[TeMPOraL]

Well, being a professional e-athlete means being an entertainer first and foremost. Everything you do and say is supposed to maximize the amount of money made for you, people who manage you, and the sport. Just like in physical sports.

In this case, the player violated this on their own accord. As right as this was, no surprise it made the business people unhappy. 'stronglikedan is correct in saying it's pretty much like misappropriation of company resources.

(In other news: entertainment is fake to the core. It's not about the game, it's about making money.)

But I also think it's 100% fair for the audience to be angry about this. It's a free market, and if people don't express their morality and/or politics through ways that impact the profits of the offenders, the market will not take those morals and politics into account. Bad press is a market signal too.

[reroute1]

I'm not disagreeing that it goes against company mission/guidelines, but if part of your product is player streams and you give them a caveat of not having the ability to freely express opinions that is going to be an incredibly boring stream.

[TeMPOraL]

It will be boring only if you're seeking some philosophical or moral insight in it. Entertainment is the opposite of boring by definition. The entire industry is built around optimizing the value of (average interest * audience size), which means that successful streams aren't going to be boring no matter how little freedom the streamer has to voice their political opinions.

I mean, take your favorite sports/e-sports stream. How much political opinions does the streamer voice? Would you really recognize, from just watching the stream, if they were censored by the Chinese?

[reroute1]

I disagree. Lots of the streams I enjoy are largely based on the personality of the streamer and their interaction with viewers. If you start removing their freedoms of what they can and can't say that would heavily impact their interactions and limit their opinions/speech. Yes it's true that most of the dialogue isn't heavily political, but politics is a wide sweeping topic. What if they are bringing up legitimate problems with the game, or the parent game company? Totally reasonable and interesting opinions that actually happen all the time on streams would be in danger of getting banned. Not to mention discussion of everyday life outside of the game which is also commonplace on many streams.

Just watching gameplay with no opinions and interaction is a watered down boring stream in my opinion. Maybe there are times when that is what someone wants when specifically looking for gameplay tips and how pros play, but that is only a subset of game streaming even by professional gamers. If the streamer is a sponsored pro, sure they have to worry about those sponsors but what kind of advice is it to tell them they should have no opinions? It feels short-sighted of the sponsors because they are limiting the potential of the stream and if they already sponsor someone, why wouldn't they want their opinions heard?