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
HK movement does have enough merit by itself. That's not the issue - the issue is that an American company is choosing to self-censor in a dramatic way and silence the players on its platform (which is acutely anti-American) to protect its financial standing with a foreign superpower. Which is fine, that's in their right. Just like it's in our rights to speak to them, in the language of money, by boycotting them for it.
But to frame it in a way that's "oh that's just them being apolitical, and if they allow this then they have to allow pro-Chinese propaganda, and therefore the boycott is wrong" is a bit naive. They already modify their games for China and all of their new releases are tailored specifically to meet Chinese censorship requirements (i.e. which is a form pro-Chinese propaganda).
What they do to market their games in China has nothing to do with this. It is a requirement. Exactly the same as GDPR in EU. If you want to work in any country you have to follow their laws, period.
And from banning that guy does not follow that they took a political stance. Only If a pro-China guy does the same thing and gets away with it then we can start talking. But that did not happen, furthermore the rules are pretty clear and he knew in advance that doing what he did could get him in trouble. I respect that, he delivered his message, that is a win at a personal cost for him. The newscasters also knew the rules and didn't act as the company expected and they got fired, nothing to see here. Blizzard and most sports and e-sports organizations have a strong policy in this regard so this should come as no surprise to anyone.
And quite frankly I prefer Blizzard to act this way than them doing nothing because then every single e-sports event will become a platform where anyone can start making political discourses. And I am pretty sure that would go downhill pretty fast.
Anyways expecting a company, any company to be be the shield that protects freedom from whoever... well that is really naive. It is bad enough to see how big media conglomerates nowadays are simple tools for the political parties that control them. A company that says "no politics" is the best we can expect.
In 2013 Activision bought out Vivendi and became the parent company, wholly-responsible for the actions of Blizzard.
Whenever you've see the Blizzard logo in the last eleven years, it's simply Activision cashing in on Blizzard's pre-2008 good reputation.
Infact you're gonna have to buy everything again.
I see your point of view, but at the same time this was all a huge miscalculation on their part. Companies do have social obligations that they are held to, and when they fail those, it destroys shareholder value.
Reason: they banned me for playing @ all hours, which tends to happen when you work in rotating shifts, accusing me of using "automated programs". I tend to react rather badly when i'm accused of doing something i didn't do.
I wonder if they still have my info back from the day when WoW released and I played for about the first 3 months.......?
We are talking about this because there is a strong political movement weaponizing the news, exactly the same that is doing their rival. For the case in point doesn't even matter who is right or wrong, who is David or Goliath, Blizzard just got caught in between.
By doing what Blizzard did, they took a side against free speech, which is not their duty to protect. They did what they had to do, because even for free speech there is a place and it is not an e-sports event. They could have handled this way better tho, but in the end it was a foregone conclusion. So yeah, people is delusional if they think there was any other possible answer.
I applaud HK supporters for finding ways to get relevant to a world quite autistic however there is no point in demonizing a company that just did what had to do.
I am way more concerned about Apple banning apps for very dubious and one-sided reasons.
Throw Blizzchung out of the tournament is fine, BUT 2 casters fired and prize money rescind is Overreacting!
They screw up big time.
" Don't forget - EVERY VOICE MATTERS"
From what I know the firing isn't due to what Blizzchung did but to how they handled it. Somehow I think they made things worse for everyone but I might be wrong.
I am sure Blizzard got a lot of pressure from China for this, so it is hard to know what their options really were.Which society? Surely not China right? And we are talking about China here, like it or not. Blizzard has to comply, there is not such thing as an option.
Follow the rules or close the doors, those are the only two options. What do you really expect Blizzard to do?
-Blizzard-Activision China
Yep... just a company trying to keep politics out of e sports folks. No Chinese propaganda here. Just upholding the pride of our country.
Edit:
Update quote, posted before this whole thing blew up:
What u said is EXACTLY why ppl are furious about!