[devilmoon]

They certainly don't, but then you have to be ready to face the consequences of silencing people based on your internal politics (i.e. those people not being your customers anymore, or, in this case, wanting you to delete all the personal data they have on you). ActiBlizz can certainly decide that appeasing the chinese market is worth more to them than the western one, but I don't understand why then their western customers can't complain/decide to not do business with them anymore

[rjf72]

That I can explain. The world tide is currently shifting - gaming just happens to be one very clear example of it. China, for instance, literally has more gamers than the US has citizens. [1](2014) The US market is still #1 in terms of revenue, but that's ending imminently - literally perhaps next year. We're currently at $36.87bn compared to China's $36.54bn. [2] And that's with an untapped market of hundreds of millions in China. And their rapid economic growth means all players, new and old, are going to be able and willing to spend more money. Within the next two decades, the US gaming market will likely be a fraction of the Chinese market.

This creates an interesting little micro-paradox. Customers in the US claiming they will boycott Blizzard over this situation are precisely why Blizzard is motivated to act in this fashion. Because there would be a mirror situation in China with a vastly larger customer base acting in an equal but opposite fashion. Until people (around the world) can accept individuals behaving in a way they find deplorable, we're only going to end up in a world where the biggest wins. And as the geopolitical status quo changes, that's no longer simply synonymous with USA or even the west in general.

This is one of the many reasons I think the trend of 'free speech is only the government' is so incredibly myopic. People don't consider that the views they support will inevitably also come under fire from the powers that be - and they'll rapidly find themselves facing silencing and censorship with no recourse. Free speech is a value, not an amendment. Dismissing this because it's convenient is something that will only come back to haunt people as the tides shift, which they inevitably do. We should base our values on a system of ethos, not whichever chain of often contradictory positions we think will work as a means to achieve whatever ends we think we're going to get.

[1] - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-number-of-chinese-game...

[2] - https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-countries-by-gam...