It appears that Activision Blizzard is doubling down on its censorship of anything that has to do with the Hong Kong protests that are currently happening. Recently, the World of Warcraft developer dealt out punishment to a Hearthstone Grandmaster who shouted support for the protests by taking away his prize money and suspending him from the card game for a full year that has prompted a backlash of #BoycottBlizzard. The latest misstep? Today, Blizzard cut Collegiate Hearthstone Championship stream after a player held up a “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz” sign.
A clip of a Twitch stream has been circulating on Reddit of a game between American University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute for the Collegiate Hearthstone Championship. In the video, team Worcester Poly plays its final card for the win and, as the game winds down, the American University team quickly holds up a sign that reads “Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz.” Before the card animations can finish playing out the end of the game, the broadcast cuts to the faces of the winning team before switching to the casters.
The casters, meanwhile, ignored the sign altogether and never missed a beat as they provided their final analysis of the game.
But Blizzard didn’t stop there. According to Reddit user TINDWELWESEEDMD, who posted the video on r/Hearthstone, the clip was shortly removed after being posted. Shortly after that, another Reddit user, crassreductionst, claims that Blizzard has “disabled team cameras & stopped interviews for the remainder of the collegiate broadcasts.”
However, at the time of this post, we have been unable to verify whether or not Blizzard has taken such steps regarding the cameras and discontinuation interviews for the remainder of the tournament.
Clarification: After getting in contact with Reddit user crassreductionist, they pointed out a VOD of the stream, after the events involving American University. In the VOD provided to me, there is a transition at the 15:10 minute mark where the stream goes from showing the teams to cutting them out and putting backgrounds in the cam sections instead. This lends some credence to the fact that tournament is no longer showing players during the matches.
However, one of the casters briefly talks about the change around the 20 minute by saying, ““I do like how today was the release of the new Hero portraits for teams that have won over a thousand games with the class. But we haven’t seen any of the teams use them yet. Which is interesting…” He goes on to point out that one of the portraits is an old version of the Hero Jaina Proudmore rather than the Fire Mage Jaina version.
The Hero Portraits were released on October 8th, when Blizzard did release a new update that also included the Doom in the Tomb Halloween event.
Question is, why would teams want to show these Hero Portraits rather than themselves?
Author’s Note: Be on the lookout for a follow-up editorial to this latest bit of news later today. In the meantime, check out our recent editorial, “#BoycottBlizzard is Justified, But the Tipping Point” to catch up what has happened so far.
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