There’s controversy brewing over Blizzard’s removal of a video clip on the Blizzard Taiwan Twitch channel, where the post-match interview VOD featuring Hong Kong Hearthstone player Ng “blitzchung” Wai Chung was removed because he yelled out “Liberate Hong Kong”.
It all started with a post-match interview that blitzchung had with the Blizzard Taiwan commentary team. As reported by Inven Global, blitzchung took off his face mask and yelled the following while the commentary duo snickered and hid under the desk…
“Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!”
A video clip of the moment was posted on the Iven Global Twitter account on October 6th, 2019. You can view the clip below.
[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj
@Matthieist #Hearthstone pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g
— 🎃 Inven Global 🎃 (@InvenGlobal) October 6, 2019
Following the publication of the article, blitzchung provided a clarification for his comments to Inven Global, saying…
“As you know there are serious protests in my country now. My call on stream was just another form of participation of the protest that I wish to grab more attention. I put so much effort in that social movement in the past few months, that I sometimes couldn’t focus on preparing my Grandmaster match. I know what my action on stream means. It could cause me lot of trouble, even my personal safety in real life. But I think it’s my duty to say something about the issue.”
Well, it definitely caused some trouble.
On October 7th, 2019, e-sports consultant and insider, Rod Breslau, reported that Blizzard had removed the VOD clip of blitzchung yelling out for the liberation of Hong Kong from the official Blizzard Taiwan channel on Twitch.tv.
in a post-match Hearthstone Grandmasters winning interview, Hong Kong HS player @blitzchungHS said “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!”
in response, Blizzard Taiwan has now deleted the VOD from their official Twitch channel https://t.co/l5lcMu4ULR
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) October 7, 2019
This has been the typical corporate response from a lot of companies where Hong Kong gamers have been voicing their opinions – and support – for the protests taking place in Hong Kong.
VRChat banned a player for promoting the liberation of Hong Kong within the game, calling it “disruptive behavior”.
Second Galaxy has also reportedly banned players for openly supporting the protests in Hong Kong as well.
Even some apps are being removed from the iTunes App Store such as HKmap Live, because Apple claimed that Hong Kong protestors were using it to evade law enforcement.
There’s a definitely a concerted effort to censor positive promotion or show solidarity toward the protestors in Hong Kong, as evident with Blizzard Taiwan removing the clip of blitzchung from the VOD collection.
(Thanks for the news tip dk max)
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