Magic: The Gathering Pro Supports Hong Kong, Isn't Punished

This weekend there was a big Magic: The Gathering tournament streamed on twitch, called the Mythic Championship. It was won by a pro player called Lee Shi Tian, who apparently managed to pull out a win with an extremely aggressive red deck, which caught people by surprise as the meta is currently focused on green-and-blue based decks that focus on big, cinematic plays and monsters.

Anyway, when he went up to the mic to have his winning interview, he approached with a red banana wrapped around his face and an eyepatch: popular symbols of resistance in Hong Kong. And then he spoke, saying:
 

“Life has been very tough in my hometown in Hong Kong… It feels so good to play as a free man!”

…and lo and behold, he wasn’t banned, silenced, or otherwise punished for speaking out in favor of the protests. I didn’t think that could happen anymore.

If you wanted to throw some further shade on Blizzard, here’s a fun little addition: you might recall that after the initial verdict on “Blitzchung” was reached, popular Hearthstone caster Brian Kibler announced he’d no longer be working with Blizzard in protest for their decision to silence their players for the sake of appealing to their Chinese overlords. So he moved on – and, in fact, casted this very Magic: The Gathering tournament where Lee Shi Tian took his stand.

And apparently, Twitch didn’t even censor the word Hong Kong in this stream. Woo!

Now, this is moderately important because technically, Magic the Gathering does have a presence in China, and is distributed to the mainland via the only Chinese company you’ve heard of, Tencent. That’s not to say it’s enormously popular in China, the way Blizzard is, but Wizards of the Coast could have used that justification if they had wanted too. But they didn’t.

So that’s nice.