> 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 will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
The rule is not "political speech is not allowed" it's "don't make us look bad."
Choosing to ban this player is absolutely picking a side, and it's not with the good guys.
You have to ask the question as a company, to allow politics to enter your space.
Now it is supporting HK, next time it is against nazi's, next time maybe against Trump. Once you disallow one, you will "pick a side".
I'm not saying this ban was good or bad, I'm just saying it's more complex than picking side in that debate. Maybe they just don't want to get into the shit of any political debate.
But for the rest, all the support for HK. Maybe this ban brings it even more in the news.
The problem is, you also take a political stance by removing him from your tournament. Intended or not, people will read this as 'shilling' for China. Now I don't follow Hearthstone, but it's quite common to ask players personal questions like "How did you prepare for this match?" and I could see someone answering that with how the HK situation has affected that (less time, extra stress etc.).
This is not automatically a political statement, but just by bringing that up they could have banned and DQ'ed him for the same reason and it would've looked just as bad if not even worse. It would still look political in that situation.
I completely disagree. It isn't a complex issue and companies don't get to decide whether to "allow" politics or not. Politics are a part of EVERYTHING... Ignoring and trying to moderate that is just foolish.
What you're saying seems to be built on assumption that all "politics" is the same. It absolutely isn't. Evil (fascism, concentration camps, ehtnic cleansing, ...) and fighting against evil, are both political stances, but they are very different.
And "let's not interfere with evil because it would be politics (or affect our bottom line)" is definitely political stance - it's picking the evil side.
Is Trump evil? It's not clear to me, so maybe you have the answer.
At some point, the line of evilness becomes so thin that you will have to "pick a side" if you have done it before. Easier to just not go down that route.
Trump is corrupt, abuser, a fascist, arguably a traitor of American people. He's racist, sexist and he gives his support to horrible movements (like KKK and alt-right) and normalizes their views. He's responsible for ICE and putting children in concentration camps.
There must be huge gap between perspectives, because I don't understand how it something like this can be unclear.
If not this guy, who would you consider evil if anyone?
Ok I was wrong, you can actually divide the world into evil or not. It's not always as clear to me and others, so can you share if following things are evil or not: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Barack Obama.
1) ICE is Executive branch and he's the chief of Executive branch (I guess the proper word would be accountable).
2) I'm pretty sure a lot of the way ICE is acting now (you know, the children in cages who are refused medical care and so on) is affected by the guy in charge being openly racist who considers non-white people subhuman, wants to build a wall and considers "good people on both sides" between nazis and non-nazis.
President is not just chief of the army and the executive branch, he's an ideological leader who represents the people and shows what kind of behavior is proper, and what is acceptable and so on.
