The Gaming Den

So a lot of stuff has happened with free speech, censorship, political protest/violence, markets, the NBA, and so on.

This just going to blow over or will it snowball

Blow over, I'd say. One of those "this should be a big deal" things that gets added to the list of other things that should be big deals but aren't.

Things like this blow over all the time until they don't. It's not possible to predict because there are too many variables. Does main-land China drop the issue, or do they escalate? If they drop the issue will a critical mass keep showing up to protest, or will people get tired of it?

The fact that there's still a Taiwan situation after 70+ years indicates that it certainly is possible for both sides to find a stable position without either side resolving things fully.

So the asks by the Chinese Communist Party have been well over the line of what they've previously gotten away with, and they know it. The idea that they could get in game penalties applied to Hong Kong dissidents is actually pretty out there. Xi Jinping even asking for it seems like over-reach to me.

Now this is the best time to do this. Liberal democracy in the West is fractured and the president of the United States is a fascism loving toad who is also embroiled in criminal investigations. In most of my life, if the government of the PRC asked American businesses to bring the hammer down on pro-democracy protestors, the American government would throw a fit. But Donald Trump obviously won't. Firstly because he loves fascist crackdowns on liberal dissidents, secondly because he's facing impeachment hearings and couldn't get Congress to order him a pizza, third because he's comically inept and has already shown that he legit has no idea how to take actions that the Chinese government feels impacted by.

Even so, this seems very likely to backfire. I expect that Blizzard gets enough pushback that they end up having to give the prize money back to the Hong Kong guy, and then this ends up being a face losing loss for Xi Jinping. This has a better chance of working out the way Xi Jinping wants it to than it would have under a Clinton presidency or if he had tried it during Obama's presidency, but it still seems very risky.

It's important to remember though that American corporations do not love liberal democracy and are happy to sell out any number of people or groups to the Chinese Communist Party. The corporations will throw you under the bus for a nickel and only boycotts in western countries will make them even consider taking a stand against repressive regimes in Asia or anywhere else.

-Username17

China is a massive market. What's going to come out swinging on the other side to even stand a chance of making corporations like Blizzard and the NBA consider doing anything else but bowing to their will?

Wait it's Xi Jinping actually making demands of Blizzard?

I don't know what organs of the CCP are working here and want to be informed

Damned Blizzard, I'm gonna stop giving them my money!
...
Oh wait, I already started doing that years ago.

FrankTrollman wrote: It's important to remember though that American corporations do not love liberal democracy and are happy to sell out any number of people or groups to the Chinese Communist Party. The corporations will throw you under the bus for a nickel and only boycotts in western countries will make them even consider taking a stand against repressive regimes in Asia or anywhere else.

Silly Frank, a significant amount of Blizzard already belongs to chinese Tencent.

Gamers hate capitalism but don't realize what they hate is capitalism. With a very loud minority of gamers railing constantly against decisions these big corporations are making I suppose something like this was inevitably going to happen. The Epic Store was the last big bad thing from China and now Blizzard is having their time on the rack. The Chinese being able to pressure media makers has gotten to proper meme status. Even Southpark even came out with an episode coincidentally last week covering it. Then there's the NBA kerfuffle on top of everything else.

I like that some people are trying to turn a Overwatch character into a symbol of the Hong-Kong protests to try to get China to ban Overwatch.

There's something cyberpunk about it, I wonder how long we'll have to wait until some company weaponizes this against one of its competitors.

MGuy wrote:Even Southpark even came out with an episode coincidentally last week covering it.

Not really a coincidence. Southpark produces episodes in 6 days..

If the Blizzard thing kicked off 14+ days ago I really missed out. I've only heard about it in the last few days.

Tencent owns large portions of Blizzard, Epic, (wholly?) Riot/League of Legends, and is also the one involved in the NBA deal.

So there is a LITTLE bit of oddness in Blizzard responding immediately before Tencent upper management should really have gotten involved, versus Epic publicly proclaiming they wouldn't pan someone over something like that.

There is some real place to wonder at what level this decision was really made, whether it was Blizzard trying to suck up without being asked, or whether a specific ask was made or what. Presumably the NBA thing was definitely an ask, but the Blizzard thing seems like it may very well be a genuinely Blizzard based decision, though obviously very influenced by wanting to suck up to China.

Kaelik wrote: Presumably the NBA thing was definitely an ask

Yep.

Chinese Consulate-General Spokesman wrote:We are deeply shocked by the erroneous comments on Hong Kong made by Mr. Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets. We have lodged representations and expressed strong dissatisfaction with the Houston Rockets, and urged the latter to correct the error and take immediate concrete measures to eliminate the adverse impact.

Still, there's definitely some comedy of errors aspects to all of this. For example, we'll never know what would have happened if noted asshole, author and Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta hadn't thrown a spotlight on the original comments by tweeting that the Rockets are not a political organization. In terms of self-defeating media behavior that's about as high as you can go without getting jailed, fired or impeached (fingers crossed!).

Whatever happened to "Better dead than red!"?
Oh.Right. Capitalism. OH THE IRONY!

Also:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/10/209 ... oved-china
Apple removes app used in Hong Kong protests after pressure from China

Said App is still available on the Google Play Store.
And even if it vanished from there, sideloading is still a thing on Android.

I mean, economists have been going on about how marketizing China was going to happen and then everything would be perfect. Now China is a modern capitalist state and it is fascist instead of democratic, big surprise (to decades of economists and no one else).

Stahlseele wrote:Whatever happened to "Better dead than red!"?

This happened
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ocrat-ohio

Gamers are lazy and stupid. They'll get mad for a few days then immediately forget it when the next AAA shitfest gets released. Remember, the last time gamers tried to do anything they sent death and rape threats to obscure "programmers" until they became millionaires somehow.

phlapjackage wrote:

Stahlseele wrote:Whatever happened to "Better dead than red!"?

This happened
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ocrat-ohio

......


Russia hasn't been Red since 1989-91 depending on how you count it. The US started "cooperating" with Russia in that time, by which I mean rigging their elections and having our capitalists obtain obscene profits from exploiting their natural resources.

Russia has separately become evil again in a completely non Red manner when one of the shitty undemocratic leaders we put in charge to facilitate our exploitation decided to stay in charge, be the person who profits from exploitation, and also start trying to exploit and much later assimilate surrounding countries.

Meanwhile, we also spent decades cooperating with China in the mistaken belief that if all workers are obedient slaves to their boss masters who profit obscenely, that this would somehow create democracy. It did not in fact do that, and instead they just have a bunch of obscenely rich people and the oppressed masses who slave away for their autocratic bosses, and also the rich autocratic bosses have a powerful autocratic main boss.

"Trump ended our hatred of the evil communists" is perhaps literally the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about Trump, and I'm including the people paid to defend his claims that windmills cause cancer.

Kaelik wrote:So there is a LITTLE bit of oddness in Blizzard responding immediately before Tencent upper management should really have gotten involved, versus Epic publicly proclaiming they wouldn't pan someone over something like that.

There is some real place to wonder at what level this decision was really made, whether it was Blizzard trying to suck up without being asked, or whether a specific ask was made or what. Presumably the NBA thing was definitely an ask, but the Blizzard thing seems like it may very well be a genuinely Blizzard based decision, though obviously very influenced by wanting to suck up to China.

Considering the ongoing "it's Chinese sypware" accusations leveled at the Epic Store, I suspect that Tim Sweeney has to be very vocal about how he totally isn't a Chinese puppet regardless of how far Ma Huateng's hand is jammed up his ass.

Mord wrote: Considering the ongoing "it's Chinese sypware" accusations leveled at the Epic Store, I suspect that Tim Sweeney has to be very vocal about how he totally isn't a Chinese puppet regardless of how far Ma Huateng's hand is jammed up his ass.

Actually they've recently announced that they won't ban players for expressing political views. "Epic doesn't engage in politics or take a position on any political dispute. We've simply said we're a neutral game operator and don't seek to limit what players say. This neutrality applies equally to players on all sides of any disagreement."

unspoken is the "Until one of our largest markets and majority shareholder tells us to take a position."

But my tinfoil hat self is taking the same stance as Mord on this.

Update, seems like people in the Blizz forums talking about this getting banned.

So seems like Blizzard doubling down on their stance.

Bobby Kuntick hates his customers enough as is, so the new megayachts he could buy thanks to money handed to him by the Chinese president is just a bonus at this point. "Pissing off people who once used to like us" is a great ends in and of itself to him.

All the bigger media businesses have no trouble pissing off their fans and never backpedal unless doing so gets them money. It's capitalism. Fandom is just another resource to be exploited.


I think that there is nerd rage out there and on the table that can and should be harnessed to help fuel anticapitalist sentiments.

maglag wrote:

Mord wrote: Considering the ongoing "it's Chinese sypware" accusations leveled at the Epic Store, I suspect that Tim Sweeney has to be very vocal about how he totally isn't a Chinese puppet regardless of how far Ma Huateng's hand is jammed up his ass.

Actually they've recently announced that they won't ban players for expressing political views. "Epic doesn't engage in politics or take a position on any political dispute. We've simply said we're a neutral game operator and don't seek to limit what players say. This neutrality applies equally to players on all sides of any disagreement."

"We're not political" is usually what shitbags who support the status quo right after it goes downhill say. Then they followed it with "don't seek to limit what players say"? Wait, there at the end "This neutrality applies equally to players on all sides of any disagreement". All sides is never a good argument.