After silencing Blitzchung during the Hong Kong protests, critics are calling out Activision Blizzard for suddenly changing its mind on protesting.
Actitivision Blizzard isn’t exactly a paragon of morality in the games industry, and critics are now calling out the company’s support for Black Lives Matter protests as hypocritical after the company took a central antagonistic role in the Blitzchung controversy during last year’s similar Hong Kong protests. It’s always raises eyebrows when international conglomerates known for their general lack of moral scruples suddenly latch onto symbols like Blackout Tuesday, but it’s rarer that those calculatedly “safe” PR moves fly directly in the face of a corporation’s recent poor behavior.
Activision Blizzard, the games publisher from the proverbial black lagoon, was on the wrong side of history as recently as late last year when the millions-strong protests against Chinese extradition from Hong Kong were still raging. In addition to silencing and banning pro Hearthstone player Blitzchung for expressing his desire for Hong Kong’s independence on-air, developer Blizzard underscored this flagrant support of human rights abuse in China by actively muzzling other critics of the Chinese government on its online platforms. The company showed its true colors when it somewhat successfully swept the entire deplorable event under the rug by announcing Diablo 4 and issuing a non-apology at BlizzCon 2019.
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