Hearthstone
Blitchung kicked out of GM
Submitted 5 years, 2 months ago by
NLbouncyknight
As almost everyone knows blitzchung is kicked out of gm and is not allowe to play competive hearthstone for a year also hes dont get any prize from this season
This is the official article about it
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23179289
This thread is not meant for hate or insults but to have a adult discussion/conversation
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As almost everyone knows blitzchung is kicked out of gm and is not allowe to play competive hearthstone for a year also hes dont get any prize from this season
This is the official article about it
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/23179289
This thread is not meant for hate or insults but to have a adult discussion/conversation
i gonna have a unpopular opinion but i am agreeing almost totaly with blizzard in this rulling
Dont get me wrong its awfull what happening there and i can understand he wanna making a statement but first at all GM is not the place to make this statement and for sure not the way he did
GM is the highest level of Hearthstone esports that should not be use to make statements like this
Make a youtube video do it on your own stream but GM is not the place and he also signed and so agreed with al rules in the blizzard handbook
on twitter roger names is also called a lot that he did worse and get less punishment and yeah this is true blizzard fails there hard
they should be banned for life in the esports hearthstone scene
I mean cheating there is colance for that but that this was a bad rulling does nothin to do with this rulling
as last almost forgot i dont agree the part that he get no money at all i mean he haves put his time al the weeks in it and he should be get the money
You probably should have included that Blitzchung was banned for voicing his support for the Hong Kong protests. Those cowards at blizzard, unsurprisingly, left that out of their little PR statement.
I'm not surprised at all to see Blizzard kowtowing to Winnie the Pooh. It's not like this is the umpteenth example of them bending over backwards to accommodate Chinese diktats, as with the recent art changes. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense why they'd sell their principles for a slice of the chinese market, but it's still depressing as hell.
Basically you are saying people rights should be banned from HS as money is much more important
-=alfi=-
Blitzchung stated he's opposed to a regime of censorship and oppression; Blizzard responded by censoring and oppressing him >.>
ggwp
Stop that i basicly say that thats just crap
No i say that hs should go over politics
GM and Polictics are 2 different things thats what i say
Hs is not violating any human right they just dont wannah have that kind of content on GM and thats there good right because its about gaming
Also reallty funnyt that out of nowhere evryone cares about hong kong before this its was non excisting here
Because this is a Hearthstone forum. Why would we talk about politics on a video game fan site?
Gosh dang it, cards bad.
yeaah just as GM is esports so way should you make a politici statement with maskes and things
I didn't say that Blitzchung should have made the statement; but for Blizzard to go out of their way to permanently ban him and fire the two casters just for being there is ridiculous. Don't put words in my mouth.
Gosh dang it, cards bad.
Blitzchung said himself to IGN that he knew full well exactly what will happen if he said that and did it anyway.
He was 100%aware of the consequentions
and i have a lot of respect that he offer his career and money to make the statement
This is math. Lose an entire country's revenue, or lose a handful of others who are angered enough to stop playing. Maybe this will cost blizzard some sales, but better than losing China. Activision Blizzard is a public company with a duty to its shareholders to pursue the companies goals. I'm guessing profits is at the top of the goal list, and promoting free speech is not on the goal list.
Don't like it? Be one of those who stops playing. But you can't really blame Blizzard for making a pure business decision. That's what public companies do.
Communism is just a red herring
I think he knew this happening was a possibility and he did it anyway, so that is on him. That is pretty noble of him.
I really don't like political talk mixing into sports/esports but I do agree with his cause and think Blizzards punishment was grossly severe. They essentially ended his HS career over it.
You can definitely blame blizzard for supporting human rights violation to protect their bottom line. I definitely didn't expect any better but there is nothing wrong with trashing them for this. People don't have to just accept that corporations are pro-profit and anti-human. Nothing directed specifically at you, nothing you really said is wrong but it's just terrible that this kind of behavior is completely normalized and the status quo
This is troubling. But not uncommon. I am a bit undecided about continuing with hearthstone or not.
In this situation it was a bit extreme and was to be expected. What I would really like is for Blizzard to be put to the test. They say themselves, you can have your opinions, just not in the competition. I wonder, though. What happens if one of the casters or pro players condemn china, but just privately? Or, what happens if someone does something a bit less extreme - wear a hoodie that says "pro democracy, down with oppression". Clearly something that can not be considered 'political' in the west, it just says support democracy, it is not even a political topic. So, where does Blizzard draw the line here?
It is of course not really Blizzard drawing the line, though - it is china. Blizzard will eventually get stuck between a rock and a hard place, if they aren't already. The west freedom of speech is not compatible with china's market.
I wonder if he'd have been suspended or had his money taken away had his statement been pro-Chinese government. . . I have a funny feeling he'd have been celebrated, and the even if someone at Blizz had wanted to punish him for political talk, they'd never have had the guts,
Did anyone notice Pooh bear at the bottom of the page?
Anyway, I feel Blizzard was justified in punishing him. He signed a contract, he knew what was up, and he did it anyway. His fault. Blizzard needs to send the message that they will not tolerate anyone misusing their platform to spread their political ideals, and that is fine. Also, they do not want to piss off China, which is another very justifiable thing.
However, I disagree with the severity of the punishment. A one year ban just seems extreme, and all prize money being confiscated was just the cherry on top honestly. It sent a good message that Blizzard will not tolerate these clowns, but they went down too hard on him. What he said wasn’t particularly offensive anyway, it was just “down with the government” or something similar to that. And before anyone asks, the casters were in on it as well, thats why they got fired.
This ain't no place for a hero
Actually, that winnie the pooh is at the bottom of every page. It's a little weird.
Carrion, my wayward grub.
It's a dig at Chinese President Xi Jinping - he was compared to Winnie in a meme and he took offense, so Pooh has been banned in China for the last few years. So naturally it's now re-surging as a protest symbol against him/the Chinese government.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-winnie-the-pooh-film-to-stop-comparisons-to-president-xi
Well, I can't disagree with you. This is capitalism and its this system we live in and its enabled by the public. The difference between us and China is that the Chinese gov't can by fiat say "Do this, our you lose our entire country's player base," even though the Chinese citizens may not want it. Here, it would take a concerted effort of a large majority of the player base to threaten boycott before Blizzard would do anything, and let's face it, most Americans probably don't care much about one non-American player to stop playing a game they enjoy over it
Communism is just a red herring
The Chinese president can't stand being compared to Winnie the Pooh. AFAIK the name is censored quite heavily on the chinese internet. I assume Flux put Winnie there as a silent protest against Blizzard tacitly enforcing chinese censorship on their platform.
Context:
Just because a person or company has the right to do something doesn't mean it is right for them to do so. Yes blizzard had a contract that allowed them to yeet players for whatever reason, but you can be damn sure they wouldn't have thrown out a player for, say, coming out against global warming or pro gay marriage.
Throwing Blitzchung under the bus may be legal and even understandable, but it is still a cowardly affront to the principle of free speech. Personally I think more people ought to vote with their wallets, because it's the one tool we have to make corporations, which are amoral entities, behave morally.
If there is no price for acting like a tyrant's lapdog then eventually most companies will do so. If there's a price to pay for immoral actions then suddenly morality becomes a part of the business calculus.
Thanks for clarifying that
Carrion, my wayward grub.
Damn... That's brilliant!
Psst! Hey, you want to play a couple of fun (albeit pointless) gamebooks? Become a king here, and a babysitter here.
The concept of Blizzard wanting politics out of their tournament is a sensible thing, or at least something they are allowed to do.
The issue, to me, is how extreme and final it was. One of the videos I've watched voiced it: it feels like someone representing China (or a Blizz employee full and deep into wanting to appeal to China) flew into a rage and wanted it all stopped RIGHT NOW AND EVERYTHING BURNT TO ASHES!!
As another said: would the response be so crazy if it was pro-China or another political statement? I also don't think so.
If I was a regular player I would probably just be paying close attention and seeing how this goes. But I was already having a hard time finding the time to play and realizing that the Daily System basically means I'm NOT going to be able to keep F2P and have enough gold next expansion, so I was already on my way out. This just helped supply the final nudge. It's a pile of sludge that I COULD wade through but realized I really don't need to.
The one thing I would ask in passing is to PLEASE don't spawn this from attacks against the company into attacks against your fellow players. That some feel it was ok or at least not worth the outcry isn't reason enough to go attack them as an enemy. I already saw one reddit thread that tried to turn it into an attack on streamers who wanted nothing to do with the situation. That's how you turn a strong campaign into a rotten mess while ruining your message (which will help Blizzard greatly).
Keep the focus on the target. Let others do what they do while you do what you do. That's how a good backlash gets results.
FINAL note: on the image at the bottom: well played OOC. Glad I had moved over here. Good luck with the site.
Why trade with minions when you can face for...billions?
I'm just going to post what I posted in the latest J. Allen Brack news post. I feel this is an aspect of the entire situation that is really getting overlooked and ignored because people are focusing on what is happening in China directly vs. what Blitzchung actually did in the context of a tournament that was simply trying to provide thousands of players HS related entertainment.
"I know part of this is meant as a meme post, but in the end something important really needs to be emphasized here. Important issues in other parts of real life does not grant the privilege to break rules everywhere else in support of more weightier issues (at least not all of the time anyway). This is just one of countless examples of this.
This is one reason I have a problem with ThatsAdmirable throwing out the word "right" multiple times at the end of his statement. Yes, many of us do believe it is right to stand up for other human beings. It is in our nature to not want to cause or allow suffering to others BUT that still doesn't mean it was right of Blitzchung to hijack an entertainment company's event that everyone was invested in to enjoy a game's tournament, nor was it right to force a company not directly invested in battling the many vices of human rights on an international level. Blitz doing what he did forced their hand to react in a situation that they did not create by bringing up intense human rights battles themselves. Regardless of how you felt about the severity of the response one way or another it would take anybody with common sense to predict that if Blizzard didn't do some form of temporary sizable response that future mic-drop political/sociocultural comments would be used in future tournament events at some point. You don't get people to follow the rules for events by not responding to questionable tournament actions nor do you get people to follow rules by not assigning consequences at all.
I'll end with a hypothetical to further illustrate this issue of free speech, human rights, and the need for order in everyday life despite intense battles over human rights violations. Say you owned your own music radio channel and one of your hosts just decided to cut the top 10 hits or whatever to give a 5 minute speech about something related to human rights (a speech not related to your schedule on the station for that day or related to any talk-show portion of your station's program). The topic on human rights could be related to anything really (whether the events in China, the mistreatment and abuse of children, individuals, and/or families at the US Mexican border, etc). In this hypothetical what would you do? Your employee clearly violated rules associated with their job and also brought your specific station into question by wildly departing from the entire purpose of your radio station. It isn't to say that what said employee talked about was not important, quite the opposite, but you can't just hijack what isn't yours and break rules for other parts of daily life (entertainment, work, etc) just to stop the daily routine and promote what is passionate for you. There are plenty of APPROPRIATE MEDIUMS for that very thing. It is not appropriate to turn a medium into something it is not."
I don't want to sound cocky, but the distribution of upvotes and downvotes on this matter is disheartening.
It's like the majority of people here in this community expects you can LAWFULLY break the RULES about neutrality, if you break them for a good reason (and get away with it, with no further action being taken).
It's like saying it is lawful to rob if you are poor, and everyone should let you.
Consequently, it implies allowing anybody at these events coming out and explicitly support some kind of political agenda. Can you imagine the absolute mess?!?
Partying for a rebel, as i do in this case, is absolutely legitimate, but that can't mean one also expects no consequences, especially in a Neutral, international environment, that has nothing to do at all with said rebellion.
I hope i misunderstand people's mindset.
Do you refer to this page? The only one getting downvotes was the OP. Other posters in this same page with similar opinions had a neutral or positive ratio, which makes me wonder if the downvotes are more connected to his choice of words than his opinion itself.
Yep, this page, but also the articles in the news section.
Hopefully, it's just a side-effect of downvoting and/or generic misunderstanding.
I think it's absurdly naive to take Blizzard's face-saving PR statement at face value and assume that they're JUST applying their rules and nothing more. The fact that they backpedalled on Blitchung's prize money and suspended the casters instead of firing them goes to show that the actions they took initially were not necessarily the result of following the rules to the letter.
And lets be very clear here: the "rule" that blitz violated is an extremely broad cover-your-own-ass clause which blizzard can invoke at any time to punish a player for anything. Had they so chosen they could have kicked Thijs for drawing smiley faces on oranges last week after he beat Orange. It's not a bleeding coincidence that the ONE time Blizzard comes down like a ton of bricks is when someone brings up politics in the 100 acre woods.
If you genuinely believe this had nothing to do with Chinese censorship, I have a bridge to sell you and it's got Heffalumps and Woozles and everything.
I think that anybody can easily agree with the Hong Kong situation and the need to set things right there. Those (like myself) that have a critical eye on this "boycott Blizzard" wave are just pointing out that what Blitzchung did was simply in the wrong contest and the actions taken on him and the casters, even if harsh, are something that should have been done to keep safe the neutrality of a gaming tournament.
If literally no actions were to be taken, anybody could decide to just use the visibility offered by such a massive event to make political proclamations. How messy could that become? How enjoyable would it be for a viewer to get flooded with such statements every time?
Of course China's money had an importance at how fast and how hard Activision Blizzard acted (it will be naive to think otherwise), but enforcing a punishment on those who broke such an important thing like the neutrality of an e-sport event was the right thing to do.
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
Why didn't Blizzard ban the three US hearthstone collegiate players who held up a sign in support of Hong Kong one day after Blitzchung's banning? If this was about setting a standard that no political messages are allowed, why weren't they punished at all?
If you look at the actual PR statement by blizzard, they repeat over and over again that Blitzchung and the casters were punished for not "keep(ing) the focus on the game". https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament This is a preposterous standard to apply. If this were the line then Frodan and Amnesiac should have been yeeted a few weeks ago for discussing the player's love life: clearly of no relevance to the game.
No, no no, y'all taking an obvious lie at face value. Come now. Even if you blithely assume that you're being given the real justification, at the very least then you have to concede that the standards are NOT being applied evenly, and draw your inferences from there.
Even if there was side-corporate influence in the punishment, rule-breakers acted knowing their consequences, and that's it.
Pretending Blizz should have acted condescendingly, because of just cause, now that is naive. And honestly unfair.
If corporate decisions are dictating if/when players get punished for the same "transgressions" (and again I have to stress that Blizzard has put such a broad clause in the contract that they can ban people at their discretion), then clearly the rules aren't being applied evenly.
At that point the rules just exist to deflect legal liability, they're not a reflection of any sort of values the company pretends to uphold.
If they saw fit to ban blitzchung, they should've done the same to the US players. They didn't, so they're not enforcing their rules, which makes it perfectly reasonable to question whether this decision was made in order to comply with the rules..... or if the rules were bent over backwards to justify a corporate/political decision.
I don't see what's "condescending" about holding companies to the values they espouse and cutting through their PR doublespeak to point out hypocrisy and lies. Expecting them to apply the same standards to all players is the opposite of "unfair".
Still, Blitzchung and the two casters deserved an appropriate reaction.
The actual reaction was possibly too harsh, but asserting Blizz should have accepted passively what happened is just utterly wrong.
I don't know what happened with the US players, but it doesn't change an inch about the above.
The alleged double-standard cannot be used as an excuse for Blitzchung.
That's what i'm criticizing (assuming it is a real mindset in the community).
Well, I though that this was clear to everyone since the beginning. Every company that is quoted on the stock exchange has only one goal: profit. Eveything else is there just for the sake of marketing. If anyone belived Blizzard would uphold their "values" after the original founders (Michael Morhaime and Chris Metzen, mainly) have all left and everything has passed into Activision's hand... than I envy you because you still belive at fairytales.
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
Why? Because they broke the "rules"? Again, and for the last time, the rule they cited is a catchall clause that can be applied to literally any one of the participants in GM.
"Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image"
If i say I'm offended by Purple's constant head-scratching or the typo in Bunnyhoppor's name, that is enough to fulfil the condition of the provision, so long as I'm the person with the appropriate authority within the company. Should all of the players in GM be banned for breaking the rules?
If they really wanted to kowtow to Beijing without being transparent flaming hypocrites they should have rewritten their contracts and put out a statement explicitly telling competitors not to make political statements.
Instead they tried to pretend Blitz broke the rules, and their paper-thin attempt to justify this based on the current rules just makes them look that much worse.
They broke the same "rule", arguably more egregiously by adding "boycott blizzard" and received no punishment whatsoever.
If you say that's not relevant then you're conceding that you don't give a lick about consistent application of the rules you cite as justification.
If your actual position is that Blizzard can do whatever it wants, no matter how hypocritical and contradictory, just say that instead of citing the rules.
Except that's not the argument. You haven't even provided the argument that blitzchung did anything wrong, but even if you had made that case, obviously the reason to point out the double standard is to show that only certain people are being punished for this supposed wrongdoing, which is itself a bad thing.
Blizzard not applying its rules consistently is an argument against these rules, not in favour of the behaviour they are supposedly trying to prevent. If a corrupt cop is turning a blind eye towards certain criminals, pointing that out isn't an argument in favour of crime, it's an argument against corruption & hypocrisy.
This is a terrible argument from apathy. If we're suddenly going to stop pretending to believe in Blizzard's PR spin then why bring up their rationalisations and rules to begin with? Just be honest and say that you believe corporations are an unstoppable evil that we just have to learn to accept and stop pretending there's any sort of moral reasoning behind your stance other than "might makes right".
I believe that consumers have a great deal of power over companies provided they vote with their wallet to punish bad corporate behaviour. If a company is behaving like shit, maybe stop supporting it. Just look how quickly Gillette jumped off the toxic masculinity bandwagon after their stocks tanked in the wake of one single male-bashing ad.
Hell, look how quickly Blizzard backpedalled on Blitzchung's punishment now that they're being universally condemned by western media and hearthstone players alike.
Corporations are amoral entities, that's why it's up to the consumer to reward moral businesses and punish immoral ones. Otherwise, it'll always be a race to the bottom, to the most exploitative business model they can legally get away with.
I totally agree with this. Just logging into any of their games or watching them on Twitch is supporting them (with numbers), so all those that are going to join the protest are really ready to totally quit? How many will do such thing instead of just keep playing/watching and spam some "support HK" around the internet?
It's the difference between taking real action and just call out good words. Not that words aren't important, but they'll hardly change things if left alone (history has already proven that so many times).
"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world, and loses his own soul?"
Blitzchung broke the "no politics rule" and i don't need to prove it.
If a cop turns a blind eye against X, he may be corrupt, yet his action against Y can be correct, and according to sensible rules. And corruption does not affect the quality of the rules, when they are correctly upheld.
My argument is based on the (unproven) impression that many in the community believe that since Blitzchung did a brave/right thing, Blizz had no rights to punish him (them).
If the assumption is incorrect, you can ignore all my posts, if it is not, the double-standard is not a counterargument.
Corporate corruption is connected to the Blitzchung event, but, i reiterate, it doesn't move by an inch the point about him. It is a different argument, and it requires Blitzchung action being proved equal to that of the US players (which i ignore).
Even the people spamming hongkong copypastas in GM twitch chat while they try to get free packs are still doing more than the jaded people trying to call out their supposed hypocrisy.
I don't really have a problem with slacktivists doing the bare minimum of "activism" from the comfort of their gamer chairs so long as they don't act too smug or self-congratulatory about it. Even going F2P instead of buying packs is still a message, it still affects Blizzard's bottom line. I don't think tweeting at blizzard is going to save Hong Kong, but I do think it can cause (other) companies to rethink their policies toward china going forward. If nothing else, I hope this controversy, as well as the NBA stuff, can accomplish that.
There is no "no politics" rule that blizzard can cite, or they would've. It's why the statement by Blizzard's president and Blitzchung both repeat the term "focus on the game" over and over again, and I've already explained at length how that standard can be applied to almost anything.
We now have compelling evidence that Blizzard is talking out of both sides of their mouth BTW. While their English-language statement said: "our relationships in China had no influence on our decision.", the official hearthstone Weibo account tweeted out a statement that ended with " We will always respect and defend the pride of our country."
https://imgur.com/a/FjiSJvC
The crux of the issue here is the cop's conduct, not X or Y. Whether or not blitzchung did a bad thing, and I will vehemently argue he didn't, either way blizzard's conduct is inconsistent. And the direction of the inconsistency points toward ulterior motives/corruption.
If Blitzchung had come out in support of the chinese government and had been banned for that reason I'd still disagree with blizzard's decision on principle. Now I don't think for a moment that that would've happened, but I'm not averse to supporting people with opinions I disagree with when they are being wronged.
The actions are exactly analogous. In both cases the players made a political statement on an official HS stream.
Brack, in his post (in the news), mentions "rules" that Blitzchung agreed to upon participation.
And inconsistency of rule application does not imply the rule is wrong, nor that ALL its applications are wrong.
Blitzchung did the right thing, but he broke the rule/principle of neutrality of the event (hence the punishment). The two things can co-exist together. No contradiction is implied.
He references a rule but doesn't cite it. The only rule blizzard did cite is the aforementioned catchall clause. Obviously Blitzchung came to some sort of agreement with blizzard and they put out joint statements containing the same lawyerly language and including a non-admission by blitzchung that he "took the focus away from the game with his comments".
Which, again, and ad nauseam, isn't prohibited by any rule blizzard has produced thusfar.
I don't care about other inconsistent applications of rules, here I'm talking about blizzard's hypocrisy specifically. If you cannot show me the rule that blitzchung broke then I won't concede he did anything wrong. Here's the rulebook. Doing a simple word search gives us exactly zero hits for "politics" or "neutrality" and I couldn't find anything in the player conduct section, but maybe I'm wrong. Show me the rule or stop asserting that it exists.
https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/page_media/w4/W4NWIBHB74T31564507077190.pdf
There must be a rule or a principle of neutrality, simply because it would be utter chaos otherwise, in an international environment. It's called common sense, and it doesn't need to be written.
Even if we assume such a principle is not obvious, your argument is just as baseless (or relative) as mine, about Blitzchung acting correctly or not.
PS: i don't care of hypocrisy (in this my interventions in this thread). As i stated, my posts were directed to those who think there should have been no serious punishment for the Blitzchung case, by virtue of just cause.
Preposterous. Sporting events and award ceremonies have often been used to express political messages, so not only are you citing a rule which doesn't exist, when cornered you're claiming that the opposite of reality is "common sense".
Unless the rules prohibit it, there is no principle or common understanding that a winner can't talk about whatever he wants during an interview. If you have no argument left to present, just concede the point rather than insisting, sans reasoning, that my claims are as baseless as yours. They really really aren't, hence why I'm citing documents and statements and you keep moving the goalposts hither and tither.
You fail to fully understand what you read.
Common sense is not the stack of historical precedents, as you assumed in your first preposition.
Common sense is knowing that bringing up hot political issues in an international sports event may have consequences.
Common sense is preventing your sports events become a circus of political agendas in the future.
My argument has never moved beyond the difference between "rule" and "principle".
If you fail to understand my argument, by virtue of the non-written, as if it was a trial with a system of laws and lawyers (hint: it is not), it's not my problem, and i don't need to concede anything.
At this point, i don't expect to make myself any clearer to you, and i won't argue any further (i have no trial to win).
If it were such a common sense thing the GM rulebook would've explicitly mentioned it, the same way it mentions other totally obvious things players shouldn't do, like show up late, cheat, get convicted of crimes or make false endorsements.
There was nothing stopping blizzard from including a political speech clause, but they didn't.
Changing the argument from "blitzchung broke a rule" to "blitzchung broke an unstated principle" is a massive goalpost shift, and you know it. If Blitzchung broke the rule of "common sense" then Blizzard has no grounds to ban him.
If you can't articulate how I fail to grasp (and refute) your arguments, that's a terribly hollow claim indeed, especially when combined with the way your goal line keeps retreating.
There are plenty of comments in the various news posts the last few days that have more or less downvoted people unless you were in agreement about Blizzard sucking, Chinese conspiracies, and a complete reversal for Blitzchung because #freehongkong (which really is completely irrelevant when discussing the appropriateness of hijacking a tournament event to make it political). Obviously I'm exaggerating a little but there are a lot of downvotes in the threads.