed to be a superpower like the United States and Russia.
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On October 12 2019 21:57 aSpeaker wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2019 21:52 Pr0wler wrote:On October 12 2019 21:40 aSpeaker wrote:On October 12 2019 21:23 Loisl wrote:On October 12 2019 21:02 aSpeaker wrote: As for the so-called Chinese influence that you are worried about, don't you think Is the same for the United States and Russia? There is a severe difference in quality and quantity of said influence on the affair of others from US/Russia compared to China. So no, it is not the same at all. Maybe China should learn more from the United States and Russia and use more military power and economic sanctions to silence its opponents? Maybe they won't have time to gossip here at that time? These people are so just. Where were you during the war in Syria? Oh, you're probably blaming Bashar. Oh yes my favorite troll argument. "The others are as bad, so we are fine." Yes, all super powers did horrible things. That doesn't make the PRC and the CCP less guilty of anything and it doesn't make Blizzard less guilty as well. Stop diverting the conversation. No, you're wrong. We're not ashamed to be a superpower like the United States and Russia. huh? you think Americans are ashamed of being a superpower? do you spend any time in the USA and interact with Americans in the real world? The "Make America Great Again" catch phrase has been around since 1980.
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On October 12 2019 21:28 FreakyDroid wrote: Blizzard has a rule and they enforced it, its as simple as that. Pretty sure they would ban a player saying 'Support China'. They want to have neutral position and that's the right thing to do for a game developing company.
It's only "as simple as that" if you literally ignore everything actually surrounding the decision. These things have happened in the past: Never have there been a punishment from Blizzard. Then when the topic was suddenly about human rights, it became "divisive" and required that they punished every individual remotely near the situation to the harshest of their ability? The reasonable response, if they actually cared about keeping their streams politics free, would have been a slap on the wrist, not outright murder of 3 professional careers.
That's also ignoring the fact that Blizzard China publicly apologised to the Chinese people, stating that they will "continue to defend their pride and honour". Sure, this was probably written by an outsourced subsidiary, but it still represents them, and if they disagreed they should have taken action.
You are pretty sure they would ban a player saying "Support China", the rest of the world is pretty sure you are entirely wrong. If they did so, they'd chance being banned from the Chinese market. So they would never dare do anything remotely to offend them like that.
And that is the root of this entire situation. Blizzard prides itself a liberal company which defends such things as free speech and gay rights. Yet when faced with potentially losing out on the quarterly earnings from China, they completely backtracked their entire stance to pander to the thin skinned authoritarians.
So yeah. It's exactly "as simple as that"...if you ignore actual context.
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On October 12 2019 22:27 Excludos wrote: And that is the root of this entire situation. Blizzard prides itself a liberal company which defends such things as free speech and gay rights. Blizzard only celebrates gay pride day/week/month in certain specific countries. Its not a company wide global initiative.
On October 12 2019 22:27 Excludos wrote: And that is the root of this entire situation. Blizzard prides itself a liberal company which defends such things as free speech and gay rights. Yet when faced with potentially losing out on the quarterly earnings from China, they completely backtracked their entire stance to pander to the thin skinned authoritarians.
nah, Blizzard cherry picks low hanging fruit. They've never been a "liberal company which defends.." anything. They almost never get into details of their political stances. The only exception I know of is Morhaime complaining about Trump's 90 day travel ban. Other than that one example Blizzard keeps all their "political philosophy" really vague and slippery.
Blizzard's "Mission Statement" and "Company Values" are really vague and filled with all kinds of warm and fuzzy meaningless catch phrases. This stuff is enough to fool their primary target audience which is young people with very little life experience.
These meaningless, vague catchphrases allow Blizzard to weave any narrative they want around any situation that comes up. They just did that yesterday around 8pm EST. It'll be interesting to see if Blizzard elects to criticize Trump in the future.
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On October 12 2019 22:27 Excludos wrote: And that is the root of this entire situation. Blizzard prides itself a liberal company which defends such things as free speech and gay rights. Yet when faced with potentially losing out on the quarterly earnings from China, they completely backtracked their entire stance to pander to the thin skinned authoritarians.
So yeah. It's exactly "as simple as that"...if you ignore actual context.
The simple answer to that is that they never had a stance.
Blizzard's only stance is that they say the best thing that they think they can say at any given place/time to give themselves the best chance of making more $$$. This is what big companies do. If you feel like a liberal company has let you down then you need to look at your own perspective on what massive companies' motives are.
The fact that they would portray themselves as defending gay rights is nothing more than pandering, its just a kind of pandering that you happen to enjoy.
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On October 12 2019 13:47 BlackJack wrote:This was my first thought when reading this. I use to do some proofreading for asian friends when in college. The writing here just seems unusual for a statement coming from an American company Amazing how I was not the only one getting this from the flow of the speech.
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So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past.
Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. + Show Spoiler +
So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread.
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On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. I have no doubt Team Liquid will defend the pride and dignity of China at all cost, like any other neutral company would.
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On October 13 2019 01:26 Yorbon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. I have no doubt Team Liquid will defend the pride and dignity of China at all cost, like any other neutral company would. I was starting to wonder this too.
Not that I care either way.
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On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. + Show Spoiler +So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. Any why would TL made an official response about something that doesn't concern them? It wasn't a TL player was it?
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On October 13 2019 01:36 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. + Show Spoiler +So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. Any why would TL made an official response about something that doesn't concern them? It wasn't a TL player was it?
Because they have made political posts and stances in the past. Why should we allow them to stay under the radar about this?
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On October 12 2019 17:23 opisska wrote: There is one important thing that people who defend Blizzard and/or China here are missing. Especially when they try to play the "this is a sensitive topic for the Chinese" card. The thing is that this is a sensitive topic for anyone who values western democracy. The reason why this is such a shitstorm is in a large part that it is about China. Because we are basically at war with China at this point. It's a war that is not fought with weapons (so fat) but with money.
China is systematically trying to impose their authoritarian views on the world using their money. So when this happens in a field we care about, we get angry. Nobody can demand that we judge China "fairly" or look at this incident in a vacuum and compare it to othsr aimilar incidents and react the same. No, China is the enemy right now and we should treat it like that. It's not about the fact that they ignore human rights and torture minorities, it's personal.
It's almost ironic that at the very same time of this fiasco, there is another China story in my hometown - the new mayor decided that he wants to exclude "we support one China" from the partnership agreement between Prague and Beijing. China went ballistic, the ambassador made official threats of withdrawing.this and that investment and everything with "Prague" in the name has been banned in china - concerts cancelled and similar stuff. What is even worse, the Czech president is deep in the ass of China, so he started even more threats - luckily he has no leverage on the city council.
This is how China works. Just recently they bought Solomon Islands by a lit of promise of investment to stop recongizing ROC. And worse things are happening in places we don't even see, such as Africa, which is poor enough that they buy it left and right. They are not only buying economical influence, but political and they insist that nobody who gets their money criticises them. This is simply not acceptable, I refuse to bow to a totalitarian regime again after my country suffered under some for the better part of the 20th century.
This is why it is OK to overreact here and why none of the "genuine chinese citizens showing us their views" should be given any consideration. This is a war and propaganda is a key weapon in it, let's treat it as such.
Because the west doesn't try to impose his shitty and corrupt politcal and cultural model over the worls by any means ? Just look at what you've done in middle east.
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On October 13 2019 01:42 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2019 01:36 Gorsameth wrote:On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. + Show Spoiler +So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. Any why would TL made an official response about something that doesn't concern them? It wasn't a TL player was it? Because they have made political posts and stances in the past. Why should we allow them to stay under the radar about this? So TL owns you a response for this and several hundred other political statements made between now and whenever they made their first political post? Do hundreds of thousands of other websites that are unrelated to this also own you a response because they once made a political statement? Are they all bought by the Chinese if they don't?
Just for a moment think of the absurdity of demanding a response lest they be bought by foreign interests every time something political happens that you happen to care about. Because its only when you think to care about it, or can you link the post where you demanded TL make a political statement on the kneeling in the NFL, or after the NBA couch tweeted in support of Hong Kong. I don't particularly follow LoL, Dota or wherever TL has a player, I'm sure something political has happened there in the last decenia that TL didn't give a response to. Did you protest then?
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Northern Ireland23732 Posts
On October 13 2019 01:53 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2019 01:42 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:On October 13 2019 01:36 Gorsameth wrote:On October 13 2019 01:19 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:So I doubt we’ll see any kind of response from TL about this, even though they’ve made political stances in the past. Reason being TL is also sponsored by Chinese money. https://www.teamliquid.com/partners And look for Huya.com at the bottom. + Show Spoiler +So I guess I’m going to push for an official response in a new thread. Any why would TL made an official response about something that doesn't concern them? It wasn't a TL player was it? Because they have made political posts and stances in the past. Why should we allow them to stay under the radar about this? So TL owns you a response for this and several hundred other political statements made between now and whenever they made their first political post? Do hundreds of thousands of other websites that are unrelated to this also own you a response because they once made a political statement? Are they all bought by the Chinese if they don't? Just for a moment think of the absurdity of demanding a response lest they be bought by foreign interests every time something political happens that you happen to care about. Because its only when you think to care about it, or can you link the post where you demanded TL make a political statement on the kneeling in the NFL, or after the NBA couch tweeted in support of Hong Kong. I don't particularly follow LoL, Dota or wherever TL has a player, I'm sure something political has happened there in the last decenia that TL didn't give a response to. Did you protest then? Well that would be an absurd expectation, agreed there.
If it involves Hearthstone, a game that TL ran a website on, albeit its closing soon, and Blizzard who oversee the majority of SC2 eSport content, if there’s anything you do comment on surely it is this?
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Considering TL has made considerable money from Activision Blizzard and this website is a platform where official Blizzard management and Developers have posted, I would consider TL above the norm in terms of what I expect from them.
And it would be absurd to expect a video game website with no interests or players to comment on NFL matters. And I would not expect the 49ers to comment on what is happening in Hearthstone.
TL has players involved in Hearthstone and Activision Blizzard as a whole and I ask for a response.
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Why do I want Blizzard E-Sports to remain as politically neutral as possible??? Because I like the fact that SC2 is an global sport, and I would like it to remain global. The Chinese viewers out numbered the western viewers by nearly 2 for every one western viewer. And that was without a single Chinese player even qualifying for Blizzcon. ( https://escharts.com/tournaments/sc2/wcs-global-finals-2018 )
This year TIME did qualify, so the viewers will likely increase by 2 or 300%. It's very likely that Blizzard will cut and eventually completely eliminate their support for SC2 E-Sports without the Chinese viewership. Why sacrifice SC2 E-Sports over buzzword political statements that change absolutely nothing in the world? If I want to read or discus politics, there are thousands of places I can do that freely already, but sometimes I get tired of politics and just want to enjoy SC2... How has politics ever improved the viewing experience of E-Sports? It just makes me feel more depressed about the world...
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