They even fired the 2 people who interviewed the guy. Unreal. The free market needs to crush these #######s (blizzard)
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A professional esports player has been fined his prize money and given a yearlong ban after he voiced support for Hong Kong's protesters during a postgame interview.
The Hong Kong-based player, known as Blitzchung, will be forced to forfeit his monetary prize and won't be able to compete for a year for making the remarks, the US-based video game giant Blizzard announced Tuesday. The two casters — esports commentators — who appeared alongside Blitzchung in the interview will also "not work with Blizzard anymore," according to the company.
The player, whose real name is Chung Ng Wai, was participating in the Hearthstone Grandmasters regular season, an esports tournament in which players play Hearthstone, the turn-based online card game developed by Blizzard.
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The NBA and many other companies did it too. Everyone wants that sweet china money.
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The NBA Chooses China’s Money Over Hong Kong’s Human Rights
Daryl Morey is now being forced to apologize because he… supports Democracy?
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The league even has a presence in Xinjang, in the northwest of the country. It is the Chinese region where Slate reported last year the nation’s authorities were holding roughly one million Muslims, the Turkic-speaking minority called Uighurs, in concentration camps. The NBA has a different kind of camp there — one of its three national training camps — in Ürümqi, Xinjang’s capital.
After Mercedes-Benz innocuously quoted the Dalai Llama in a social media post last year, the auto company apologized for “wrong information” that “hurt the feelings of Chinese people”—language commonly used by Chinese officials to protest statements made by foreigners.
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Marriott has fired staff who expressed support for Tibet. Delta apologized to China last year after listing Taiwan and Tibet as separate countries on its website. Versace apologized to China last month over a T-shirt that suggested Hong Kong and Macau aren’t part of China. (Versace not only stopped making the shirt, it destroyed all the ones it hadn’t sold.)
The NBA is currently in a battle with them too with the commissioner defending the freedom of people to express what they want after China threw a tantrum for an executive tweeting support for Hong Kong.
“We’re strongly dissatisfied and oppose Adam Silver’s claim to support Morey’s right to freedom of expression,” CCTV said in a statement. “We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech.”
I really wish the NBA stood up to them. The NBA has a product that the Chinese people crave, and is something that China can't copy. They would get backlash internally from their citizens if they come down hard on the NBA.
They had a lot of leverage to stand up and do the right thing, and they failed horribly. It's really demoralizing and disappointing.
I don't give a full pass to Blizzard, but I understand how hard that situation is because if they came out against them, China would just ban Hearthstone, steal the code, and have a new functioning version by tomorrow.
I really wish the NBA stood up to them. The NBA has a product that the Chinese people crave, and is something that China can't copy. They would get backlash internally from their citizens if they come down hard on the NBA.
They had a lot of leverage to stand up and do the right thing, and they failed horribly. It's really demoralizing and disappointing.
I don't give a full pass to Blizzard, but I understand how hard that situation is because if they came out against them, China would just ban Hearthstone, steal the code, and have a new functioning version by tomorrow.
They haven't "stood up to them" per se, but Silver isn't exactly backing down either. The next few days will be interesting, they've only pulled preseason games to this point. I mean James Harden has already cowered, but the NBA does try to be the vanguard as far as being progressive for sports leagues. Maybe they'll finally be the ones to say "enough".
I really wish the NBA stood up to them. The NBA has a product that the Chinese people crave, and is something that China can't copy. They would get backlash internally from their citizens if they come down hard on the NBA.
They had a lot of leverage to stand up and do the right thing, and they failed horribly. It's really demoralizing and disappointing.
I don't give a full pass to Blizzard, but I understand how hard that situation is because if they came out against them, China would just ban Hearthstone, steal the code, and have a new functioning version by tomorrow.
Chinese are also pretty touchy when it comes to criticising China. That whole nationalism thing.
The bottom line is the NBA loves money. Principles tend to go out the window when it can result in the loss of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
I thought Adam Silver towed the line really really well. As a protege of David Stern, I thought he'd be just as slimy. I guess not. For 95% of corporations out there, the CEO would have bent over backwards for that sweet sweet Chinese money. In this case, the commish made his point without explicitly saying it. He's simply saying in a pro-democratic society, we express opinions and that's fine. I think the way he did it was very fair. No side will back down - likely it'll just be hush hush and we won't hear much from either side that this ever happened. I would really really appreciate if a player did something in support of Hong Kong - that would really throw some chaos into the mix, though personally I don't like politics in sports or anything.
Daryl Morey has the freedom to say whatever he wants and China has the freedom to retaliate by cutting off their business done in China if they felt like what he said was inappropriate. I don't see the problem? There is no attack on the institution of "freedom of speech". China is not coercing the American government to do anything to their first amendment of the constitution, so I don't understand why freedom of speech is being talked about so much.
Daryl Morey has the freedom to say whatever he wants and China has the freedom to retaliate by cutting off their business done in China if they felt like what he said was inappropriate. I don't see the problem? There is no attack on the institution of "freedom of speech". China is not coercing the American government to do anything to their first amendment of the constitution, so I don't understand why freedom of speech is being talked about so much.
You can't be this obtuse. China tramples "free speech" any time they can. The fact that whenever someone says something they don't like causes them to flex their financial muscle, thus affecting much more than just their own country, is reprehensible.
I mean, they won't even acknowledge Tibet as a separate entity.