Blizzard Facing Backlash Among Gamers

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Blizzard Faces a Storm of Its Own Making

During a tournament for popular online card game Hearthstone, controversy has become the center of the event. After winning a match, professional Hearthstone player who goes by blitzchung donned a mask similar to those worn by protesters in Hong Kong and, at the encouragement of the two casters, went on to announce “Liberate Hong Kong. The revolution of our age!” As blitzchung made his comment the two casters ducked their heads under the desk.

After the event, Blizzard pulled the Video on Demand and made an announcement stating that blitzchung would be banned from Hearthstone events run by Blizzard for a year and has lost all prize money he would have received. Blizzard reached this decision by citing one of their rules stating

“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. “

Backstory and Backlash

Blitzchung made his comments after his match while China and Hong Kong are in a tense political climate. Blitzchung, who is from Hong Kong, had decided to make his comment during the livestream and later would say he put a lot of time into the movement and sometimes couldn’t focus on Grandmasters. While Blizzard was not wanting to get political with their esports, inadvertently it looks like they have done just that. Many gamers have claimed Blizzard to want money from China more than caring for the people in Hong Kong and many are uninstalling Blizzard games and cancelling pre-orders.

At one point, Blizzard locked their subreddit, but it seems to have reopened as of the time of this writing. How this will affect Blizzard is unknown, but in the stock market Blizzard is losing money and is expected to plummet in stocks for the next few days at least.

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