Blizzard creates art/items/events specifically catering to LGBTQ, with the concept that in modern western countries this is not a controversial stance but the only decent stance.
Then, at an event, a tournament winner is given a chance to speak and calls for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong.
Blizzard's response to this is ban him, take his prize away, ban the tournament casters for some reason (who did nothing at all, AFAIK).
The takeaway people get from these actions is "Blizzard projects the image that they care about social issues, but in reality they will shut you down hard if those issues cost them a penny."
When forming opinions on things like this, I think its important to see what happened in context.
This [1] is the entire, in context, video of the controversy in question. Unfortunately I've yet to find a complete translated transcript so I am left on relying on potentially unreliable online translations. From what I've read the casters say 'Go ahead and say those 8 words and we'll wrap up here. There's nothing else to talk about. Let's lower our heads.' He then screams 'Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.' Guess that's 8 words in [presumably?] Cantonese. This was done while wearing a gas mask. The tournament casters then laugh and clap.
This is actually the thing that most frustrates me about so many issues. How can people justify forming opinions on these things without seeing everything in context? Why isn't this entire video, alongside a professional translation, a part of every story on the topic? Of course providing in context video gets downvoted, because it makes the issues look less black and white. But that to me is the clearest example of idiocracy. We should not seek to create Hollywood villains and heroes in nuanced issues. We should consider these issues as they are, which invariably tend to be a million shades of gray as opposed to black and white.
Nothing in that video should change anyone's mind on the issue on anything except whether or not the casters were also involved. I don't see how any of it changes anything important about the issue - Blizzard is censoring political speech for their own financial gain.
Why would it matter if three people were involved in the political speech rather than just one?
There's no guarantee in life that everything is shades of gray. Sometimes people really are evil. They're not Hollywood villains - Hollywood can't sell the level of evil some people actually are. Go read about the Falun Gong and organ harvesting.
Blizzard creates art/items/events specifically catering to LGBTQ, with the concept that in modern western countries this is not a controversial stance but the only decent stance.
Then, at an event, a tournament winner is given a chance to speak and calls for democracy and freedom in Hong Kong.
Blizzard's response to this is ban him, take his prize away, ban the tournament casters for some reason (who did nothing at all, AFAIK).
The takeaway people get from these actions is "Blizzard projects the image that they care about social issues, but in reality they will shut you down hard if those issues cost them a penny."