[_RPL5_]

I don't understand why a game company is expected to have an opinion about international politics, outside of "we don't want our platform to be used for politics."

It's bad enough that Facebook mods are now in charge of deciding what constitutes the truth; don't also conscript game companies into fighting idealogical battles with foreign states.

[FridgeSeal]

Politics isn’t _really_ a thing that you can pretend doesn’t exist and operate in isolation/ignorance of it.

You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist (see the “no politics in my video games/comics please” argument used by some gamers) because it a part of, as much as a function of, any given culture. This doesn’t mean of course, that we require every company to lay out some kind of political guidelines that they’ll support/abide by, but it does mean that when something happens culturally, and the politics “rears its head” that something will need to be done, or some position will need to be made.

[falomor]

Companies ignore the vast majority of political events and issues. Consider a hypothetical startup where all employees are working too many hours to keep track of current events: recent political/cultural developments will necessarily be missing from company policies and products.

[ben_w]

Being ignorant of politics isn’t the same thing as being able to operate in that state.

Imagine your hypothetical team had been (over)working on a game which was all about the “valiant mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan fighting off the Soviet Union” when 9/11 happened?

Or they started working with the likeness of any of Prince Andrew, Rolf Harris, Kevin Spacey, etc. before they became personae-non-grata?

Just because some politics is trivia doesn’t make it all trivia.

[falomor]

Postal was published after the Columbine shooting and did well enough to warrant a sequel. I can't imagine a less justifiable premise.

The United States has large numbers of contrarians and free speech supporters - they even enjoy constitutional protections. Neither the free market nor the state obstructed Postal's success.

[ben_w]

I believe both of my two examples are vastly less politically acceptable in America than mass shootings, mainly on the basis that nothing changes in the USA as a result of mass shootings while things did in fact happen as a result of 9/11, and that child abusers have always been in the category of “villains so evil we don’t need additional explanation”. There’s a reason why you have political cartoons like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/dRaH47BbaKAjJt116

(And that’s just the USA; the rest of the world isn’t like America, ignoring politics in other countries can get your games banned for reasons that would never hold up in America because of the First Amendment)

[Lazare]

The point, I think, is that we were expecting them not to have an opinion about international affairs, but Blizzard went out of there way to take a pro-CCP position.

> don't [...] conscript game companies into fighting idealogical battles

Quite right; China conscripted Blizzard into helping them fight an ideological battle, and I think that's reprehensible.

[Dylan16807]

Letting him express his opinion would not be "fighting ideological battles"

They went out of their way to pick a side.

[Qwertious]

If you continue to operate under the status quo without comment, then you are implicitly supporting the status quo.

For example, if you follow Chinese laws by banning anyone from your platform who criticise China in any fashion, you are upholding the Chinese status quo.

Now, you can say "that's the fault of the law, not of me". To which I would ask, do you actually expect laws to be the arbiter of morality? By that logic then anything immoral should be made illegal (libertarians reading this should be frothing at the mouth at this notion).

Of course, you could argue that it's not the law that ought to arbite morality, but the customer. In which case, why would you not understand why customers would expect game companies to have an opinion on politics, and pressure said companies when said opinion is unpalatable? You just (hypothetically) said you expect them to be the arbiters of morality.