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S2 Ep73: Blizzard and China
73 Plays6 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about a more serious topic for once. One that was too popular in the news to pass over!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Change in Episode Topic
00:00:00
Speaker
Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, Tubby little cubby all stuffed with floppies Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, We're in any silly old bed.
00:00:16
Speaker
Deep in the hundred acre wood, like Christopher Robin plays. You'll find the end child had never heard of Christopher's childhood does.
00:00:40
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I am joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going weird. Yeah, it's, uh, it is pretty weird.
00:00:53
Speaker
I would like to say for anybody who knew what this week's episode was supposed to be, I have kneecapped it to postpone to a later week in favor of some more recent events and newsworthy topics. I like how diplomatically. Oh, this is when I try and sound smart.
00:01:17
Speaker
I like to, uh, word things in certain ways. You're like, Oh, yeah. You know, it's like, I, we don't usually come up with titles, uh, before the podcast actually is recorded. We kind of like come up with it afterwards.
Fun with Episode Titles and Wrestling Nostalgia
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm wondering if this one's just going to be China, right? Like what are people even going to think in response to that? Like, is it the wrestler? Is it the country? That was CH YNA, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Actually, I didn't actually ever really watch wrestling.
00:01:48
Speaker
I don't like I might have watched some because I used to go over to a friend's house after church And him and his dad were big into pro wrestling. Mm-hmm So just beyond but then we'd also like play those games right to be fair the games were actually really enjoyable right because there's a certain thing of like beating the shell somebody with a Random objects chairs the customer ladder matches. Yeah. Yeah
00:02:12
Speaker
There's a guy with a suit. I can't remember his name, but he was literally just like a business person with the suit. I mean, that could easily be a wrestling personality. Yeah, that's who he was. I was glad this is where the story ended up where you're just like after church, me and my friend, like my friend and his dad, we would go over to his place and we'd wrestle.
00:02:31
Speaker
Right? Well, I was having a hard time grabbing him because he's so slippery. Right. Just oil up and get in there. No, that's not what we're talking about, though. Though maybe we should someday, you know, get through that. Today, we're going to talk about
Epic Games and Chinese Influence
00:02:49
Speaker
the implications of recent events in the gaming industry, our own personal thoughts on it. And if anybody spends any time on Reddit, we'll basically know what we're talking about. But yeah, like why is Epic keep giving me free games? Right. What's that about? Yeah, exactly. The reason Epic keeps giving you free games is because they have a significant, a significant number of their shares are owned by Tencent, which is a Chinese company and they have our best interests at heart.
00:03:21
Speaker
Like any big company, they have their best interest at heart, which is just making money, which is not an invalid or wrong goal. Just the root of all evil. Or that's specifically the love of money.
00:03:37
Speaker
This isn't the religious episode. I'm sorry. I'll take the back. We'll get to that. It's a later week That'll be the halloween one because nobody wants it. That's the ultimately scary one, right? Is the religious episode Okay, what's scarier than hell Oh could the intro for that be yeah, take me to church that's definitely licensed music. Yeah versus everything else that we've stolen right um
00:04:02
Speaker
Well, it was only licensed till we stole it. Now we stole the license too. It's unlicensed. We're at the high seas out here.
00:04:09
Speaker
So what happened in recent events for those who do not go on Reddit as often as we? Right. Or maybe Reddit is blocked in your country.
Hearthstone Controversy and Censorship
00:04:20
Speaker
So in that case, we're breaking news here. So it starts out as basically a pretty non-conspicuous event. So there's a Taiwanese player wins Hearthstone championship.
00:04:36
Speaker
um heresy yes right that's where the problems started first we left the taiwanese players win hearthstone matches um but he uh after his uh winning the match um he was going for the post-match interview and there were uh two casters who uh basically said say the eight words and we'll cut and he comes on with a gas mask
00:05:02
Speaker
and essentially says the slogan of Hong Kong liberation which is liberate Hong Kong and revolution of our time and that's like big big bad no-no in China where
00:05:19
Speaker
censorship laws are in full effect So they do cut Blizzard ultimately posts on their site the exact part of the codes of conduct that he violated which was essentially boils down to Bringing disfavorable views upon Blizzard, which is like pretty vague. You know, I think we'd agree
00:05:43
Speaker
That there's a lot of money has like a blanket ruling on something as like a cover your ass type thing Yeah in the same way that like how YouTube handles a copyright claims. Mm-hmm. It's just kind of a
00:05:56
Speaker
Well, I guess it falls under this, uh, sucks to suck. Yeah. It's the thing that makes it kind of exceptional is not that they have that policy. Everyone would have that policy. Um, and he did violate it, you know, by causing this up, this, this issue with China.
00:06:13
Speaker
Also, what were the eight words that he was supposed to say? Oh, so if not represent the Hong Kong revolution. So the at least my understanding of the situation is that the casters knew what he was going to say. There was no eight proper words. It's that the casters knew based off the fact he was wearing a gas mask at the time that he was going to say the liberation motto for Hong Kong.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it's like hey, you'll get your two cents Yeah, it's a it's a layered joke and then essentially they're just going to cut Yeah, like they had to give him air time because he won the tournament. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. It's interesting though because and this is where you know a trying to apologist may come in and say
00:06:57
Speaker
So ultimately, the casters were fired. The player was banned for a year and his winnings were reduced to zero, which is stipulated in the terms of service, basically in the policy. That's pretty, you know, aggressive that his winnings would be reduced to zero, but that's the part that stipulated the ban was entirely kind of. It was Blizzard's determination how long he should be banned and they picked a year.
00:07:24
Speaker
So that was up to them. The casters being fired upset a lot of people because they didn't understand. Right. Right. Exactly. What is the justification for the casters being fired? And it wasn't like super well spread about that. They said like, say your eight words and we'll cut because that's kind of Lynn's intent in a way. Right. Like they're giving him a platform to speak about the revolution.
00:07:52
Speaker
and I mean most people I think listening to this would you know agree with um like Hong Kong's push for democracy all of this you know their their own like push towards liberation we see that as like a positive thing in the west right but definitely from a Chinese perspective that's two people willingly choosing to enable someone
00:08:15
Speaker
to say this message when they knew he was going to say it it's not like he rushed grabbed a camera and a microphone just want to say uh yeah yeah exactly um and so in their eyes if you're approaching it from that view like you would understand why the casters ended up getting fired
Cultural Clash: Freedom of Speech vs. Censorship
00:08:34
Speaker
Now that's, you know, pretty serious penalty for both people. Well, I would say for all three people, that is a very serious. Yeah. Cause like you said, um, the initial rule or a clause, uh, in the tournament codes of conduct is kind of vague and just kind of a, Hey, you pissed us off. So we're going to enact judgment. Yeah. Um,
00:09:01
Speaker
It just seems like a lot for one player to be banned for a whole fucking year. Yeah, and to have no money because they have Political views on things are going on and you know
00:09:14
Speaker
Like, things that they're close to and involved in. And it's kind of a Western view. I say Western, but I mean, non-Chinese view. Well, we're outsiders, obviously. That someone should be able to say those things. In China, it's kind of assumed, no, you can't say those things. Why should you be able to say those things? Those are against the government.
00:09:40
Speaker
We don't do that in the West. That's one of our great freedoms, is that we have the freedom to criticize our government. That's what we feed off of, really, is criticizing our own government. Without getting into politics, which I realize will get me banned from the soap store.
00:09:59
Speaker
I think it's it should be everyone's right to have a public discourse on matters that affect them plain and simple. And when those rights are shipped away, again, not getting it like full politics, but anybody should feel justified in desiring those if they do not have them because they are entitled to them.
00:10:21
Speaker
Like to us in our upbringing in our country, this is a basic human liberty. This is how we see the weed. Have and take for granted. Yeah. Do you know how many times we would say fuck the cops? I say it all the time. All right. You don't swear.
00:10:39
Speaker
Like everybody, even like just jokingly or like in certain music where it's on like actual issues or like violence with police or other scenarios. Um, and we can, and that doesn't, we're not docked for that. That is just freedom of expression.
00:10:57
Speaker
Right, exactly. It's you're allowed to say something Unless you're actively harming other people, you know, then Like we have we have these freedoms and we use them The some of some of the consequences of what happened here is um one of the casters ended up on Twitch there was a twitch clip of him. It's basically like crying going over like talking about this this incident and how his career is basically over because when
00:11:26
Speaker
People work for Blizzard You're part of that ecosystem. So he was mainly an overwatch caster actually but he dabbled in Hearthstone casting and His entire you know portfolio is essentially nuked off the face of your like he's not gonna be able to get a job Anywhere that has an affiliation with China because he's on a blacklist now His career is basically done. He has to do something else. He has to do something where He doesn't interact with China
00:11:55
Speaker
You know, um, so I don't know where he's from whether that's china or taiwan, but I hope it's taiwan, you know, like otherwise he's he's gonna have a hard time of it. Um, it's especially rough when you have a Very incestuous industry that is also that public facing Because like let's say you say industrious. I said incestuous. Okay. All right. You're saying like
00:12:22
Speaker
So any type of job you have, so right now I work for a company that is related to banking. So let's say I did something really shitty and that got relayed to other companies.
00:12:37
Speaker
Like companies don't have relationships, um, on like a public friendly facing way. Oh yeah. Where it's like, Oh, Hey, this guy worked for you. Like, what were, what were they like? Or I see that they're leaving your company. Why? Um, and then we'll share that information.
00:12:53
Speaker
So something like that of, oh, we fired them because of these reasons in a region where a lot of people would agree with that decision. Like you said, full blacklist is kind of shit out of luck as far as that career path.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, even competitors. I'm just going to reword what you say. Well, no, I mean, I think you covered a different point. Like this, this has significant impacts and this, especially the e-sports space, which is like a pretty, uh, insular community. I mean, obviously more in the U S than like, um, South Korea, places like that where it's massive, but, um, you know, being blacklisted by Blizzard. That's huge. That's, that's something that will show up on Google forever.
00:13:36
Speaker
They're one of the biggest companies and have Anybody could name at least three games of theirs. Yeah, that's just not including battle chess right Diablo 1 Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 Diablo mortal, right fourth game. Gotcha Diablo 4 maybe someday who knows
00:13:57
Speaker
But yeah, this is a, that's the base story. That's the inciting incident. Um, and it really sucked for everybody involved. So at, at this point, yes. Do you think any part of their decision was fair and just, or are you more with my leaning of like, what the fuck Blizzard? Yeah, I think it's like, I think it's the punishment is justifiable.
00:14:26
Speaker
Not this punishment. Punishment itself is justifiable. So political Platform in a place where it's clearly not supposed to be allowed people will disagree with me for that but you could argue like anyone could step up there and like
00:14:43
Speaker
You know say like Jesus saves or you know some like religious slogan or anything like that That's all supposed to be it's supposed to be professional environment where you're focusing on the game itself I get that sometimes you need to go outside of that to actually get noticed get recognition bring attention to a cause but those should always be exceptional and you should be willing to pay the price for that essentially
00:15:03
Speaker
That being said, what they should have done is given them a slap on their wrist and been like, hey, clean your wrist because I haven't washed my hands. But instead, they shot them through a catapult into the sun, basically. And those are different punishments entirely. So the severity of the punishment, I think, is the injustice.
00:15:27
Speaker
here and also the proximity to it like the casters just being They were gonna have the interview with them and they were gonna talk to him about something their self-awareness of what he was going to say and the fact that they were giving him a platform for this should not have impacted the outcome for them like This should be his choice, right? They could have just been like hey
00:15:57
Speaker
How are you feeling after that win and he would have been like liberate hong kong they would have been fine But they but they didn't um, and I think that that shouldn't be that shouldn't destroy their careers Just because they were like, oh the interview is going to go this way. So We'll let him have his eight words. I feel like a lot of people would have let him have his eight words. Yeah, I
00:16:22
Speaker
Because like what else do you do in that situation? You say like, Hey boss, this guy's wearing a gas mask. I just have a, I have a feeling he has a certain political beliefs and leanings. So we won't give the Victor their, uh, outro. Yeah, exactly. Which is done at every fucking tournament ever. I always skip it when I'm watching where he plays. Like, yeah, well, of course you're going to say he played a good game and the opponent sucks.
00:16:50
Speaker
I want to thank God. I want to thank my family. I'm gonna thank my coach. I'm gonna thank some person who has a lot of money who funded them to do something. I want to thank Tencent. I want to thank China. Yeah, so it does seem like it has a bit of a splash damage on that for sure on top of everything else. And then then we come to the fallout though.
00:17:15
Speaker
A lot of companies have been dealing with China for a long time. People have to. If you want to do business in China, you have to go through a Chinese company.
China's Influence in the Gaming Industry
00:17:28
Speaker
Not to get too technical.
00:17:31
Speaker
That is their actual national policy. Yes, it is their national policy. Even if you want to go, Microsoft has Azure, that's the cloud services, you have to go through a Chinese company via Net21. It's a completely different website, completely different subscription. You can't go through Microsoft for it because they're licensed. Everything in China is licensed to China.
00:17:51
Speaker
And so gaming companies like bend over backwards to get into the Chinese market because there's a huge market Yeah, they're like one eighth of the world's population imagine like the 18 to 24 for like a
00:18:07
Speaker
young white adult males in the US, but imagine that for the rest of the fucking world. Huge. It's absolutely gigantic. And like for gaming, like their mobile gaming market is huge compared to ours. So if you have an interest in mobile games or you're thinking of expanding there, getting into China is gigantic.
00:18:25
Speaker
Diablo Immortal. Exactly. Diablo Immortal. So companies go out of their way to get into China. And China also has been expanding into the games industry. They have significant stock in Epic Store. They outright own Riot Games. You can go down the list. You can Google the list. There's a list somewhere, I guarantee it.
00:18:51
Speaker
Um, but the difference basically here is something finally happened. There was an instance of censorship or punishment that the internet exploded over. And like you, you spent time on the internet, Dave, you know, that it seems to be relatively arbitrary with the internet pays attention to any given time.
00:19:12
Speaker
It's true because we're at an age where you have access to so much information of things happening around the globe at all times. It's really overwhelming as far as like it just sensory overload.
00:19:29
Speaker
It's hard to say. It's hard to process all things, but there's a lot of shit happening everywhere. A lot of shit that sucks flat out. Um, you have shootings, you have riots over injustices, you have all these things that you should care about, but there's 30 of them happening at once and I have to do my day to day shit.
00:19:51
Speaker
Exactly. So if the internet which is a group of people who are only connected through The internet. Yeah, like you don't necessarily know that other reddit user in Michigan but It's always interesting to see people Group up and collaborate on a thing that they feel passionate about. Mm-hmm when not actually knowing somebody face-to-face Yeah
00:20:15
Speaker
I always, I always think of this as the eye of Sauron where it's like, everyone's attention for a time is on this, but it will shift. And usually companies rely on that. So like, yeah. Like, uh, if, if your company is suffering, like the eye of Sauron, all of the internet's upset with you for a time, you kind of eat the loss. You stay quiet, maybe release a statement, maybe you do something, but you trust that attention will shift and then you'll go back to business as usual.
00:20:45
Speaker
You wait for Gillette to make an ad or something you're like Yeah, and I think that's what blizzard really hoped would happen here, but unfortunately It exploded all over reddit all of the subreddits for each of blizzard's games were like spammed massively with anti-blizzard sentiment and Hot takes on the story everyone has their
00:21:08
Speaker
There are opinions on it, and these threads get massively uploaded. They started making mega threads in Overwatch, in Starcraft, in Hearthstone, which is the origin.
Blizzard's Dilemma and Public Reaction
00:21:21
Speaker
It also created threads in gaming, and even other communities.
00:21:29
Speaker
And so they had all of this outrage all at once massively upvoted people started canceling their wow subscriptions This hurts blizzard a lot because like wow classic lamp launched like last month
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, and that was supposed to be a huge thing because everyone has that nostalgia vibe. A lot of people just like WoW Classic because it was good, straightforward and simple and they liked what it was. They felt that future content, I guess, kind of diverged from what they wanted. And they were just upset that the original WoW was not supported anymore. Yeah. But they finally had this like Return to Glory.
00:22:04
Speaker
But yeah, having that much negative press around something like that definitely is a big oof.
00:22:10
Speaker
And it kind of poisoned the well of nostalgia. I think for some of these people, because they go back and they're like, Oh, I want like playing this. I like playing this. There's raw experience, even with all the bugs, everything like that. It's good to be back here when times were good. And then the company hosting your game, you know, does all of this to someone because they expressed their political sentiment. Um, and trying to probably said, don't do that. Nuke that person off the place of the earth, off of the face of the earth.
00:22:38
Speaker
Which is a starcraft reference right exactly. Oh, it's a tactical nuke incoming. Yeah A new killer launch detected. There you go. I'd be like i'm gonna screw this up You remember when they're like, oh shit nukes are coming. Yeah in starcraft. Remember when the zerg said that? Yeah Oh shit nukes gurgle gurgle
00:23:01
Speaker
And what was the trading call of duty? I think it was like, was it op four that like lost it? And he was like, it's like, it's all over. It's great. Um, but yeah, that for one person, um,
00:23:16
Speaker
Everybody lost it, or maybe found it, you know, a conscience, I guess. But there are people who have been subscribed to World of Warcraft for like 15 years. Past the point, they send you like a statue with like a orc on a warg or something like that.
00:23:33
Speaker
And like this guy had a statue. He's like, I just, you know, got my 10 year statue for continuous subscription to World of Warcraft. And I'm canceling my account right now. We're outright deleting their accounts. So you can submit a GDPR request because they have to be compliant with EU standards. So personal data where basically you can submit a request and be like, delete all of my personally identifiable data from your servers. Right.
00:24:00
Speaker
And that is your account, essentially. Like, you can't delete that and then still have an account somewhere. Can I log in? Yeah. They're like, who are you? Exactly. God's like, I never knew you. And that's like, that's massive. Like a lot of people have sunk a lot of money into Blizzard games over the years. I mean, obviously I can't empathize because, you know, I've never really played Hearthstone or anything like that and dropped hundreds of dollars.
00:24:26
Speaker
So where were you at then? So I'm not. I don't want to delete my account because. So selfish reasons. I still have all of these games. I have all of this content that you invested time money. Yeah. I really enjoyed Blizzard games, but.
00:24:44
Speaker
At the same time, I understand that deleting their account is a much stronger message than just stopping playing their games. Even unsubscribing from World of Warcraft, that's a medium punishment. The company will see that. They will see your unsubreason as being Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
00:25:05
Speaker
That was just one person saying Hong Kong. Um, but if I just like stop playing Starcraft, then there'll be like Starcraft numbers are down a little bit. Makes sense. They'll come back. Um, but I appreciate everybody who does delete their accounts. Like that's the extreme. That's the high impact option. You're saying screw my investment. What you've done here is untenable. I cannot, I don't want to be associated with anymore because of your choice. Personally.
00:25:35
Speaker
My take is I want Blizzard to make it right. And since no company up to this point has been punished for their implementation of Chinese censorship, I want to believe that there's a chance that they'll actually make it right in some way. So I guess what are you hoping that Blizzard will do to make amends?
00:26:00
Speaker
So they it's it's really tough actually because there's there's almost no path to there's no happy business path for them anymore because they either placate China and they Sign they just say all of these Western all this Western dissatisfaction unhappiness Cancellations everything like that. We're just gonna eat that cost but we're gonna keep the Chinese market open and
00:26:25
Speaker
and keep them happy or They try for like a middle ground Where they're like, oh we're going to unban this character or this player Maybe we send him his money. We do whatever and they try to stay on China's good side, which historically is hard It's all or nothing. Yeah with China
00:26:47
Speaker
or they go all out and they're just like liberate hong kong you know screw china they give them the double bird and they segue like