Video Games and Human Rights: Two Things Linked by One Major Mistake

Just as World of Warcraft celebrates 15 prosperous years on the market, the developer Blizzard (owned by Activision) finds themselves under fire for an international incident that spans miles, ideologies and player bases.

The incident all started after Hearthstone player Blitzchung (Twitter @BlitzchungHS) won the Grandmaster Season 2 Championship. He almost immediately appeared on a post-match stream, where he uttered 8 words that would change things across the world. He is quoted as saying “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of our times.”

Shortly after this appearance on stream, Blizzard handed down the following decision:

So not only did they strip Blitzchung of his title and prize money, they punished the casters who had no prior knowledge of his intentions. The internet was almost immediatly abuzz about the incident, with all Blizzard-associated subreddits becoming flooded with posts about it.

While Blitzchung’s comments do directly go against Blizzards Esports terms, some wondered why they initially responded with such drastic and sweeping punishment. That confusion did not last long, however, as it was revealed that China-based congolmerate Tencent has a five percent stake in Activision.

Activision-Blizzard is no stranger to causing heated debate within player groups. Blizzcon has become a parody of itself in recent years, inspiring the gaming community to make memes of the developers famous misstep of porting Diablo to mobile rather than giving the fan base the much anticipated Diablo 4 announcement. The quote of “Don’t you have phones,” still resonates across platforms and games even over a year later.

What no one was expecting, however, was the wide-spread backlash against Blizzard-Activision. #BoycottBlizzard was trending within an hour of the incident, and by the night of October 8th, two U.S. Senators had condemned the companies actions.

In the last two days, Blizzard stock has fallen two percent, which seems like a drop in the bucket until you recognize the thirty-five percent stock loss since July. Blizzard has taken notice of the issue, most notably by changing the account deactivation procedure to keep people from being able to deactivate. With Blizzcon, the yearly Blizzard branded convention, just around the corner, it will be interesting to see what damage control, if any, they attempt.

Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate with a five-percent interest in Activision, has a ten percent interest in the NBA, along with several other American-held companies, drawing criticism of the amount of influence Chinese affairs are having in the US.

The Hong Kong protests began on March 31st 2019, and were prompted by the introduction of a bill called the Fugitive Offenders Amendment Bill by the Hong Kong government. Since the beginning of the protest movement, several human rights violations by China have been unveiled, including the harvesting of organs from the minority Muslim population, beatings of the citizens by police, and even suspected government backed kidnappings.