Even if it weren't possible to fully customise the user experience it would probably be a good idea for OOC to branch out into other (online) card games. As it stands, I don't see any downsides: There's obviously a lot of overlap with these games, both qua player-bases and qua design, mechanics, flavour etc. You get to increase the user-base of the forum, presumably increase traffic & forum activity and expand the scope of discussions, not to mention provide the prefect place to compare and contrast all these different games.
I'm all for it. Great idea. That said, as an old school DotA player I'm morally obligated to look down on LoL and anything related to it. :/
The green glow around the arena just signifies there's a special event going on, namely dual class arena-ing. It's there every time you enter the main screen.
He didn't break any rule that Blizzard has been able to cite so far. The only thing they have pointed towards is a catchall clause in the contract that allows blizzard to dismiss any player for pretty much any reason, at the sole discretion of blizzard.
"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 damage’s[sic] Blizzard image...."
If doing something that someone, somewhere might find offensive is a bannable offense then by god, the entire GM roster should be banned. The fact that Blizzard has the right to yeet players at will doesn't mean they retroactively broke a rule because they got yeeted.
Don't be ridiculous. China censorship does not care about sexualized characters or gore. Have you seen Chinese games? They changed Secretkeeper because it was literally an ass, and that's dumb. Why do you think they changed Mistress of Pain but not Silver Hand Regent's very visible nipples? You can't argue that it's a Wild card no one uses, because so is MoP. It was for the same reason they changed Succubus - because they don't want an actual sex demon in their game.
The thing that gets censored is bones. That's the #1 thing that gets changed.
I've been saying this since the announcement - the art changes were only for the reasons Blizzard gave. That art didn't fit the game anymore.
That's false. Yes, bones are the most common thing chinese censors take issue with, but violence/gore and sexual imagery are also regularly censored, albeit less consistently:
In light of Blizzard blatantly lying about how their decision to kick Blitzchung had nothing to do with China, I think it's all the more reason to second-guess Blizzard's motives for censoring these cards: Do you really think they would admit it was to comply with chinese censorship it that were the main reason? No, obviously they'd try to sell it as their own decision ("think of the children!") rather than admit they're kowtowing to Beijing.
The eight mana slot has been the sweet spot for evolves and such for ages, but this is probably one of the strongest pools ever. I say probably only because The Lich King is no longer in standard. It's a fair point to raise that Mogu probably would be considerably weaker as a 6 mana 3/3 or 8 mana 4/4 even if it kept the discount mechanic simply because it'd roll into considerably worse minion pools.
Another solution would be to consider just friendly minions for its discount effect: it will still evolve into an 8 drop, but it will come much later and its cost won't be reduced below 2
---
//Sinti: banned the bot and removed the external link from this quote.
If Mogu fleshshaper is to be changed, I'd rather have it keep its functionality as a cheap rusher and nerf the evolve highroll aspect than vice versa. I think the cheesy highroll potential is what makes the card/combo problematic, whereas the discountable rusher aspect is the core thing the card does (by itself).
I'd rather not have the card be nothing more than an evolve target.
Exactly. What they should have done is change the rules going forward, adding a specific rule against political statements, and maybe, MAYBE give blitzchung a warning. After all, he broke no rule that Blizzard can cite beyond the "we can kick you out for any reason at our discretion" clause.
But I am incredibly amused at the china shills inadvertently admitting that they think stifling political speech is a good thing unto itself, a goal to be pursued. Really gets that noggin joggin'.
Anyone able to explain how to use Lock and Load well? Seems like quite a risky card. You need a lot of mana and luck to wait out for some RNG? And you spend a bunch of your own cards? Basically I don't know how to use it properly.
It's a trash tier meme card. It was never good and it's been completely outclassed since by EG Mana Cyclone.
I was genuinely puzzled when I saw this card and Renounce Darkness among the cards to be brought back from wild because I thought it was obvious, especially to the designers of the game, that these were poorly designed cards.
but then why do they have china-only card art version for stuff like Skeletons?
If it was only a chinese issue they would have just given the chinese versions different artwork.
Probably because commissioning alternate art for china is extremely overt and obvious. Changing it for all regions gives them some plausible deniability that they're not just doing it to impress Winnie the Pooh, which would have resulted in a wave of criticism similar to what we're seeing now with Blitzchung.
Acting like the US hasn't fought against censorship hard in regards to sexuality and violence in children's entertainment doesn't dismiss the fact that there are also obvious factors other than #somethingsomethingbuzzwordschinesecensorship
Or would you like me to direct you towards Yu-Gi-Oh? Although I'm sure I'll be told China caused that as well right?
So your argument is whataboutism then. That's spiffy. Clearly one instance of misguided western censorship twenty years ago completely negates decades of chinese pressure to alter games, which continues unabated to this day. Bra-vo. This isn't the first time chinese censorship has affected game art. It isn't even the first time it has affected blizzard game art: WoW is famous for having had to alter undead designs considerably for their chinese servers.
But sure, chinese censorship is a buzzword.
Care to provide solid evidence then that China is exactly what is causing such a censorship then? I ask because all too often people on the internet tend to like saying something causes another thing without evidence and just assume everyone else won't challenge their claims
If you want a signed confession from Blizzard that they did what they did because of Chinese censorship, then no, you're probably not going to find it, for the same reason Blizzard lied to us and said the decision to ban Blitzchung had nothing to do with china (while telling Chinese players that it was done to defend the honour of m'lady China). Unfortunately developers and designers aren't nearly as candid about it as they used to be a decade or more ago. I remember when "Chinese alternate card art" was a recurring article type over at Magic: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/alternate-chinese-art-guildpact-part-1-2006-02-23
Or, more likely, they waited or were told to hold off reacting the exact same way because they saw all of the reactions they were seeing from the community, inside and out.
People really got to stop the copy pasta responses about everything having to do with China.
Blizzard said it was about china in their own words, in their statement on Weibo. "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country."
I really don't see what you hope to accomplish with all this spin and gaslighting. No one is buying it.
Acting like the US hasn't fought against censorship hard in regards to sexuality and violence in children's entertainment doesn't dismiss the fact that there are also obvious factors other than #somethingsomethingbuzzwordschinesecensorship
Or would you like me to direct you towards Yu-Gi-Oh? Although I'm sure I'll be told China caused that as well right?
So your argument is whataboutism then. That's spiffy. Clearly one instance of misguided western censorship twenty years ago completely negates decades of chinese pressure to alter games, which continues unabated to this day. Bra-vo. This isn't the first time chinese censorship has affected game art. It isn't even the first time it has affected blizzard game art: WoW is famous for having had to alter undead designs considerably for their chinese servers.
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.
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 firstpreposition.
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.
At this point, i don't expect to my make myself any clearer to you (and i won't argue any further), but stop acting cocky. It doesn't make you smarter.
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 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.
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.
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.
Blitzchung broke the "no politics rule" and i don't need to prove it.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
The actions are exactly analogous. In both cases the players made a political statement on an official HS stream.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Still, Blitzchung and the two casters deserved an appropriate reaction.
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?
The actual reaction was possibly too harsh, but asserting Blizz should have accepted passively what happened is just utterly wrong.
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.
I don't know what happened with the US players, but it doesn't change an inch about the above.
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.
The alleged double-standard cannot be used as an excuse for Blitzchung.
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.
Blizzard is obviously operating by a PR&legal playbook. You see the same kinds of common themes in the statement by Blizzard's president and Blitzchung.
I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of (re)negotion took place and these statements by the casters (written by blizzard) are part of the deal. I don't think they really care about how transparent this all is to gamers, if you ask me the main audience for these statements is the investors.
If nothing else, I take an immense amount of schadenfreude from the fact that the stated reason for banning Blitzchung ("distracting people from the game") has backfired spectacularly, and now the twitch chat in GM is just wall-to-wall political commentary.
Even if it weren't possible to fully customise the user experience it would probably be a good idea for OOC to branch out into other (online) card games. As it stands, I don't see any downsides: There's obviously a lot of overlap with these games, both qua player-bases and qua design, mechanics, flavour etc. You get to increase the user-base of the forum, presumably increase traffic & forum activity and expand the scope of discussions, not to mention provide the prefect place to compare and contrast all these different games.
I'm all for it. Great idea. That said, as an old school DotA player I'm morally obligated to look down on LoL and anything related to it. :/
The green glow around the arena just signifies there's a special event going on, namely dual class arena-ing. It's there every time you enter the main screen.
I assume the update was a bugfix of some kind.
He didn't break any rule that Blizzard has been able to cite so far. The only thing they have pointed towards is a catchall clause in the contract that allows blizzard to dismiss any player for pretty much any reason, at the sole discretion of blizzard.
"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 damage’s[sic] Blizzard image...."
If doing something that someone, somewhere might find offensive is a bannable offense then by god, the entire GM roster should be banned. The fact that Blizzard has the right to yeet players at will doesn't mean they retroactively broke a rule because they got yeeted.
That's false. Yes, bones are the most common thing chinese censors take issue with, but violence/gore and sexual imagery are also regularly censored, albeit less consistently:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/arcana/chinese-skeletons-2002-03-13
In light of Blizzard blatantly lying about how their decision to kick Blitzchung had nothing to do with China, I think it's all the more reason to second-guess Blizzard's motives for censoring these cards: Do you really think they would admit it was to comply with chinese censorship it that were the main reason? No, obviously they'd try to sell it as their own decision ("think of the children!") rather than admit they're kowtowing to Beijing.
If Mogu fleshshaper is to be changed, I'd rather have it keep its functionality as a cheap rusher and nerf the evolve highroll aspect than vice versa. I think the cheesy highroll potential is what makes the card/combo problematic, whereas the discountable rusher aspect is the core thing the card does (by itself).
I'd rather not have the card be nothing more than an evolve target.
Exactly. What they should have done is change the rules going forward, adding a specific rule against political statements, and maybe, MAYBE give blitzchung a warning. After all, he broke no rule that Blizzard can cite beyond the "we can kick you out for any reason at our discretion" clause.
But I am incredibly amused at the china shills inadvertently admitting that they think stifling political speech is a good thing unto itself, a goal to be pursued. Really gets that noggin joggin'.
It's a trash tier meme card. It was never good and it's been completely outclassed since by EG Mana Cyclone.
I was genuinely puzzled when I saw this card and Renounce Darkness among the cards to be brought back from wild because I thought it was obvious, especially to the designers of the game, that these were poorly designed cards.
Probably because commissioning alternate art for china is extremely overt and obvious. Changing it for all regions gives them some plausible deniability that they're not just doing it to impress Winnie the Pooh, which would have resulted in a wave of criticism similar to what we're seeing now with Blitzchung.
List of chinese cennsored magic cards: http://squt.tripod.com/error8.html
Various altered WoW models on CN servers: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/49x7m0/chinese_wow_censorship_comparisonlots_of/
Skeleton Knight art in china:
If you want a signed confession from Blizzard that they did what they did because of Chinese censorship, then no, you're probably not going to find it, for the same reason Blizzard lied to us and said the decision to ban Blitzchung had nothing to do with china (while telling Chinese players that it was done to defend the honour of m'lady China). Unfortunately developers and designers aren't nearly as candid about it as they used to be a decade or more ago. I remember when "Chinese alternate card art" was a recurring article type over at Magic: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/alternate-chinese-art-guildpact-part-1-2006-02-23
Blizzard said it was about china in their own words, in their statement on Weibo. "We will always respect and defend the pride of our country."
I really don't see what you hope to accomplish with all this spin and gaslighting. No one is buying it.
So your argument is whataboutism then. That's spiffy. Clearly one instance of misguided western censorship twenty years ago completely negates decades of chinese pressure to alter games, which continues unabated to this day. Bra-vo. This isn't the first time chinese censorship has affected game art. It isn't even the first time it has affected blizzard game art: WoW is famous for having had to alter undead designs considerably for their chinese servers.
But sure, chinese censorship is a buzzword.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Blizzard is obviously operating by a PR&legal playbook. You see the same kinds of common themes in the statement by Blizzard's president and Blitzchung.
I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of (re)negotion took place and these statements by the casters (written by blizzard) are part of the deal. I don't think they really care about how transparent this all is to gamers, if you ask me the main audience for these statements is the investors.
If nothing else, I take an immense amount of schadenfreude from the fact that the stated reason for banning Blitzchung ("distracting people from the game") has backfired spectacularly, and now the twitch chat in GM is just wall-to-wall political commentary.