Blizzard have royally fucked this up. And while my previous position is "why don't we criticise others for this stuff" I've changed to just "others will fall, just a matter of when". In the travel industry there has been a minor compared to this issue of airlines or travel companies having to change their websites to say "Hong Kong, China" or "Taipei, Taiwan, China" on their listing or even include them in the same country like say, New York and Washington would go under "USA". Companies will have it forced on them and it's up to us as consumers to fight back.
I do think that political protest as an official sporting event can be tricky though. Like if a player wants to kneel at the anthem I say good on him. But what if a player (or gamer in this case) wanted to voice support for... the "pray the gay away" camps? Should they be able to support them on the stream/event/ interview? Your argument could be no- it could harm teenagers/children but ultimately you would be making a political decision to shut down discourse.
I feel like they either need to leave it open but talk to streamers/ players behind the scene to keep them aware of what is expected (like say the NBA actively support more programs for minorities in the USA, they also don't have people kneeling as the players probably feel supported by the league)
who would feel supported by blizzard at this point?
The only other option is to shut any discourse down at all. I don't love this but I do see a point. It's not fair to make every company or every even a football to play out a seperate issue. We have to be careful to not just conflate Chinese people (who still may support the bans) and Chinese government policy. Just because we don't like the government or blizzards decision doesn't mean it's not a bit racist to just say "well deal, don't sell your product in China then!"
