The Blizzard Catastrophe: More Casters and Pros Protest, Riot Games Responds, and Epstein Links

Another day, another hodgepodge of news surrounding Blizzard and their now three-day-old mistake of punishing Hearthstone grandmaster Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai for daring to speak up for the Hong Kong people on stream.

First up: you might recall that a day after “Blitzchung” got his ban, Blizzard hosted and streamed a college-level Hearthstone tournament that ended with the American University team holding up a sign that said “Free Hong Kong boycott Blizz”, before the camera quickly cut away. Shockingly, it’s been reported that those three players -- Casey Chambers, Corwin Dark, and a third player who simply goes by his online handle, TJammer – apparently didn’t suffer any kind of punishment from Blizzard for their actions, and were invited to continue onto their next match.

However, all three players have agreed that they’d rather forfeit and cease participation as a sign of solidarity.
 

“We feel it’s hypocritical for Blizzard to punish Blitzchung but not us. The response from Blizzard shows that as soon as the messaging is out of the view of China, they don’t care about ‘political’ messaging.

Secondly: yet another respected professional Hearthstone caster, one Nathan 'ThatsAdmirable' Zamora, has made the decision to stop casting until Blizzard reverses their decision regarding “Blitzchung”.

"Blitzchung's actions to support Hong Kong speak to me far more than I could have imagined. It takes courage to stand up for what you believe in, and to make sacrifices in the process. His actions are inspiring to me, and I support him wholeheartedly…

For me, this is a large part of my livelihood. This is my passion. This pursuit has been my life, and I'm lucky that I've been able to make it a career. But I cannot compromise my conviction. Without change that would convince me that Blizzard will uphold their core value 'Every Voice Matters,' I cannot continue casting the game."

His sentiment is shared by a third caster, Simon “Sottle” Welch, but he has decided to continue streaming for Blizzard regardless.

Third up: Riot Games. You may or may not be aware, but Riot Games, the developers behind League of Legends, currently have a rather big event going on with the World championship of their esports league. You may also be aware that they are largely owned by a Chinese company called Tencent. Recently, someone pointed out that one of the participating teams – called Hong Kong Attitude – had their team name abridged to HKA during professional casting, which was viewed as censorship. However, Riot Games actually addressed this via twitter:
 

To make this as explicit as possible, we aren't telling anyone to avoid saying "hong kong." We'd just rather the team be referred to by its full name. There's been some confusion internally about this as well and we're working to correct it. One more personal note on this: I think everyone is very sensitive to this issue right now given the events of the last week. We should have better prepped our casters and we’re reiterating this policy to them today.

They did, however, admit that they do pre-record all their interviews, so presumably any politically dangerous messages could be filtered out. If any player has tried to make such statements, we have no way of knowing.

And finally: there’s a video circulating around the net that alleges that Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has ties to Jeffery Epstein, the man who was recently arrested (and later found dead) for hosting a child sex trafficking ring.



I have not yet found any third-party source that verifies the integrity of this claim, which originates from a Gawker article. It’s worth noting, however, that merely showing up in his address book doesn’t automatically make him a sex criminal: Jeffery Epstein was a powerful and influential man who would have rubbed shoulders with a lot of other powerful people, regardless of if they were ever passengers on the Lolita Express.

Still. Something to make a note of.