Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

Aren't Epic about 40% owned by Tencent?

It is true.

Yep. Hence my expectation: if China pushes on Tencent and Tencent feels threatened by a problem arising from Epic, they'll fold.

But yeah, Blizz is more sycophantic here.

Edited by Adannor on Oct 15th 2019 at 1:21:43 PM

And Blizz is being especially sycophantic here. There's Just Following Orders and then there's creepy disgusting Renfield-esque bootlicking and knobslobbing like what Blizzard's doing right now.

Hm, I wonder what they could do about HK-Mei. Delete her from chinese version, with maybe later a replacement with some other character with her moveset? Make some regional extra materials or skin elements that make her explicitly pro-authority?

The contrast is especially drastic when compared to utterly limp responses to social pressure from other areas, like extremely reluctant punishments for homophobia and pathetic "this character is gay but we'll only show it in one easily removable panel of supplementary material and then never bring it up again" attempts at safe corporate LGBT representation.

But China gets to enjoy swift and decisive action before it even actually gets mad at anything.

That's a matter of trying to have their cake and fuck it too. Because America has freedom of speech right there in the Contitution, the government can't say what goes and what doesn't; even age ratings aren't legally binding. This means companies have two blocs to pander to and they try to have it both ways, by adding in some wishy-washy pro-queer stuff to appeal to the progressives while keeping it as subtle and overlookable as possibly to appease conservatives.

An interesting take on that whole controversy I've just finished reading really puts into perspective why this behavior doesn't match with the "company just wants to stay out of trouble" thing, because this isn't how a company that wants to avoid trouble plays.

I'll just quote that bit of the take because it really just nails it :"This is right out of the standard corporate playbook. If someone big – like a major government – is being a pain in the ass and they’ve got leverage over you, then you start dragging your feet. Promise on the phone that you’re going to act right away. Then wait until it’s 1am in China and email them back requesting clarifications. When they call back the next day, tell them you want to comply but you need your lawyer present to help hammer out the details. So you set up a conference call for the next day. Then postpone it at the last minute for logistical reasons. Just draw everything out and hope the government gets bored and loses interest in the whole thing."

And even if it doesn't work out in the end, you can just end up complying and put up a statement that puts the blame where it sould be. "We love all gamers and we want everyone to enjoy this hobby together. In order to continue working with our valued Chinese partners and serving our fans in China, we’ve had to do X, Y, and Z." That's how you remain neutral in this shitshow.

Blizzard isn't a stranger to abusing loopholes everywhere. They do tax evasion, tactical lawsuits and other usual tricks every big corporation does precisely to screw over governments as much as it makes them money while keeping them out of trouble. They know what game they're playing.

But here ? Examplary punishment was dished out in 48 hours tops. You wouldn't see bureaucracy that exemplary to save a life.

Ultimately it's just another way to say "what's disturbing there is that blizzard immediately punished them without china interfering", but it kinda puts into perspective how weird it is even for a profit-driven company to act like this.

Player spends 150,000$ on Shitty Mobile Transformers Game

Note that this is the developper bragging about it.

Edited by Ghilz on Oct 15th 2019 at 12:12:10 PM

And I'm reminded we haven't had an actual Transformers game since Devastation.

I'm still waiting for a piece of Transformers media where "Robots in Disguise" means something. The central premise is about the robots camouflaging themselves as vehicles, animals, etc.; you'd think there'd be more of a stealth and subterfuge element to the franchise.

I think that's already been used.

Thats mainly the toy element that rarely gets used in actual transformers,they have no need to be stealthy

"hey look,it's a truck,no way its a robot in disguise!2

Transformers was alrèady an attempt to make another Macross anyhow.

Its mainly to just hide from the humans.

The 2001 Robots in Disguise anime apparently had the bots driven by random humans until they were called to a mission of which they dicthed the human with an ejector seat.

A pretty sucessful attempt considering how much it branched out into its own thing.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 15th 2019 at 9:52:05 AM

It's mostly the one specific human. It's a running gag.

Relevant:

The first Michael Bay movie was actually pretty good about that, and I believe the IDW comics do it a lot.

That was just Jet/Skyfire. The other Transformers were rececoed Microchange and Diaclone toys, which started off as Henshin Cyborg, which was itself added to the Japanese retools of GI Joe. Funny how things work out.

Access Now, a human rights organization known to work with the UN, has openly condemned Blizzard.

Are there seriously people who accuse those of siding with the Hong Kong protesters of being racist?

Extreme Chinaphiles and tankies, and some paranoid leftists mostly. There is some valid concern that the criticism of Chinese censorship policies is being used to justify actual anti-Chinese racism and Yellow Peril sentiments, but I haven't actually seen anything that came off as out of bounds yet. It's mostly a hypothetical concern and to be fair so long as the criticism is aimed at the government and their nationalistic propaganda, and not the collective people disregarding the actual Patriotic Fervor types among them, I see nothing to be worried about.

Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 16th 2019 at 3:12:10 PM

I do think there is a degree of racism and Yellow Peril paranoia behind the greater than usual response to the incident. Specially inside many gaming and conservative circles who are otherwise love to defend the rights of corporations.

But, yeah, just because terrible people support Hong Kong now, we should flip around and decide China is good as a response.

Part of is probably some of the people who decided to bandwagon it, particularly once it crossed into gaming. A lot of pretty awful people.

Maybe, but I'm not willing to protect the authoritarian government of China just because some racist fools decided to get involved with the Hong Kong protests.

Yeah, the outrage over this is more good than bad.