I am not a huge fan of Blizzard Entertainment but I think Blizzard lately has been getting the short end of the stick concerning the suspension of Chung Ng Wai. Professional gamer Chung Ng Wai recently won a Hearthstone tournament and after his win during an interview, he said: “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”. Blizzard immediately forced him to forfeit his $10,000 dollars prize money and suspended him for a year. They even cut his interview off midstream. Numerous gamers are calling for a boycott of Blizzard. This boycott would consist of World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone and Starcraft. Many employees at Blizzard have walked out over what happened. One Blizzard employee told the online news site the Daily Beast “We want people all over the world to play our games, but no action like this can be made with political neutrality.” Of course, they spoke under anonymity for fear of professional consequences. I agree with people exercising their right to voice displeasure. however, do not act as if boycotting Blizzard is the only thing you will have to boycott. During some earlier interviews on my show with Inven Global Nick Gracie, I have mentioned that Tencent games have a lot of vested interest in our video games and entertainment industry. I even questioned if we should be worried? This is something that is not mentioned often. If you look at Super Data Top Grossing Games for a particular month, you will see for PC
-League of Legends
-World of Warcraft
-Hearthstone
-Fortnite
-Player Unknown Battle Ground
-Crossfire
Tencent games invest in each and every one of those titles. Tencent also is invested in Activision’s Call of Duty and popular mobile games like Supercell’s Clash of Clans. Tencent is headquartered in Shenzhen China. They are an internet-based technology and cultural enterprise. They even invest in movies. They have invested in blockbusters like Wonder Woman (2017), Venom (2018), Kong: Skull Island (2017), Bumble Bee (2018). They even invested in upcoming films like Terminator: Dark Fate, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Monster Hunter, Top Gun: Maverick, and more. While people want to Boycott Blizzard will you also boycott Tencent’s other investments and other Chinese investors? You can’t just look at one part of the spectrum you have look at the entire thing. Blizzard is not the best company but Tencent and other Chinese companies are financially invested in so many of our interests until if we boycotted we would literally not have much left to enjoy. For example, they have investments even NBA ventures. Will you boycott them? For those Nintendo fans, Nintendo has partnered with Tencent to bring the Nintendo Switch to China, will you boycott them? iPhones are built in China are you willing to boycott Apple? I am not saying do not defend your beliefs but what I am saying is look at how invested China is in our culture and ask yourself what are things you are willing to give up for these beliefs.