{"id":179683,"date":"2019-11-04T11:47:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T11:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/?p=179683"},"modified":"2019-11-06T15:08:43","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T15:08:43","slug":"blizzard-ceo-apologises-for-controversial-hearthstone-ban-but-stops-short-at-reversing-its-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/business-news\/blizzard-ceo-apologises-for-controversial-hearthstone-ban-but-stops-short-at-reversing-its-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Blizzard CEO apologises for controversial Hearthstone ban but stops short at reversing its decision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite an on-stage apology from Blizzard CEO J. Allen Brack, much of Blizzard’s annual expo, BlizzCon, was overshadowed by protests about the company’s decision to suspend a Hearthstone player for supporting for the Hong Kong protests during a livestream event.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although it initially banned Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai from online tournaments for a year, the company later reduced the player’s suspension from 12 to six months. However, the reduction wasn’t enough to satisfy many pro-free speech fans critical of the ban, which meant much of BlizzCon was overshadowed by protests outside the event.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many in the community have accused Blizzard of giving into Chinese censorship, though the company denies that their business interests in China had any impact on their decision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Blizzard had the opportunity to bring the world together in a tough Hearthstone esports moment a month ago, and we did not,” Brack said. “We moved too quickly in our decision-making, and to make matters worse we were too slow to talk to all of you. When I think about what I’m most unhappy about it was two things – first, we didn’t live up to the high standards we set ourselves and the second, we failed in our purpose. For that I accept responsibility and I am sorry.<\/span><\/p>\n

“So what exactly is our purpose? BlizzCon is demonstrating it even as we speak. We aspire to bring the world together in epic entertainment, and I truly believe in the positive power of the video game. When we get it right, we create a common ground where the community comes together. To compete, connect and play. As an example, BlizzCon has people from 59 countries at the show today – and that is amazing, is the positive power of video games.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The protests about the ban also resulted in Blizzard making a last-minute decision to pull out of its planned event at Nintendo World<\/span><\/a>. The event was intended to celebrate the launch of Overwatch on the Nintendo Switch, and the company had planned a meet and greet with some of the game\u2019s voice actors for the first 150 fans to sign up for the event, which was cancelled just a day before it was due to take place, with no explanation. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Blizzard had the opportunity to bring the world together in a tough Hearthstone esports moment a month ago, and we did not”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[1383,9978,1620,1355,9981,2555,9980,1354,9979],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/hearthstone_key_art_840jpg.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179685,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179683\/revisions\/179685"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcvuk.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}