Blizzard needs no more encouragement, it's digging its own grave day by day with its responses to pro-Hong Kong protests from its player base. Following its halfhearted attempt to walk back the suspension of professional player, Blitzchung, over his support for the embattled state of Hong Kong, it's now implemented a suspension of an American team which voiced its support for Hong Kong and Blitzchung.
The incident that inspired the suspension took place at the Hearthstone Collegiate Championship, where three American students held up a sign that read "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz." You can see here, how Blizzard quickly cut the stream to those individuals, but initially instigated no punishment for their actions.
Blizzard has now retroactively banned the trio for six months of play, claiming that the players were in violation of its terms of play. That seems a strenuous link, when the rule it's cited is to do with player respect and not using offensive language.
This has, unsurprisingly, gone down poorly with the wider Blizzard gaming community. There have been hundreds of reports of people cancelling subscriptions to Blizzard games, or deliberately halting play in protest of Blizzard's actions. You have to imagine that the numbers go far higher, if you account for those who didn't make a show of doing it.
With Blizzard's annual Blizzcon event taking place at the start of November, all eyes will now be on that show to see what Blizzard, and its community of fans, do next.
