Bet Blizzard wasn't expecting that avalanche (see what I did there  

Seriously though, #BoycottBlizzard is trending on Twitter, and here's a good article from IGN explaining why

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/09/activision-blizzard-...



Blizzard decided to forfeit Chung's winnings of $10,000, and ban him for a year.
Obviously many people are seeing this as Blizzard simply putting money before anything else. I agree. I haven't purchased a Blizzard-Activision game/product in years, and certainly don't plan to at this point. 


https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/9/20906110/blizzard-hearths...
Nice move by Epic. 

They are cowards just like the NBA. Let's all bow to China.

This is "social justice" I can get behind. China is a thug-regime that has worn a mask of being "friendly" to outsiders for years. Trump has been putting the squeeze on them and even if you don't like the guy, the truth is, no side wants to budge on making a trade deal.

When China does stuff like this, it doesn't bode well for their PR and their image in the US. Make enough of us mad, and we'll start moving into the "screw you" camp. It's bothered me for decades how much we rely on China and when you study monetary systems and how China has slowly manipulated global (not just American) markets for decades, it's just insidious.

This isn't about hate for China. This is about not wanting to do business, or support, a regime that blocks free speech and even goes so far as to create "social credit scores" in order to keep their citizens quite. It's disgusting. I'll get off my soapbox now, but it annoys me to no end when American companies cave to Communistic thuggary.

I hope hating communists controlling our corporations and speech is the thing that's going to heal America. It's one of the few things both sides seems to agree on. Let's all get together and not bow to our Chinese overlords.

I wonder what Colin Kaepernick thinks

I, for one, welcome our new overlords.

Man if Blizzard and the NBA isn't a sign of things to come with spineless multinational companies, I dont know what is. However, it's not like the NFL isn't guilty of something similar and they had zero influence from China. South Park gives me some hope

Oh man, companies now to China all the time. I remember the airlines industry caving on Taiwan, FB, Google, and Apple censorship. The list goes on. How about instead of giving in to their demands we demand they give their people real human rights and start cutting them off?

I heard about this when it first happened, awesome to see the backlash it's caused. Hope more folks jump on board this train.

Because none of those companies you listed want to lose out on a literal billion customers?
 

I know, it's because of fear of losing out on money. However, when you sell your soul to the devil you pay a steep price in the end.

Seriously though, that’s America for you. Chase the almighty dollar no matter the cost.  It’s funny to see people up in arms about this but drug companies price gouging us or amazon not paying their fair share in taxes is just good honest capitalism.  In fact, not bowing down to China in order to get their money would be anti capitalist.  A communist really.  Being anti China makes you a communist.

People are writing anti China messages all while everything they buy is from China,

"This message was posted from a device made in China"

All this talking, hash tagging, etc etc ain't gonna do shit but make you guys feel like you did something. You are gonna post some "anti China" comment and go on with your day using hundreds of things made in China. Shit you might be buying something right now that's made in China and that's not helping the issue. These company's don't care for your social justice, they know that in a few months everything will be back to normal and continue making money of you again.

This is a rather over-reaching conclusion.  Yes, a major tenant of "capitalism" is letting free markets do thier thing.  However, capitalism (as part of conservative Americanism) neither exists as a sole ideology, nor is it scrictly about letting markets be free to do whatever they want to do. There's philosophically more to it than that.

This is especially true in the context of fiat currency.  Gone are the days of buying and selling in gold or bartering.  Whether we like it or not, all soveriegn nations have their own fiat, and they also have their own taxation laws.  As an ideal, yes, we wouldn't tax goods coming from the US, nor would China tax goods coming into their country.  However, by systematically undervaluing their currency, companies across the globe can buy "cheap" Yuan, build cheap facilities and higher cheap workers.  This has been a Chinese long-play and has allowed the Chinese government to slowly acquire most of the worlds manufacturing, making us nearly 100% reliant on them for all of our goods.

The major difference is that this is a power-play by a nation-state to manipulate global currency to their advantage, and it's working.  Is this ethical or fair? Not at all, and the solution isn't necessarily to let free markets be free markets, without some other strategies coming into place.  Those strategies involve the government to do what it was intended to do, which is protect the rights of it's citizens.

The founding intent of America was largely freedom for individuals where, together, we're making a better nation. Free-enterprise is a large part of that because the lower the barrier of entry to starting a business, the easier it is for the individual to become independent.  Capitalism is a means to allow individual freedom prosper.  However, when foreign governments make strategic moves to manipulate supply chains, it makes sense for free, sovereign nations to respond.

And, regarding China, it's even worse for them.  It's been a long time since I read up on the specific laws but part of the reason why we've seen a huge influx of "cheap China junk" in the past 10 years is because Chinese companies pair there dirt-cheap manufacturing with the fact that the get close to 100% free shipping, due to shipping negotiations and agreements that have been made, and China was considered a "third world nation" during those agreements.  China gets ridiculously deep discounts, where we pay extra because of their "third world" status.  If their status were to change and it cost as much to ship to China as it does to the US, and if all tariffs were dropped, we'd see a significantly different playing field but that's simply not the world we live in.

China has robbed our manufacturing and now they are flooding many of our supply chains with junk.  Something needs to be done (with cautious discretion, of course,) and unfortunately some of that should involve government involvement.  This isn't anti-capitalism/pseudo-marxism.  It's just realizing that Capitalism is one piece to a whole and needs to be prioritized accordingly when crafting international policies.

And don't get me started on pharmaceuiticals.  I've worked in the medical industry for years, and I have friends who've had to work neck-deep in those details specifically in pharmaceuticals and working with the legal side of those things.  Drug companies aren't "fleecing" the US.  This isn't a conservative talking point but the straight-facts are that every single country with socialized medicine sets price control standards for every single drug, and the overwhelming number of those drugs are priced below the cost to research, develop and manufacture them.  Pair that with current patent laws where a drug company only has 8 years (IIRC) before generics can enter into a market.  That means they have 8 years to basically make their money back from the research and building of sophisticated manufacturing processes AND profit by sales almost-strictly amde in America, but benefited across the globe.

Big-Pharma isn't fleecing America--China, Canada and Europe are.  I wish it weren't true but when you spend $1B to develop a drug and then every sale outside the US is at a loss, you have to make up that revenue somewhere?  That's us here in the states.  We are by far the wealthiest nation in the world.  Every country and it's grandmother, somehow, has it's hand's in our pockets and it's not for our pleasure, that's for dang sure.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/te...

"The specific views expressed by blitzchung were not a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: Our relationships in China had no influence on our decision," said Blizzard Entertainment President J. Allen Brack

Errr, of course they didn't. Of course. And if you believe that, as the saying goes, you'll believe anything...

rlh - your point about Big Pharma falls apart when you look at the industry in the US. They use tax payer dollars through public universities for a substantial chunk of their R&D costs. They spend a ton of money on stuff like advertising, stock buybacks, lobbying doctors to prescribe their meds, pushing opiates,etc. Most of their R&D is spent making copycat drugs that ate the same as an effective drug but with minor tweaks to "renew" their patent on the brand name drug. With no price negotiated country-wide, they can jack up prices of anything they see fit

I'm not going to claim you are wrong.  However, I only speak from the experience of working in the medical field and also know people, personally, who are actually rather liberal but work heavily on the legal side of pharmaceuticals.

I say, "I'm not saying you're wrong" because what I said can both be true and, what you're saying also is.  For the bigger picture, what happens is companies like pharma companies grow to be huge, and international, dealing in multi-billion dollars worth of revenue, what tends to happen is the government regulates and the "market" inovates to find new ways to profit--and sometimes that involves playing around the system.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to say that pharmaceuticals are perfect, but it's also wrong to simply blame them, stating they are trying to fleece our pockets.

Medicine, and profiting from is VERY complex.  Many of these techniques have developed because these companies have had to develop from external "pressure", much of which I'd consider unfair to the pharma companies, which trickles down to the consumers.

 

... The views expressed by blitzchung were not a factor? They just like to randomly ban people and withhold their winnings?

Most R&D is spent on drugs that fail, and that is rising quickly as the "easy" targets are gone and personalized medicine ramps up. As a percentage of revenue biotech is always more than other tech.

Universities are not a substantial chunk of R&D. The type of research they do is discovery, not development. Just like how you hear about a new revolutionary type of battery every few months but none are viable products.