Shortly after Blizzard made their decision publicly to ban Blitzchung and strip him of his $10,000 in prize money, Immutable, the creators of Gods Unchained, weighed in on the decision. Going beyond just acquiring social currency, the developers offered to pay Blitzchung his lost prize earnings along with offering him a spot in their $500,000 tournament with airfare included. Afterward the company would go on to denounce the practice of bending the knee and join support to free gaming from this manner of tyranny.
No deed it seems goes unpunished, as the company has spent the time since their announcement battling cyber attacks that have prevented players from logging into the game ,according to Decrypt . The company has been keeping busy dealing with the attacks and hasn’t had the time to pinpoint their origins, but it doesn’t require Sherlock Holmes’ level of deduction to compile the short list of potential suspects.
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[Update:] It’s now being reported by Vice that the issue involving the Battle.net accounts not being deleted has been fixed, and the “bug” has been stomped out, allowing users to now finally delete their accounts without being fettered.
[Original article:] In other Blizzard related news, users on /r/blizzard have been reporting for the better part of two days now that Blizzard is actively preventing users from deleting their accounts even if they go through all four stages of authentication to do so.
The Boycott Blizzard movement had been gaining serious traction over since the bogus decision to ban Blitzchung with many users opting to go one step forward from just abandoning their accounts to deleting them entirely, permanently severing their ties with the company. There is no confirmation as to how numerous these instances have been, but if Blizzard has now taken the steps to prevent users from deleting their accounts it cannot be regarded as insignificant.
Blizzard can obfuscate to investors the scope of the backlash. Investors rarely look beyond popular outlets headlines and investor statement for how their investment is performing.. What the company cannot do is explain why thousands of accounts were deleted and while the performance numbers are significantly down.
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Things may soon be getting a lot worse for Blizzard as Mei the popular character from Overwatch has now become a popular mascot in the Free Hong Kong movement. Protesters have been seen on CNA with fliers depicting the character along with the message free Hong Kong. CNA is a region wide Asian news station boasting the 6th largest reach in the region and broadcasts into over 29 territories including Australia.
Worse still, Google searches are now showing Free Hong Kong variants as first page results. Leaving Blizzard little chance to hide the images from the Chinese Authorities whom aren’t known for their measured responses to cartoon images they do not approve of. Even Newsweek and gaming outlets like Polygon have picked up on the story putting it into the mainstream awareness.
After the significant backlash the NBA has faced over a mere tweet and standing up for American values one has to wonder how severe the backlash from authorities will be as the company becomes tied inextricably to the very movement it hoped to suppress.
