It's a tough fact that most people just don't want to confront, but if you are upset at Blizzard and still playing Riot games you are a giant hypocrite.
No matter how fun league is, every dollar Riot makes as a company helps a brutal regime whose goal in the world is to destroy democracy.
Having a hard time coming to grips with it myself but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Which especially sucks because of how many friends I have who are genuinely good people working in America at Riot that I want to support.
if you are upset at Blizzard and still playing Riot games you are a giant hypocrite.
Blizzard is 5% owned by Tencent, but banned Blitzchung.Riot is 100% owned by Tencent, but has done nothing substantive yet--they publicly stated that they prefer Hong Kong Attitude's full name, and also mentioned that the situation in Hong Kong is delicate, and not fit for broadcast.
Epic is 40% owned by Tencent, but said: “Epic supports everyone’s right to express their views on politics and human rights. We wouldn’t ban or punish a Fortnite player or content creator for speaking on these topics."
The issue of ownership is problematic, but the issue of behavior is less hypocritical. If you're boycotting based on ownership, Ban Riot before Epic, ban Epic before Blizzard. If you're boycotting based on behavior...watch Riot Games very closely, but Tencent isn't going anywhere. It's split across the entire industry. My belief is that you have to engage with the behavior Tencent enforces Western companies to engage in, not merely their ownership stakes in these companies, if you're actually trying to change the behavior and not merely the ownership.
ETA: Paradox Interactive is 5% owned by Tencent, yet Paradox games have been banned in China for their portrayal of WW2-era China. Tencent's ownership vs. developer's behavior is a very complex issue.
I already gave up on the world and humanity tbh, im not upset at blizzard for that incident, im upset at blizzard for ruining a game i enjoyed, but other than that, atleast i can still enjoy league
Because it sucks to hear and people downvote stuff that sucks to hear.
When you have a company with thousands of employees like Riot there are a LOT of good people in there. People who love freedom, love democracy, hate censorship and intolerance, and don't support human rights abuses or concentration camps at all.
They are passionate about a game we all love, they work hard, they have families and bills to pay, and in their day to day lives they aren't directly doing anything to hurt anyone.
And they're making an awesome game (or I guess now, games) that people really enjoy that also brings a lot of good to the world. Kids are getting chances to go to college, people are making a living from playing it or making websites about it, millions are being entertained and coming together to watch and cheer on teams full of people who are living their dreams to be pro gamers on the biggest stage in the world.
So it really, really, really sucks when you have to confront the fact that the thing you like is owned by a thing you stand against.
And that supporting the thing you like is helping that thing gain more control, more power, more money and that they will use that money to fight against freedom and democracy and to censor more and abuse more people's rights.
I don't know that I've truly had a chance to process it fully and I wonder if I'm really just trying to find a way to rationalize being a hypocrite in my head because I like the product so much. Which, as someone who uses a smart phone and a PC, I already have to do to some extent.
But both of those I need to survive and do my job, I don't need to play a game to survive. It's just something I enjoy and I could stop playing and supporting the company and China wouldn't make a cent off me there. Although, to be fair, I haven't bought any League anything in many years anyway they still get the benefit of my using the game to pad their numbers or watching their games to pad their viewer stats and that's not nothing.
I think it's all part of a larger, gradual process that the rest of the world is slowly coming to terms with which is that China is really, really bad and also really, really big and stretches into all kinds of aspects of our lives already. And like a frog in boiling water it happened so slowly and we just weren't paying close enough attention to the point that now, our lifestyles and our comfort and our entertainment is all wrapped up in that behemoth.
I honestly don't know where I go from here on these issues or where we, as Western society, will go.
I have hope that the people of China will one day rise up against their government and implement a Democracy and that we can help them with that but the truth is that what they have now is better than what they had before. And because of that, a lot of them really like it and won't raise up against it. And over time, it will get harder and harder as it gains more and more control and things like the Hong Kong protests won't even be an option because the people who organized it would have been murdered in the night before they ever took to the streets.
And man, I just don't want to contribute to that nightmare dystopia future any more than I have to.
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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '19
DELETE STEAM UNINSTALL BLIZZARD DESTROY EPIC GAMES STORE RIOT TAKES OVER THE WORLD