Thursday, October 10th 2019
Blizzard's Account Deletion Mechanism Conveniently Breaks Down
In the wake of the Blitzchung ban controversy, clamors for "#BoycottBlizzard" are growing in gaming boards and social networks, with some angry gamers even deleting their Blizzard Battle.net accounts. Under GDPR, any EU consumer is entitled to delete their accounts with an online service, and have their data scrubbed. On Wednesday evening, however, users found themselves being unable to do so. The user authentication system (which authenticates that a request to delete the account is legitimate), has conveniently broken down, preventing people from deleting their accounts. Some see this as a deliberate attempt by Blizzard to cauterize its userbase while the controversy dies down. Blizzard's customer support for the Americas tweeted that this is "an issue" with the account deletion mechanism and that Blizzard's engineers are "looking into it," with no ETA mentioned.
Sources:
devicemodder2 (Reddit), Blizzard (Twitter)
82 Comments on Blizzard's Account Deletion Mechanism Conveniently Breaks Down
Now I understand why all the Blizzard founders jumped off the ship in so little time.
Could they have issued a warning? Probably so. Would that be detrimental for possible cases? Probably not.
As for the snowflakes creating this drama, if you want to really support HK pack your bags and get over there...
The collab with NetEase and Tensent, the franchising of Chinese OWL teams. Blizzard wants that Chinese money hard.
It comes down to what they ban and why, do they ban evenly or only conveniently. It is a gaming platform, not a political one, they have the ability to say gamers do not represent blizzard and their statements are their own.
They don't have to take the violent authoritarian side but they have chosen to.
Tencent owning a stake is "normal?" China requires any gaming company that distributes in China to have a 5% stake owned by Tencent. So if you had any wishful thinking that Tencent wasn't state backed... sorry. They own a lot more of Epic and a large chunk of bluehole (pubg).
This is not a conspiracy theory they are the simple facts. Whether China is strong arming through Tencent or Blizzard is simply bowing to avoid sanctions no one knows, all of that is conjecture.
As for people having to jump on a plane and get stuck in a work camp to support HK I think that's a bit mistaken. I prefer the Economic sanctions route than the hard labor camp one...
Deleted my account.
ForniteChina Money.However the Blizzard boycott is wrong on this one.
if they allow one political view they are forced to allow others, so If you don't support the ban you are opening the doors to pro-China or whatever propaganda on e-sports.
This is like being kicked of Twitter for jaywalking.
Soooo, i'm not sure why people are surprised.
This kind of rhetoric helps no one. From my point of view the HK movement have enough merit by itself, there is no need to make unjustified claims.
Not only Blizzard punishment towards that player and the casters was way too severe, but by doing what they've done they essentially spoke against freedom. Afterall how else can you look at it if they silence and punish a guy who spoke for freedom.
If a company does something like that, they deserve all that they experience right now. Mass account closures, Blizzard games being burned down by former military, worker protests, former employees speaking against them and so on.