Did they ever apologise properly for what they did to that player that said free Hong Kong and allow him to play again or have we all just forgotten that?
For the uninformed:
That was when Blitzchung, in his post-tournament win interview, uttered a brief sentence in support of Hong Kong (and implicitly in support of human rights). Blizzard responded by revoking his prize money, banning him from tournaments, and terminating the interviewers who happened to be on camera with him at the time.
This action took place late at night (well outside of US business hours) and was accompanied by a letter that some analysts pointed out had peculiar phrasing patterns that one might expect from native-Chinese speakers writing in English. The excuse given was a tournament rule prohibiting any act that “brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image.”
To answer your question: No.
At the subsequent BlizzCon, Blizzard president Allen Brack gave a speech in which he “apologized” for the vague act of failing to live up to the high standards they set for themselves. He didn’t mention Blitzchung at all. This was a typical, predictable, corporate non-apology, allowing them to say “I’m sorry” for something other than the harm they inflicted or the position they took. Neither Brack nor Blizzard apologized for the actions taken against Blitzchung and the interview hosts. The punishments were not reversed. (I think Blizzard eventually responded to massive public pressure by somewhat reducing the duration of Blitzchung’s ban, but never lifted it entirely, awarded his prize money, or restored the interview hosts’ contracts.)
A few years later, Activision Blizzard was bought by Microsoft. Bobby Kotick, the CEO at the time of the Blitzchung decision, is no longer there. We don’t know who else participated, so we don’t know if they are are still making decisions at Blizzard.
Ah, I see my decision to delete my account and stop playing is still justified. Thank you for the information and the answer.
This is the incident that made me cancel my WoW sub, and close my Battle.net account. Never again trusting them, even under Microsoft (or rather, especially now under MS).
This can’t be right, Blizzard ≠ Fun
Must have been an accident. Next patch will get right on fixing that
The more I read your comment the more I wonder if it needs /s
Can’t say I know either. It’s definitely tongue-in-cheek and I don’t believe ActiBlizzard has managed to make their game fun on purpose for a second. That said, patching out the fun would imply they know what they’re doing when I’m unconvinced they’re good enough at game to purposely make a game tedious.
So you’re saying the studio its self is RNG.
ActiBlizzard is a lootbox.
Wait. Loot boxes are back?
They are back just as a reward for playing and can’t be bought in any way.
Even better.
It just sucks you can only earn 3 lootboxes a week. It used to be 13 every week for 1 month and now that event ended.
FFS. Literally no free fun allowed. Bare minimum to appease players.
You used to get lootboxes just for playing, progressing hero, having good endorsement, none of that came back. Or the grindy 10 levels past battlepass that only give you useless name tag, not a single lootbox and it’s more grindy than entire battlepass.
Their brain’s have rotted so far they’re finally having fun
New Stadium is kinda ass. Matchmaker for it is absolutely horrendous and it keeps making teams where one is a stack of Top500 players and the other is bunch of randoms who only played Quick Play before.
I’ve only played 3 games of it, but they’ve all been close so far. I suspect the window for fun has already passed.
Overwatch is fun every time there’s a new completely game-changing shift. At its core it’s an incredibly fun game, it’s only because its so competitive that it loses all the joy. As soon as a new iteration is “solved” it stops being fun.
Yep, just like TF2, that they copied, game is not fun if everyone starts taking it too seriously. I feel like Valve understood that and that’s why they never really pushed the competitive scene.
6v6 and no role queue?
Seriously.
Let me know when stuff is no longer locked behind a “Battle Pass”.
I got pretty much all the cosmetics in OW1 without paying for a single lootbox, and definitely refuse to pay for the privilege of FOMO.
The Ban system needs to go.
