Jeff Kaplan explains why he wants Blitzchung ban dropped Blizzard Vice President, Jeff Kaplan, has revealed that he believes Ng Wai \u2018Blitzchung\u2019 Chung\u2019s suspension should now be \u201celiminated\u201d amid the controversy that has ensued, after the Hearthstone player used his GrandMasters victory to support the Hong Kong protests. After Blitzchung called for the liberation of Hong Kong during a post-match interview, Blizzard clamped down on the Hong Kong native \u2014 dishing out a one year ban, retracting two season\u2019s worth of earnings and stripping Chung of his GrandMasters status. Following on from the community backlash, Blizzard refined the suspension to a six-month ban and reinstated Chung\u2019s earnings. However, fast-forward to one month after the incident and the Blizzard VP has expressed his views on the situation. Blizzard President, J. Allen Brack, addressed the BlizzCon 2019 audience with an apologetic opening before stating: \u201cWe will do better moving forward. Our actions are going to mean more than these words.\u201d One week after the convention, Kaplan has expressed his thoughts on the current state of affairs in an interview with the Washington Post, explaining that \u201cthe suspension should be reduced more or eliminated.\u201d \u201cIt got to me personally,\u201d Kaplan said. \u201cI think the punishment was too harsh and I was greatly relieved when they gave (Blitzchung) his money back \u2014 I think that was extremely important.\u201d The Blizzard VP then went on to explain how there are conflicting emotions flying around Blizzard: \u201cI think as individuals, we all have very different feelings about what happened in regards to the Hearthstone tournament and Blitzchung. There is a lot of very different reaction among all of us.\u201d Richard Lewis has also weighed-in on Kaplan\u2019s comments, stating: \u201cWe can assume that the punishment came from the very top of the company\u201d since the Blizzard executive appeared to have little to no say in the punishment that was served. Blizzard VP and head of development for Overwatch, Jeff Kaplan, has told the Washington Post he believes that Blitzchung’s punishment should be reduced further and that he doesn’t support it. As such we can assume that the punishment came from the very top of the company. pic.twitter.com\/sLaBpiR2w7 \u2014 Richard Lewis (@RLewisReports) November 8, 2019 \u201cI\u2019m obviously a huge supporter of free speech; it\u2019s something that\u2019s very important to me,\u201d Kaplan said, as he edged in his personal standpoint during the interview. Although Blizzard have already reflected upon their decision and made amendments accordingly, there are more twists to this tale which now appears to internally refute the company\u2019s core value of \u201cevery voice matters\u201d (as per their mission statement).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeff Kaplan explains why he wants Blitzchung ban dropped Blizzard Vice President, Jeff Kaplan, has revealed that he believes Ng Wai \u2018Blitzchung\u2019 Chung\u2019s suspension should now be \u201celiminated\u201d amid the controversy that has ensued, after the Hearthstone player used his GrandMasters victory to support the Hong Kong protests. After Blitzchung called for the liberation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}