Malignant corporate "capitalism" wants total control in order to suck the remaining wealth to the top... but democracy stands in opposition. What to do when "free" people still hold wealth that you want? Change the political system into a structure you (corporations) can better manipulate. Sounds so very Cyberpunk 2077... in 2019. Watch the number of articles recently from "corporate news" sources saying capitalism is dead.

With the addition of multiple NBA "scandals," we can certainly see the amount of direct and indirect power the Chinese economy -- and corporations in general -- have over us. But when you have an economy based on credit -- not manufacturing -- you have to expect that one day that credit is going to come due. Did we expect it was free money? Did no one watch gangster movies?

That last bit reminded me of that quarian in ME2 on the Asari Hub planet.....the one who tried gaming the stock market & lost the money, then took a loan and tried again, and then took a black market loan and did the same before ending up a debt slave.

Blizzard is under no legal obligation to let the Chinese dictate which accounts are allowed. They're doing it purely because they've got no spine. They could have said no and the Chinese players would just find ways around it for games that don't rely upon internet connectivity. It's not like they were paying for the software in the first place. In all the time I was there, I don't think I ever saw any option to legitimately pay for software.

Which accounts are allowed? I don't follow what you're saying here.

It's not about legal obligation. It's about having access to 1.4 billion people.

That rule is enforced as often as the law in many broken nations :P

You should read the thread before responding. It's pretty clear that the account wouldn't have been banned if they weren't going after the Chinese market and trying to suck up to the authorities there. It's also quite clear that there's no legal obligation for Blizzard to go after any particular market.

There are over a billion people in China, but they don't buy software with any regularity over there. They don't buy really any sort of IP over there, buying a legal DVD or software package over there is virtually impossible due to a flood of pirate copies on the market place. Even just knowing that a copy is legitimate is extremely hard in many cases due to the relatively high quality of the counterfeits. In some cases, they're even produced in the same factory as the authentic ones.

In other words, the 1.4bn number isn't particularly relevant when only a small fraction would even consider buying a software product in the first place. It's probably not a large enough number to justify the bad press that they're getting for this.

Sure, in the future that's likely to change. But, Blizzard is doing something now that they'll likely have forgotten about long before that happens.

And it hits the fan: Blizzard gets scolded by congress

[url]https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/18/us-congress-members-send-letter-to-blizzard-over-concern-for-recent-actions[/url]

not much congress can do except scold, but still, not a good look for Blizzard.
Paticualrty when you have congresspeople as far apart politically as AOC and Mario Rubio both blasting you.

They keep getting in hotter water... But i guess that's what you have to do to make china feel like they are in control because otherwise you couldn't get some slice of their market with their heavily devalued currency (Where China has printed 50 Trillion Dollars worth... more than the rest of the world's currency combined!)

Also The Quartering Banned from the Hearthstone Twitch channel when he tested some Hong Kong support in chat...

I hate when people take a simple question and use it as a springboard for their own arrogance.

If this is happening that frequently, it's not us that is the problem, it's your failure to do basic research before asking a question. There is a ton of information addressing your question in this thread, it's the main reason the thread exists.

Blizzard has just set precedence for the Chinese authorities to get people banned from competition. Whether they directly told Blizzard to do it or Blizzard inferred that it would be a good idea is largely a matter of semantics as the net result is that accounts that become well known might wind up being banned and losing any competition money they earned.

You made the claim that this was justifiable because of the size of the market, but the reality is that the Chinese market isn't currently that big. They don't have a lot of money and they have a current culture that tolerates piracy to the point where it's genuinely difficult to find legitimate copies of various IP.

As far as being allowed, that's where the previous discussion of the terms is relevant, and that's not something that I posted.

More negative information of Blizzard. Crowdfunding gone wrong. Also D4 leaks?

At Blizzcon, Blizzard gives a non-Apology... (Jim sterling)

Yep this isn't going to go well...

After beating up the kid of a parent and taking his wallet.

- Hey man, I'm sorry for what happened and I regret taking so long to apologize. I understand that it was disrespectful to you, after all, we're all humans and we should act that way. I take full accountability for what happened, it's on me.

*silence*

- So like, we cool?

Walks away with the wallet

Honestly apologizing at all just exposes weakness and the masses will never accept it no matter how much of an effort you make to change.

Being strong for one's principles is one thing... Blizzard is looking for China money, and it's obvious. Otherwise a number of the recent actions wouldn't have happened.

They are more surprised they are getting any backlash at all, nevermind going against their own gamer base who loyally have followed them thus far. But as politics leeches into every facet of life, the gamers who didn't care will suddenly be pushed to make a choice. and that choice is likely going to be anti-censorship.

Just saying, it seems all the large corrupt gaming companies are having issues.