Blizzard Employees Strongly Support Company's Punishment of Hong Kong Advocate & Player Censorship of Sensitive Chinese Topics - Blind Survey

Blizzard HQ photo by Heather Newman

Blizzard has been under tremendous backlash since its October 8 decision to punish Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai, a Hong Kong-based Hearthstone champion, after he advocated for the city's pro-democracy movement during a live post-game interview. Anti-Blizzard memes have spread through the gaming world, along with calls to boycott the company's games, and protest at its conventions; unsurprisingly, Blizzard just cancelled an upcoming Overwatch launch event in New York.

However, aside from a small walk-out protest and other ripples of dissatisfaction, one point remains unclear: What do Blizzard employees think of punishing its players for expressing opinions considered taboo by the Chinese government on their gaming platforms?

According to a survey recently launched by the development team of Blind, an anonymous messaging app for tech company staffers, a strong majority of Blizzard employees actually support the punishment of Chung -- and in general, strongly support censorship of players criticizing China's government.

About 500 Blizzard employees are members of Blind's community for the company, Blind co-founder Kyum Kim tells me. Of that 500, fifty to seventy Blizzard employees took the two question survey, along with hundreds of staffers from many other tech companies -- raw data on the right.

Asked, "Should Blizzard reverse its banning of the Hearthstone player?", only 36% of Blizzard employees surveyed responded Yes. However, a solid majority of 64% opposed the reversal. This greatly contrasts with answers from employees across the tech industry, which supported a reversal at ranges from 67 to 92%. (With the notable exception being Riot Games -- like Blizzard, a game company that's heavily dependent on the Chinese market, with opinion split 50/50.)

Blind launched this survey last Thursday, just before Blizzard softened (but did not completely reverse) Chung's punishment. However, when asked a more general question about sensitive Chinese political topics, Blizzard employees were about as adamant in their support of player censorship :

The second Blind survey question was: "Do you think Blizzard should have a strong free speech policy for players regarding Hong Kong and other controversial topics in China (Tibet, Tiananmen, Taiwan) -- even if it hurts Blizzard financially by a loss of Chinese revenue?"

The results are at right: Only 31% of Blizzard employees supported free speech on Chinese topics as a matter of principle, regardless of its impact on Blizzard's bottom line.

To be sure, this survey attracted only 50-70 Blizzard employee respondents, a small sample from a total staff count of about 4,700 people. Then again, that's a much larger sample than the "couple dozen" Blizzard employees who protested Chung's ban. And because of how Blind works, the survey likely reflects true staff sentiment.

“Blind allows employees at companies to share their opinion anonymously, which means they can share their honest opinions without fear of judgment," as Kyum Kim puts it. Furthermore, Blind users can only join its Blizzard community if they create an account through their company e-mail.

Personally I'm surprised by these results, especially as Blizzard is such a player-focused company, full of employees who are passionate Blizzard gamers themselves. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be: We are seeing a similar pattern among celebrity players of the NBA, another organization which makes billions from the Chinese market. And given the size of the Chinese economy, its deep roots in the global market, and the bellicose attitude of its current government leadership, this is almost certainly just one chapter in a much longer story. And so far, Sinclair Lewis' famous adage threatens to be that story's underlying theme.

Update, 10/16: Some readers in Comments have suggested that Blizzard management may be manipulating this survey through fake accounts. On background, however, a developer with Blind told me that there haven't been enough new Blind users from Blizzard signing up after the survey was launched to skew the survey's results.

Comments

[osc]

Where is the survey you're citing? Your link only goes to https://www.teamblind.com/articles/Topics which doesn't show any such survey results.

[George Lershmann]

Maybe because once you are actually in the thick of the controversy, you begin to truly study the event, and then you realize that, yes, this is indeed a fight for freedom, just as terrorist groups around the world call themselves freedom fighters. https://www.youtube.com/user/Saib0tx

[Summer Haas]

"Blind users can only join its Blizzard community if they create an account through their company e-mail."

Right, and there's no way they didn't just make a bunch of fake emails to skew the results, just like Disney didn't buy millions of dollars worth of Captain Marvel tickets to pad the numbers.

[Adeon Writer]

@SummerHaas: Well if they made a bunch of fake emails just to prove how much they support China, then that kind of also indicates they really support China, no?

Anyways: The biggest conclusion I draw from this is to not trust Blind with anonymous data. They will out you and violate your privacy.

[Wagner James Au]

"Where is the survey you're citing?"

The survey data is in the spreadsheet screen captures included in this post -- I fixed the link, which was just meant to go to the app homepage.

"They will out you and violate your privacy."

Not sure what you're referring to? The only user data that Blind sent me are the anonymous results of the opt-in survey.

[mutilate a doll 2]

In any case, the article you give is quite reasonable. I appreciate your insights, and hope to receive more articles from you

[Simple Lemon]

Hahaha, yeah go ahead and support China. Be utterly oblivious to the reality of their track record.

Here are the things you should put your China support behind.

* Take over of HK by China military.
* Take over of Taiwan by China military.
* Take over the China Sea by China military.
* Encourage the China Military to build more military islands in international waters.
* Encourage more concentration camps for dissidents policed by China Military.
* Encourage more concentration camps for members of religions policed by China Military.
* Encourage more disappearance of civilians who speak against the China military.
* Encourage the use of China’s Social Credit System policed by China Military.
* Encourage the tightening of rules with the Social Credit System until the lower ranking individuals are put in “re-education” concentration camps policed by China Military.
* Encourage China to build better long-range ICBM with multiple nuclear warheads.
* According to the China Daily Mail news operated by the government, China claims rights to these countries and would like all of them to someday be under China Military governance: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan.

Is it a long list…want me to go on? Or do you get the idea of what support for China means in reality? If you're really into this support China thing, you might like the idea of bringing back Chairman Mao Zedong to rule the country. He only oversaw 50 million of his citizens murdered, which is peanuts compared to the direction the Chinese Military wants to go eventually.

[Susan Wilson]

Memo #1 - 20% of your salary comes from China
Memo #2 - Do you think we should piss off China?

[George Lershmann]

Firstly, let's use "Chinese Government" instead of "Chinese" or "China". I don't think any of you mean to say that *all* Chinese people are nasty. That's just... wrong...

Secondly, there *is* a difference between being anti-Chinese Government, and supporting the protests in Hong Kong. The protests in Hong Kong is anti-Chinese Government in its most extreme form - the same form that has people crashing planes into buildings to make a point.

Obviously we aren't at that point yet, but we are getting there. Again, I refer you to just view the shortest of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/Saib0tx. Around 5 minutes of your day. Then perhaps another 15 minutes to verify that the author isn't a "spy" as many suspect. 20 minutes total of holding an olive branch, of empathy. And then, I proudly accept your right to call me a "goddamn ch*nk spy"!

[Michael Baek]

Why does everything has to be looked vis political pipe glass? A company has rules and policies the employees and and participants of the company's products or services that co.es with end-user agreements that stipulates ones acceptable conducts. Does it seem okay to put up posters around the walls of your apartment public areas just because you pay rent?

[Summer Haas]

@Adeon - I think you miss the point. If you have 25 employees participating in a survey that all say they do not support the decisions made by the company, the company can just make 45 fake employee emails and skew the results in the opposite direction that makes their position look like the employees support it when really they don't.

This is the problem with anonymous surveys, they are very easy to manipulate and there is no way to prove they are accurate.

[Patricia Flanagan]

Did anyone notice the tiny portion of Blizzard employees who took the survey? "About 500 Blizzard employees are members of Blind's community for the company... Of that 500, fifty to seventy Blizzard employees took the two question survey." It sounds to me like those who agreed answered and those who didn't and didn't want retaliation (because they obviously had to register with their Blizzard email addresses) kept their opinions to themselves.

[Duane Stephenson]

Nearly everyone, even China, agrees that China struggles with free speech. But why?

China is terrified of swinging too far the opposite way, and becoming bratty, whiny know-it-alls like America. China values respect for experience and expertise, cooperative discussion and problem solving, and hard work with productive results. Americans often assume they are experts after reading or writing enough articles, make moral decisions without discussion and throw tantrums if an alternative perspective shows its face, and think the expressing of their opinions is their best gift to the world.

Blizzard has real experts (people who dedicate their lives to the subject) in bridging Chinese and American culture. They took this issue seriously, discussed different angles and perspectives, possible approaches, and carefully measured consequences before enacting their final decision. It is clearly innappropriate to discuss sex, politics, or religion in a setting not designed for it; it shows no respect to the viewers who can spend their time on those topics if they like. And these tantrum boycotts do have power, but only the destructive kind (like a toddler tantrum) where expensive events are canceled due to safety issues, for example. And surveys are a marketing tool for general opinion, not for expert cultural strategies

[Mag]

More chinese than riot?

[Totalitarianism Today]

Duane Stephenson- you should submit an article to our magazine.

[Bootsnboards]

I keep my own council so this statement in no way represents my personal views regarding China itself, its government, or anything of that kind.

This is simply me parsing peoples' logic displayed in some of the previous comments... for example-Blizzard can go and make a bunch of bogus company emails, register them, then use them to post false survey results on some survey site that has little or no real political heft or power.

Ok... logically, this is just silly. Having worked in the cyber-security field for more than 2 decades, the checks and balances make this scenario, while still remotely possible, so unlikely that it is just ridiculous. Let us keep in mind, "The Company" isn't some sentient entity acting on its own behalf. It is PEOPLE, in positions, and in order to pull this off, it would require people of shared opinion in key single point of failure positions (lest someone in the department who does NOT agree blow the whistle) across several different divisions of the company to all have successfully conspired to collaborate, spending company time to fudge and skew survey results on a survey site that doesn't really matter. Oh, Blizzard is ALSO publicly traded you say?! Activision Blizzard has a board of directors who govern business actions? If the said board takes actions for the company that employees disagree with, no one is forcing them to continue working for the said company? OHHH! Gee, maybe we have some people who lack a basic understanding of economics, corporate operation, diplomacy and geopolitics making statements about things the inner workings of which they are largely ignorant? Creating conspiracy theories to justify a narrative that wouldn't pass any litmus test for logic or reasonable likelihood? Naw, people NEVER do that on the internet!

Do you REALLY think Blizzard, a profit-based, publicly held and traded corporate venture in a largely capitalist world market would waste its time (corporate time=financial resources) doing this, and that the stars would align just right so that the multiple employees required to collaborate to secretly pull this off would be aware of one another's attitude on the issue beforehand, be willing to risk someone changing their mind, outing the actions, marring the company for generating bullshit like that, and do it all over just one little employee survey? If so, why stop at such a small number of fake accounts? Why not make 300 fake accounts? Make the allegedly faked results even more clear and delineated? If this was important enough to waste company resources on and you had the proper people placed in the proper positions to pull it off, stopping at not even 100 survey results from a corporation of thousands of employees seems pretty tame.

Come on now... you're adults. Disliking a narrative is not reason enough to engage in these silly mental gymnastics to create another narrative dependent upon unlikely conspiracies. Think this through. Some of you making these comments have GOT to have experience working in companies of this kind and are therefore fully aware of how company emails get created logged, used, etc., and that all of this is clearly visible to the corporate legal team, cyber-security team, and compliance departments, all of whom would have to actively choose to ignore the risks associated with creating bullshit email accounts, all for such a petty, stupid reason. Most corporate breaches occur via email security measures and practices failing, btw. To put the company at that much risk of being exposed for manufacturing bullshit survey results over something so petty is just too ludicrous to take seriously. Its possible, sure, but so highly unlikely that no reasonable, objective person functioning from a logical perspective would fail to realize that it just doesn't pass any smell test for being likely.

Grow up, people. And on the note of speaking in terms of things from a corporate perspective, when you're on company time, you have no free speech. Its as simple as that. If you're being paid a wage to perform tasks on behalf of a company, the time during which they pay the wage, the location, building, grounds, or cyber-space in which that work occurs, that belongs to the company paying for that time from you. They have every right to control what goes on during the time they pay you to be essentially a representative of the company. That doesn't mean you have to agree with the company. But if you accept a paycheck from them, you are very literally agreeing to do what you are told during the hours you're being paid to be working for them. They own that time because they bought it. If you don't agree, you have to weigh how much you disagree, and if it outweighs the compensation the company pays you, its always your decision to stop accepting pay from them and resign.

So many people have such enormous misconceptions regarding what free speech is, where it does and doesn't apply, what is and isn't "protected speech", and etc. I do personally think Blizz crossed the line when banning the player who made the comment, about HK in the first place, the Hearthstone champ... unless of course Blizz was sponsoring his appearance in the interview, in which case, ya, it's fully their right to take any action they want. It isn't imo great optics, but given the way the player through the company under the bus, so to speak, they were put in a shitty situation, to begin with. If he wasn't sponsored and it was simply a case of him speaking in his personal views (albeit in a stupid, careless way) on someone else's platform, then Blizz really had some tough choices, and in the end the law requires them to pursue the path they believe was most likely to continue generating the biggest profits for their investors, and that is just simply how corporations operate and the legal requirements that they're beholden to...

This player, I mean really, he was provided with the very platform he used to vent his personal views due to his use of someone else's, i.e. Blizz's, in the first place, and if he were older and wiser, he probably would have kept things topical to the platform he was on... fucking eSports, rather than essentially creating drama for Blizzard by turning a completely unrelated, apolitical thing like an esports championship interview into a personal political soapbox.

As for the laundry list of things the Chinese Government is guilty of, I hate playing the false equivalency game, but obvious things like how many of those very things the U.S. is also guilty of doing, in its own national self-interest should be mentioned as well... along with the mantra of worrying about your own backyard before involving yourself in someone else's (whether its a sovereign nation or a publicly held corporation). But far too many Americans conveniently perform extreme mental gymnastics to avoid even recognizing similar actions in American national self-interest have also occurred, in the name of "preserving security". They are still occurring, occurred in the past, and are likely to reoccur in the future.

To that false equivalency game, I'll simply say, the fact that every country takes actions on a daily basis which are contrary to general human rights and freedoms doesn't make those actions okay. The U.S. does it every day, China does it, countries across the world do it, and it sucks. It's never okay or right. But that is an entirely separate issue from someone practicing bad judgement in the public comments they make from a platform they owe in part to the very entity they are complaining about. If dude doesn't like what China is doing, then one way to TRULY protest that is to stop supporting things that profit from China until behavior improves, so wtf is dude doing playing Blizz games if his beef is so big that he feels he has a right to use Blizz's public eSports platform to air personal views? It is childish and unproductive and likely to trigger the very knee-jerk responses that occurred. Its poor political calculation to try to play both sides by using a product that is profiting from some of the very entities you're bitching about. Only childish idealists behave in such diametrically opposed, stupid, unproductive, illogical ways. The reality is yes, you definitely put yourself in danger of estranging yourself from the provider of the very platform you abuse, and any responsible adult understands that concept.

[Dr. Chung - PLA]

@Simple Lemon

* Take over of Taiwan by China military.

Yes by any means neccacery they are a renagade provence that needs to be put under control
They belong to china the land and the people

[Dr. Chung - PLA]

@Duane
Agreed and china does not have a track record of invading 100 countries in the last 50 years like the USA

China respects other country's borders and sovereignty
we do not invade to take resources like what was done in Iraq or kill a million babies like what was done in Iraq

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

@drChung

You make it sound like the Chinese habit of heavily financing foreign projects under onerous terms only to steal them from client countries when they fall behind in repayment in several countries on the New Silk Road is somehow better.

Military Brutality or Bandit Economics? Wow, tough choice.

Also: The practical fact of the matter is that Taiwan exists as a separate nation from China for practical matters. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter best left for discussion on other blogs that are more focused on separatism and independence discussions.

[joseph petritis]

If blizzard did nothing this wouldn't be news. Iam glad blizzard did what China wanted. Shows China's real color's,
to the world.

[joseph petritis]

China living in the pass can't hid the truth anymore.Freedom of speech is a right that can't be hidden. joseph

[Tom]

People don't "belong" to a country, you dope.

[Rin]

One thing that such corrupt despotic regimes like in China understand very well, but well to many people in the (so called) West like Tod ignore is, that everything can be political. Sports, music, games, books, entertainment in general ... If it would not be, then why would Blizzard bother doing what they did? Or why would the NBA be so fast in falling to the knees and beg for forgivness? Or why would all such regimes pump unholy amounts of money into big spotrs events? Hint: its not because they are such big Fans.

Fact is, they fear freedom oft speech and are weak crybabies totally unable to deal with critique or anything that puts a shade on their own nationalistic Version of histoty and the image they like to create in order to brainwash their fallowers.