[jimbob45]

At this point, Blizz must be hoping that the bad publicity is better than their current no publicity. Hearthstone is the #14 title on Twitch as I type this out and prominent players have noted how much less viewership the tournaments consistently get.

Also Tencent owns a portion of Activision Blizzard. That would be my guess for who is pulling the strings behind this specific incident.

[lmedinas]

I think Blizzard wants to make a statement and being strict about politics have no place in their games... Honestly i would be surprised if any gaming company would allow that, independent if the Player is right or wrong.

With respect to Twitch placement, since when Twitch is a benchmark for number of Players in a game worldwide ? HS lost momentum because of the greedy economy of the game and because other games surged.

Another source for the subject: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/10/in-post-game-interview-hea...

[LordDragonfang]

>I think Blizzard wants to make a statement and being strict about politics have no place in their games...

Meanwhile in Overwatch, they've made a point of a diverse cast and canonically made several characters gay/bi, upsetting plenty of far-conservatives. (all of which is excellent, of course) Hell, Starcraft literally features storylines about revolutionaries fighting a dictatorship.

I get that game politics are different than real-world politics, and they have to draw the line somewhere, but it's a little conspicuous where they've chosen to draw the line.