[brainfish]

I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other.

I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and quit playing Hearthstone at that time. However I had still played some of my other old favorites, reasoning that I was not providing them further financial support. The recent announcements about their terrible, sexist culture had challenged that notion for me, and I was not sure what to do.

This news is the straw that breaks my back. That Activision/Blizzard would double down on their despicable behavior and stance in this way is completely beyond the pale, and I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much.

Thanks for ruining that for me, Blizzard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

[kelnos]

I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it.

Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do.

But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it.

I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger.

[0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.

[ctrl-j]

One of the things that companies rely on these days is engagement and playerbase. If you don't find that compelling, that's up to you, but Blizzard invests millions every year into maintaining their playerbase - so at least they find it compelling.

Just by being a part of the starcraft community, you are providing support to activision blizzard.

If we were talking about offline-only non-community driven content, sure... but this is a company that is almost entirely driven off of multiplayer games.

[lapetitejort]

To play Starcraft II, one must open Battle.net, potentially exposing themselves to ads for the latest shiny game, and may lead them to break their boycott by buying said game. Having to visit the store to use the product changes the dynamic. If I bought a widget from the widget store, then found out the owner sexually harassed their employees, I would continue to use the widget while boycotting the store because I would never have to visit it. But if I had to occasionally bring in the widget for a free cleaning, I'd stop using it.

[bakuninsbart]

Some of the best fiction was written by people with absolutely despicable opinions like Francois Céline or Knut Hamsun. You can see it in their art, but their art isn't limited to it, and still holds a lot of value. Friedrich Nietzsche's opinions on women and politics are plain dumb, yet his other thought can be extremely compelling, and he is rightfully one of the most influential thinkers of modern times.

Going back further in time will only make you miserable if you hold the work closely accountable to the person. Terrible people can still say really good things, and I don't believe it is different with games or modern entertainment in general. Old Blizzard games are still good, and old Louis CK sets are still funny.

[aftergibson]

Celine and Hamsun aren’t getting engagement activity from their in-app analytics. They also can’t respond to all of the legitimate criticisms against them. Activision can and they’ve decided to bring in the Pinkertons.

At the end of the day, another player booting up an Activision game is another (tiny) data point that says whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player. It’s not revenue driving right now, but in 6-12 months, this has blown over and enough of the tiny subset of temporarily outraged players will eventually start to generate revenue. That’s what they’re banking on.

Decide what you care about or don’t, but at least accept/own the impact of your decisions and don’t conflate the situation with century old authors.

[dylan604]

>whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player

This is definitely how Activision/Blizzard will interpret it. However, not every single gamer is tuned into these kinds of stories about the game makers. Some will be totally unawares of any of the shenanigans that occur behind the game. Not everybody has the time and/or interest for that. Just like people do/don't care about Amazon, Walmart, Nike, etc. Someone that does care will bring to light something that may garner media attention. Some people will see that, and get worked up about it. However, the majority of people will be just as happy to put their head back in the sand and continue on with their day-to-day.

I also came here to see if anyone else was calling that Activision/Blizzard's next move were to call in the Pinkertons.

[aftergibson]

I completely agree that you can’t act on what you don’t know. It’s almost impossible to act as an entirely ethical consumer today, who could know if a suppliers, suppliers supplier is doing something dodgy?

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. This case however is a pretty simple B2C relationship and if a consumer is aware of what Activision is up to and continues to support through revenue or engagement, simply accept that you don’t care about these issues enough to change your behaviour, we all make compromises in life.

What I’d like to avoid is consumers deluding themselves into thinking that playing Starcraft is fine because it’s the same as people buying the books of dead racists.

[falcolas]

One small difference between those specific artists and Activison-Blizzard - they're dead. But more importantly, their beliefs are also a product of their times.

ACTI doesn't have that excuse. They're all with us now, and their actions don't have the shield of being reasonable in the society they exist in.

[temp_account001]

Why should we value greatness more than morality? Should the magnitude of someone's impact overshadow the morality of their impact?

Opinions of celebrities don't exist in some sort of extra-dimensional cloistered thought bubble; they influence other minds and affect society in very real and measurable ways. Amplifying the celebrity status of these individuals by cherry-picking their acceptable works will in turn, unavoidably, also amplify their less-acceptable opinions -- though probably not by the same magnitude. But in general the masses are terrible at sorting out "oh, this is a righteous opinion that I should listen to" vs "this is a despicable one by the same person, but I have the intellectual & emotional maturity to be able to compartmentalize it". We're too tribal a species, on the average, for that. Our brains, societies, and cultures have not evolved to effectively handle multiculturalism well, ivory-tower internet freethinkers notwithstanding.

The flipside of cancel culture is moral nihilism, in which speech has no consequence and exists purely as a form of harmless intellectual exercise. But that's just not how it works in the real world. Speech has consequence, and for those wishing to prevent those consequences, sometimes ignoring the speaker and refusing to amplify their voice is the only realistic option they have, if they have no power to censor them outright or sufficiently amplify contrary opinions of their own. A canceled author isn't really very different from a boycotted company; it's a moral vote by a like-minded mass of humans who together value their version of morality more than that author's impacts. It's really not that difficult to not be an outspoken asshole.

Saying "I don't want to read this book" or "I don't want to play this game" because you don't like the author's values is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's very different from, say, government ban lists. So what if someone doesn't want to read Harry Potter or watch Weinstein movies anymore?

Back to the first question: why ought greatness be the measure of a person, instead of righteousness? Our species is largely full of mediocre apes with mediocre thoughts who nonetheless manage to coexist and thrive to some degree, yet are all too often led astray and into peril and evil by the "great" Machiavellian few among them. How does that help anything at all?

[mnowicki]

What we're Nietzsche's opinions on politics/women? I'm not surprised based on the bit of his work that I read that he has some unappealing thoughts on women, but am surprised to here his politics may be problematic as well(aside from the whole nazi affiliation thing - which as I understand is a misrepresentation of his work by his sister and her Nazi husband).

[boomboomsubban]

Nietzsche was ultimately pro authoritarianism and anti liberalism. His view on women is fairly standard nineteenth century misogyny, like how he "compliments" them by saying they are more clever and wicked than men.

[acituan]

You missed Heidegger being an outright Nazi, and not even a rank-and-file one.

Not being able to relate to an other if they are not pure is a failure in having strong enough ego boundaries. High functioning requires complexification of our boundaries; a confidence in deciding what goes in and what doesn't on the fly without requiring rigid codification of rules, which ultimately requires a confidence in ourselves; what we are and what we are not.

All-or-nothing purity is a way of keeping things simple and reducing the complex calculus the reality demands. Not saying this in a demeaning manner, because we all do this in varying degrees. But if one can't tell if they are being a "bad" person or not for making use of a "bad" person's valid idea/product, that could as well be a shortcoming of their own self-conceptualization than the "badness" of the other.

[user-the-name]

Terrible people can say good things, but there are a million good people out there saying good things that you could listen to instead.

Why spend the limited time you have in this world on consuming the works of terrible people? There is more out there than you could possibly experience in a lifetime. Why not dedicate that time to people who are not awful?

[harpersealtako]

There are a million authors worth reading if your standards are low enough, but there's only one Friedrich Nietzsche.

[user-the-name]

There are plenty, plenty of people who are as good or better to read.

There is only one of any given person, that is not an argument to read them either.

[yowlingcat]

A problem with privileging "good" is that it is socially constructed, and social constructions of good can sometimes reveal themselves rather painfully to be fads of the time which ironically are anything but good, such as Lysenkoism [1].

On the contrary, real insights tend to stand the test of time, which is why Nietzsche continues to remain relevant and timeless. Lysenkoism, not so much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

[manofmanysmiles]

Learning from an “awful” person helps you grow as a person.

Also understanding the enemy.

Also not all “consuming” of work is for “entertainment”.

[user-the-name]

Does it, though? Does it do that in a way that's better than just paying attention to people who aren't awful? I'm really not convinced here.

[akudha]

I guess different people draw lines at different levels. And it is a personal decision. One extreme would be to just care about the art and not the artist at all (especially if the artist is long dead and lived in a completely different era) and the other extreme would be to only support artists who we think are nice people. I suppose most people would fall somewhere in between.

We still celebrate conquerers like Genghis Khan after hundreds of years, even though they brought a ton of misery (especially Genghis, who was known for his cruelty) to the people they conquered and often to their own people. The pyramids, great wall of China etc were all built on the death of tens of thousands of workers.

Sometimes the more we learn, the more depressing it gets (Ignorance is bliss? lol)

[donmcronald]

Maybe it’s just a normal thing as you get older, but knowing the company mistreated people sucks the fun out of it for me. I’m not completely against playing the stuff I’ve already paid for, but they won’t get another penny from me.

I’d like to have a database that tracks the C-Suite employees. I’d personally boycott any company that hires any of them. Their careers should be over IMO. I wish we could take away Bobby’s money too, but that’ll never happen.

[akudha]

This app has been around for a while https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse I do not know how good it is.

We should totally not give our money to shitty companies. But global commerce is so intertwined that it would quickly become very difficult to buy anything if we start closely looking at every company we give money to.

I don't know what the solution is. Boycotting is a start.

[cogman10]

Yeah, it really sucks and points to problems with our weak UN and world governments.

Sure, we may have somewhat high manufacturing standards in the US, but take a step into foreign soil and all the sudden all the rules are out the window. With companies specifically using countries with the weakest safety regs to cut costs.

It's why walmart keeps getting busted for using slave/child labor.

[XMPPwocky]

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.

[tcbawo]

Bill Cosby's character was a gynecologist whose office was in his basement (!)

[Phenomenit]

Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.

[anoonmoose]

Better comparison would be R. Kelly who, like Cosby, was actually convicted of what he was accused of, and did end up having a lot of radio stations (and other media contexts) stop using his music. Not all, but a good number.

[waterhouse]

I googled around, and ... has R. Kelly been convicted? Searching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Kelly for the string "convict" yields only the sentence saying "R. Kelly had not ever actually been convicted of any crime", quoting a news article from 2019. There is mention of a "sentencing trial", but the cited article (from Dec 2020) says he has pled not guilty and that evidence will be presented, which also sounds like it hasn't reached the conviction stage. And recent news results don't mention convictions (other than "If convicted") either.

Do you have a citation?

[anoonmoose]

Uh, damn, you're right. Honestly, he's been in jail for so long now- 2.5 years and 22 counts against him- that I wrongly assumed/forgot he wasn't/Mandela effected it.

At the time of this writing I had 13 upvotes for a mostly wrong take. Still maintain that the jail time puts Kelly closer to Cosby than Jackson.

[afavour]

The allegations against Jackson surfaced while he was still very famous so you could argue it’s already been “priced in”, for want of a better phrase.

[yaseer]

Aside, but there seems to be a much higher level of collective cognitive dissonance with Michael Jackson, perhaps because of his stature in popular culture. I'm guilty of this myself - my brain sets a higher bar for evidence, perhaps unreasonably.

[Phenomenit]

Yeah, his music is so deeply ingrained in my mind that the "new" information doesn't stick. I have to many fond memories associated with his music and art that it always takes a few seconds for my mind to change course.

[steaknsteak]

He's also dead, so it's not like he is personally benefitting from our enjoyment of his music anyway.

[klyrs]

Yeah, same. As a lifelong fan of the genre, I think R. Kelly's work is boring pastiche, almost entirely forgettable (notable exception, "I believe I can fly" does have some nostalgic value). So it's never been a challenge to put his music away...

[aeturnum]

I think for many people, but certainly not all, the wider culture of an escapist work is important. Looking at a fanciful image doesn't automagically distract you, there needs to be some amount of collaboration between your mind and the media you're consuming. You need to accept what it offers as an alternative. That can be harder for people when they learn about how things were really made. It would be hard to take a work arguing against slavery seriously, for instance, if it used slavery to produce it.

I also think that these kinds of products, because they are indivisible creative works, suffer from rotting from within. Where you might be able to use the "reasonable" parts of Facebook or Google, once you start to think about a core element of a narrative as being in-geunine or compromised, that can undermine the other elements of the story.

Especially in this golden age of game development, I think there are many other alternatives to Blizzard's games that allow people to think less and escape more.

[minusSeven]

You buy a game not just to play it but also to support developers. If you don't give a shit about this part you can always pirate it. By telling the company you will no longer use their product you are sending a clear cut message about that you a paying customer will no longer use their product.

[supercanuck]

In 2021, your attention is a more valuable currency than you're wallet.

[beebmam]

I was sexually abused as a child, and having learned in the last week that Blizzard management has actively protected and covered up the sexual abuse and harassment that some of their high level employees have enacted on others, I have felt extremely sick to my stomach and it has been highly triggering for me.

Seeing that they're making literally no changes at all to management or executive leadership, I'm having a hard time describing the rage that I feel inside. These people who knew and covered up the harm deserve prison, not just being fired.

I've been a huge fan of Blizzard games since I was a child. When I see Blizzard pushing back by aiming to crush internal protest, these feelings I have about this corrupt anything good I ever felt for these games. These people in leadership positions and the HR department that covered this up are criminals and should be seen as such.

[mrits]

I hear you. We need a better way of society to punish the individuals. The company is made up of mostly innocent people. Interns new to the industry, people that just got promoted and had dinner with their family last night to celebrate, and the actual victims of this behavior.

I never feel good about boycotting a company. I certainly understand the people that do though.

[x3iv130f]

A company is only just a shell. It is the creative people that work for a company that make the actual products.

If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.

[my_usernam3]

Dreamhaven & frostgiant are the ones I'm following (and super hyped for), is there anything else I should be aware of?

[bobiny]

Bonfire studios

[bitsoda]

Keep an eye on Ben Brode's scrappy new studio, Second Dinner.

[MikeTheGreat]

This is a really awesome point, and one that I hadn't considered before.

This is how I normally find new books to read (by following authors) for some reason it just hadn't occurred to me to follow individuals in the gaming space. (Except for the Mode 7 Games, which put out Frozen Synapse, the awesome turn-based RTS [0] )

I'm curious how you follow people when so many games are made by teams of people - how do you find them, how do you decide which ones to follow, etc. I'd love to hear more

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Synapse

[keerthiko]

Western gamedevs are almost universally on twitter. Pick the ones whose contributions to the games you enjoy you think mattered most (narrative designer of a story you liked, or combat designer of a gameplay loop you liked, or lead programmer of a technically robust complex game, 3D artist of a game with beautiful environments, etc). Follow them and their recommendations! Ditch them when they turn out to be predatory/abusive assholes.

[jorgesborges]

I'm leaning the same direction although I can't bring myself to leave Starcraft. But who knows. For those unaware there's a new company Frost Giant Studios founded by some of the best game developers from Blizzard and they're devoted to creating the next big RTS [0]. One can speculate about their choice to depart from Blizzard and their reasons are probably myriad but it can't be unrelated to the horrible culture there. Here's an interview with some of them on The Pylon Show hosted by Artosis [1].

[0]https://www.frostgiant.com/

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc

[dharmaturtle]

I've slowly stopped playing video games after college... but I deleted my Blizzard account after Blizzard doubled down on Blitzchung. Banning the casters for six months... that still gets me riled up. It makes zero sense to ban the casters for the player's conduct.

[LegitShady]

I deleted my blizzard account at the time as well and I had most of the products they had ever offered. Aside from missing playing starcraft2 occasionally, I’m not sorry.

These companies are organizations who can change rapidly as management and staff turn over. Blizzard from last year isn’t the same as blizzard from 5 years ago isn’t the same as blizzard from 20 years ago.

The veneration of brands based on their inheritance from what the brand used to be distorts people’s view of reality, and leads to brands that feel they don’t have to continue in terms of excellence.

Personally I think the start of WoW was the end of an age for Blizzard. Similarly the release of Fallout Shelter was the end of an age for Bethesda. Beyond those points the organizations were distorted by the success and profit they encountered there, and basically shifted to new companies with different priorities yet still holding the brand name.

[aeoleonn]

Check out Path of Exile 2 -- it's the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. And it's freemium

[dimitrios1]

It's a great game, but if you are concerned about Freedom in Hong Kong, Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, so you are still sending money to support an authoritarian regime that is still finishing up their latest installment of ethnic cleansing and re-education camps.

[celdon25]

This is anecdotal but I have memories of people freely bashing the USA in POE chat rooms, while I got a warning for making comments about China.

[pteraspidomorph]

So is Funcom, Riot, Epic, Miniclip... They're harder to avoid than Nestle...

[LegitShady]

No they’re very easy to avoid. Just don’t play games by ten cent owned companies. There are a lot of companies out there and a lot of games - more than you or I could conceivably have time to play.

[sidlls]

And almost none of them is any good. I like story heavy games and can tolerate some pretty bad art and graphics for a good story. Unfortunately most games these days seem to be terrible on both counts.

[res0nat0r]

Tencent has its fingers in lots of companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Foreign_gaming_investm...

[philliphaydon]

I had no idea. Looks like I won’t be playing PoE 2. Thanks.

[aeoleonn]

Good to know, thanks. Definitely do not want to support communism or the CCP.

[ggregoire]

Path of Exile 2 is still in development, you probably meant Path of Exile? By the way, they just released a new free expansion so it's a great time to check the game out. It's considered by many as the greatest ARPG.

[scrollaway]

Hades is a better Diablo than any of the Diablo games imo. I feel like it's the perfection of the mechanics that diablo's dungeon runs were supposed to be.

[podric]

Hades definitely has more interesting game mechanics, but it's more of a Roguelike ARPG than a classic ARPG.

I also find its enemy design and atmosphere lacking in consistency and quality. It just doesn't have the dark, dangerous, and foreboding feel that Diablo 1 and 2 have mastered.

[SantalBlush]

Totally agree. Both Hades and Diablo are great, but the gameplay and art are considerably different between the two.

[scrollaway]

Yes, i agree but then again i still feel it nailed down what the addictive parts of diablo were and put them into a far better game and context. That's why I maintain it's a better Diablo than any diablo or POE.

[dylanz]

I’d recommend Grim Dawn over PoE personally.

[aeoleonn]

Nice, thanks! It looks good!

[meristohm]

I got hooked on Diablo, and the memory of anticipating Diablo II (for which I built a computer) is almost tangible. WoW was the next drug/escape, and Hearthstone my last Blizzard slot-machine until I became a parent. I never thought I’d move away from games, and now I don’t miss them, turning instead to gardening and exploring with my kid. I still have a lot of emotion bound up in that game time, and perhaps they were useful in the absence of a counselor (in person or through books) who could help me cultivate a sense of purpose.

I still play a couple games (Hell Let Loose as a 3-person tank crew is great) but only as a way to spend time with distant friends.

[bpiche]

One thing about the non-rts Blizzard games, is they're basically all loot piñatas. Diablo 1/2/3, WoW, even Hearthstone to some extent are basically loot piñatas that prey on addictive behaviors in very much the same way that loot boxes and freemium mobile games do. Personally, I prefer a well crafted single player story over that sort of 'game'. And if you have your ear to the ground it's clear that they're going to make Diablo 4 a real Genshin Impact loot box nightmare as well. I don't know what demographic they think they're selling to anymore but it's sad.

[foobarian]

I just discovered Genshin Impact and enjoying the story line and combat system quite a bit. The artwork and voice acting is some of the prettiest I've ever seen in a game. What makes it a loot box nightmare? TBH Diablo 2 was a lot worse, the rarest boss drops had the ability to give a player orders of magnitude more power. GI loot scattered around the world is completely unremarkable kind of like the coins dropped by regular mobs.

I know about the wishing system but that seems to be a completely optional mechanic that allows people to gamble with money, which seems fair for a F2P game. But can be skipped and is not essential to the gameplay.

[sdwr]

Don't know where the downvotes are coming from. People don't want to acknowledge life without gaming?

[tarsinge]

The Blizzard that made Diablo and Diablo 2 is not the same as the Blizzard of the today, the key people have moved, so I don’t see the issue with playing their older offline games.

[falcolas]

Ironic, the mention of those two. They've both been (or are about to be) re-released (and - as I've heard - have replaced the originals in the launchers). As such, they are both still revenue generating products for ACTI.

[runawaybottle]

They don’t really care that much about the American market anymore really. Something like 90% of League of Legends players are in China. The mobile gaming market is massive over there, hence Diablo Immortal.

China does not care about the West’s uproar over most things. Blizzard does not care if you buy Diablo 4, they care if the East buys Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal.

[biryani_chicken]

It's dystopian to see Chinese people consume American products at the expense of American workers.

[azornathogron]

Turn-about is fair play, right?

Less tongue-in-cheek, I'm really not sure it's China's responsibility to ensure good working conditions in the foreign companies that produce the goods they want to buy, and I'm not sure it's the west's responsibility to ensure good working conditions for the Chinese workers who produce the goods we buy either. I feel I may be in the minority with that view though.

[ehnto]

I don't entirely disagree, pointing out that their workers are at least the producing country's responsibility is fair, since some seem to forget.

But the consuming country is still participating in the exploitation knowingly. It's not like we're unaware, so it's definitely a conscious choice being made to ignore it. It's worth considering the weight of that, since being loud about it has been cause for quite a lot of positive change over the decades.

It's not like I think someone who buys something made with exploitation is a monster, or even shares much of the blame at all, but it is a choice you can make to support less exploitation here and there and I think that's worth doing.

[dillondoyle]

I don't totally agree but it's a good point.

I think it's important to add that with China t's not simply poor working conditions (happens in other countries too, but CCP on a vast scale and what we're talking about).

It's forced labor and genocide, which I think we have a fundamental human obligation to do the smallest bare minimum of trying to avoid those goods (like cotton). That should rise above states and politics.

Though tougher action that could make a difference of course has big consequences and a big ethical dilemma for sure. But a boycot seems like the most basic bare minimum.

[zeusk]

And not dystopian to see American people consume American products made in China at the expense of Chinese workers?

The manufacturing industry in Asia isn't very pretty.

[beebmam]

Of course it is. My god, there have been like 100+ documentaries and an uncountable number of news articles and literature written about this exact topic for like the last 30 years.

[csydas]

Can you explain why you chose «dystopian» here? Did you maybe mean to indicate a sick irony?

I want to lead off with saying I don't want __anyone__ exploited, but this more or less is what US consumers have and continue to do world wide, and I'm not sure that dystopian is the most accurate word for it.

I'm not fully convinced that the original comment that Blizzard wants to sell in China is entirely accurate (there is truth of course, but somehow I think they'd really feel if the American market lost confidence), but dystopian is a pretty specific word for me, and just curious what you are meaning to communicate.

[runawaybottle]

I can lend some color to that. Blizzard created a modestly successful MOBA to compete with League of Legends and it just couldn’t make a dent in LoL’s Asia numbers, so they slowly put the game into maintenance mode (effectively given up on it).

Diablo Immortal is them outsourcing development of a flagship franchise to a Chinese company Netease to develop a mobile version. Netease mobile games are really big overseas. That to me is similar to Facebook outsourcing to Bytedance to make a social network with China in mind first. There’s a world of difference between having an office China and literally handing over your IP to a Chinese company. It’s a big deal.

It’s not they don’t want American’s money, everything adds to the bottom line, but China is showing itself to be bigger markets for video games (just as Hollywood is seeing that they are becoming a bigger market for movies).

It’s a very real thing, and forward decisions are being heavily influenced with that market in mind first and foremost.

Edit:

To put a final stamp on my main point, if the Chinese people were to be offended by these allegations, I can promise you Blizzard would turn the world over and rectify it over night. The same way they got John Cena to apologize in Mandarin to not fuck with the Fast and Furious release in China.

We matter very little at this point to these industries.

[itsoktocry]

>Blizzard created a modestly successful MOBA to compete with League of Legends and it just couldn’t make a dent in LoL’s Asia numbers, so they slowly put the game into maintenance mode (effectively given up on it).

Are you talking about DOTA2? It was hugely successful, both from a gamer's perspective, as well as in the eSports world.

[runawaybottle]

No, Heroes of the Storm. DOTA2 was created by Valve :p

[vlunkr]

Still though, dystopian is not the right word for video game drama/economics.

[runawaybottle]

The irony of what you are saying here is too much friend. Americans consumed Chinese goods at the expense of Chinese workers.

I’m no CCP apologist by any measure.

[aksss]

> Americans consumed

Still a voracious consumer of Chinese goods, as is the world.

[Ericson2314]

I would like a tarrif that goes down as wages of the exporter goes up. Screw nationalism. Help all the workers.

[Aunche]

How are Chinese people benefiting from Blizzard hiding sexual harassment allegations? From a pure workload perspective, most Chinese people would probably consider Blizzard to be relatively lax.

[nemo44x]

It's amazing that they're actually paying for them.

[alex_c]

"I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle"

I don't think Blizzard has released any new products (other than game updates) since then anyway, so I expect most people can say the same :)

By the way, check out Grim Dawn with the Reign of Terror mod if you want a "Blizzard-free" Diablo 2 experience.

[breakfastduck]

I think that's a purposeful misinterpretation of the post at best.

They clearly mean they have purchased no further Blizz products since the news.

[Icathian]

My experience has been almost identical. What a crying shame that they've fallen this far.

[jmcgough]

Same - I was a heavy Hearthstone player since beta, and was ranked within the top 500 for about six months towards the end when I was pushing to compete. But the Blitzchung incident left such a bad taste in my mouth that I quit the game and haven't returned to it. They didn't just penalize him for what he did, they BURIED him and effectively ended his career.

If he'd held up a sign for ending apartheid in another country he probably would have gotten some small penalty, it was clearly motivated by Blizzard's relationship with China. And it was so over the top and unprecedented that a ton of casters and pro players spoke out against it.

[raxxorrax]

I think at the time when Starcraft 2 was released the company changed significantly.

I remember Bobby Kotick TD in SC 2. If he hits you, you lose money, if you hit him, you lose money too. It was banned after a short time.

I enjoyed SC2 very much, but I left their platform shortly after. Most of my friends stopped playing too.

[ScoobleDoodle]

I also haven't purchased any new Blizzard products since Blitzchung. I uninstalled the Activision Blizzard game launcher last night, hopefully others are doing the same and adding to the dent in their KPI scores and financial bottom line.

[mcdevilkiller]

It was the developers that made those games, not "the company".

[dmead]

what the hell am i supposed to replace starcraft with?

[wayeq]

i hear Hula Hoops are making a comeback

[adkadskhj]

`

[jchrisa]

The myth of shareholder value is roundly rejected by the people who's job it is to think about these things: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...

[whatshisface]

>Ie why would Blizzard be okay with workers unionizing for better work conditions? It seems unlikely that would favor Blizzard in the short term[1].

Well, if everyone reading about Blizzard's malfeasance decides to not do business with them, as some commenters in this thread are doing, then they will suffer a problem in the short term as well.

[RangerScience]

AFAICT, this is one of those counter-intuitive cases. Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better. A significant aspect of this (IMHO) is employee empowerment, which relates to the common theories as to why Silicon Valley happened rather than the Boston corridor (legal situation advantageous to employees).

Other things that come to mind: "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice." https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ags - "If the stock market made any sense, you'd be able to exploit that sense and capitalize on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

So it makes "logical sense" IFF short-term improvements/non-losses of control, power, and position lead to profit, and that's not something that's logically provable. Rather, that's something that's got to be observed experimentally, and AFAIK it ...isn't.

If your goal-metric is money, you run into both what SMBC is pointing out, and Goodhart's law. If your goal-metric is something else, money is an "easy" by-product.

> how can we work to promote moral behavior?

IMHO sociological studies examining this. "Seek money, make nothing. Seek to make, get money twice", or something.

[kelnos]

> Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better.

Do you have links to any studies backing this up? The idealist in me really wants this to be true, but the cynic in me believes capitalism is set up to reward the most ruthless, unscrupulous people.

[RangerScience]

I do not :/ It's a soundbyte that I've heard within the startup space (probably HN, ages ago).

But - what's be your top 10 list of successful startups? How many of them are either directly mission-driven, or have a strong mission?

[brainfish]

My hope is that I can contribute in my small way to making moral behavior more profitable than immoral. IE voting with my wallet.

I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism.

Beyond that, I don't really know. And I'll readily admit that looking around at where we as a society are and where we seem to be headed, especially with respect to things like climate change, those seem like very small measures. I just don't know what else to do.

[brainfish]

Edit: parent deleted their comment, but it was a question about isn't union busting the logical capitalist move and what can we do about it.

[acituan]

> I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much

That is a very confusing argument to me.

Not only you’ve already given your money to them and received your end of the transaction, whether you make use of it or not, is this the most robust way to conceptualize the identity of a corporation? No temporal limitations, no account for the actual people that make up the corporation at a given time?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying keep buying their games or give support to what they do but if the people who made your beloved Diablo aren’t the same people responsible for today’s shitshow, what’s the point of your gesture?

The inverse concern applies too, VW, IBM, Hugo Boss among many other had affiliations with Nazi Germany. Should they be condemned today, if so for how long more? What determines the cutoff?

This is a classic Theseus’s ship problem, if you change every board of a ship one board at a time, is it still the same ship, how do you define the identity functions.

Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with.

[brainfish]

> Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with.

There is certainly an element of this, I am sure. But frankly it is that I don't want to give them even the millionth-of-a-cent of value that they could derive from my +1 to their active player numbers. I don't want to contribute anything to their advantage.

[acituan]

You can play Diablo I and II offline.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with demonstrations of purity in protest, for the record, as long as we’re honest about what they are.