During their match in the Hearthstone Collegiate Championship Fall 2019, three students help up a ‘Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz’ sign.

This is after Blizzard kicked Ng Wai Chung out of the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament, stripped him of his $10,000 in winnings, and banned him from tournament play for a year for saying ‘Liberate Hong, revolution of our age’ during a post-match interview. Blizzard’s response to the American University students?

Complete silence.

This pretty much ends the ‘Chung should’ve read the rules about no politics in gaming’ argument I’ve been hearing, because there appears to be no rules other than not angering Blizzard’s Communist Chinese overlords. When they’re not watching, you can say whatever you want apparently.

Or maybe this is Blizzard getting the message and wisely staying silent this time. I hope that’s the case.

BlizzCon is coming up in a couple weeks. It will be very interesting to see what kind of response we’ll see from Blizzard’s core audience at the convention. If Blizzard thought last year’s Diablo Immortal debacle was bad, it could pale to what goes down this year.

Make this right, Blizz.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/10/9/20906219/collegiate-hearthstone-hong-kong-protest