Gamers boycott Blizzard, deleting Battle.net accounts and supporting protests in Hong Kong

Blizzard is bogged down in yet another scandal, this time related to politics, but apparently has no plans for it

get out.

Where did it all start?

On October 8, Blizzard banned a professionalHearthstone player Chun Ng Wai, who competes under the nickname Blitzchung. In the broadcast after the speech, he openly supported the protesters in Hong Kong and received a ban. In addition, Blizzard fired the commentators who streamed with the player.

The reason for such actions was paragraph 6.1 of the official Hearthstone Grandmasters rulebook. The condition states that the corporation can remove an eSports player from competition if his actions harm Blizzard's image.

Gaming community response

As a result, gamers staged a protest against Blizzard.First, Overwatch fans turned the character Mei, who according to the game's lore is a native Chinese, into a symbol of the freedom movement in Hong Kong. Thus, images appeared on the Reddit forum in which May speaks in support of the protesters.

Participants in the Hearthstone University League competition also joined the protest. During the match, a participant thrust a poster into the camera with the inscription: “Liberate Hong Kong, boycott Blizzard.”

Last straw

The last move of the players was a mass deletionBattle.net accounts and calls for an archive of personal data. According to European law, a company must issue such a document within 30 days or face a fine. Blizzard responded to this move, and now gamers cannot delete their accounts.

Charlotte Mather wrote on Twitter that whenWhen she tries to erase her account, she receives the error: “The email code has been blocked due to too many attempts.” In the comments under the post, users say that they also received such a notification. In addition, according to gamers, support requested their identity document to issue an archive with personal data.