Blizzard Preventing Users From Deleting their Accounts

[pas008]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

Lots of people are sure it's because they're getting money from the Chinese government. Which honestly isn't all that unreasonable, except nobody has been able to find me any proof.

what does that matter

guy broke the rules

 

the casters that ducked away even was fired

why were they ducking away?

cause they knew it was wrong and was premediated

[JoostinOnline]

3 minutes ago, pas008 said:

what does that matter

guy broke the rules

 

the casters that ducked away even was fired

why were they ducking away?

cause they knew it was wrong and was premediated

Well they're not particularly strict, and breaking the rules to protect human rights is something lots of people would let slide, but okay.

 

Their decision isn't even settling well with Blizzard employees, who staged a walkout in protest.

[QXC]

While amusing, it's very logical to conclude that their deletion system/workflow simply wasn't designed to handle a huge amount of users at once, which appears to have happened with the recent news. So, if anything it's a good sign that users are actually willing to take a stand against their actions.

Deleting an account might not seem like much, but it shows the strongest possible sign internally that the userbase is not happy with what's going on. Plus I'm sure "active accounts" or "total accounts" is some sort of metric that they use internally or with investors, and a huge dip in that is a sign that their actions are actually having a financial impact on the company, not just a bunch of people moaning online between overwatch rounds.

[RejZoR]

18 minutes ago, pas008 said:

why?

cause they banned a player that broke the rules? especially at an event

 

wait many companies ban for less lol

No, I had shit with them before. And I've seen they as a company suck. And their ToS is written so vaguel they can ban you for whatever they get random erection on that moment and when you demand they show you exactly what you did wrong they refuse. But they never forget to mention how they doublechecked it and the action was indeed correct. And then they instantly lock the ticket because you can prove them wrong if you had any extra replies. For me they just made sure they are really dicks when they banned this guy. And they also managed to take the crown from EA. EA may suck, but boy Blizzard sucks donkey ass trillion times more. And they just proved that to millions of people with their knee jerk dumb ass damage control they are STILL pulling!

[pas008]

16 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Well they're not particularly strict, and breaking the rules to protect human rights is something lots of people would let slide, but okay.

 

Their decision isn't even settling well with Blizzard employees, who staged a walkout in protest.

of course whats going on over there isnt right but its not their platform to do anything on?

 

example can you freely talk here about hacks/religion/politics?

 

can I preach about trump? or whoever?

 

ok not on this platform right? exactly

[JoostinOnline]

28 minutes ago, pas008 said:

of course whats going on over there isnt right but its not their platform to do anything on?

 

example can you freely talk here about hacks/religion/politics?

 

can I preach about trump? or whoever?

 

ok not on this platform right? exactly

You're acting like you've beaten me in some argument, but I never said any of those things. I didn't even suggest Blizzard wasn't within their rights.

[Doobeedoo]

I still wonder how this got blown up so much though. It was obvious, everyone knows already what would happen, ban is not a surprise, there's tos and contract, it's known. 

There are many more messed up things that there's not even half of an outcry as this. Possibly and partially due to Blizz being so known and such. People don't boycott more important things on daily basis and are outraged when know rules get broken result in a ban. 

[pas008]

14 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

You're acting like you've beaten me in some argument, but I never said any of those things. I didn't even suggest Blizzard wasn't within their rights.

no didnt know it was competition but i am just pointing out

everyone thinks they entitled to free speech even on others platforms

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, pas008 said:

no didnt know it was competition but i am just pointing out

everyone thinks they entitled to free speech even on others platforms

I never even suggested that.

[Valentyn]

4 hours ago, WereCatf said:

They already have had steps to prevent that for years. Completely preventing people from deleting accounts is a new thing.

New, and if true a Massive GDPR violation. I hope people are reporting them to get this looked into.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

Multiple Blizzard users are saying that when they try to close their account or request a copy of their personal data,

Worth checking what the GDPR defines as due diligence in these cases, or they may find themselves at a European court soon (again ), even if they win.

 

 

7 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

I have never seen this kind of behavior before from a U.S company. I want to avoid making this thread political so please fight the urge if possible and discuss.

[Touch My Hamm]

Being mad at only at Blizzard is weird. Yes they made some choices but its nothing that alot of Companies are doing right now. Tencent is a large player in mainland china gaming. They own shares in Activision Blizzard, as well as Epic games, Grinding Gear Games, Bluehole, Riot, and have given over $150 million in funding to Discord. So if your actually wanting to vote against this seemingly transition to another market then you might want to stop playing Fortnite, Pubg, League of Legends, and stop using discord, and this is only naming a few of what Tencent owns shares in. 

 

Not going to go anymore political into it then that. my argument isnt that Blizzard did the right thing or the wrong thing. Its just silly to focus the anger out on them for 15minutes until the next thing. Either fully fight for your beliefs or wait for the 15 minutes of fame to die down. 

[minibois]

Just processed the account deletion (have never used this account - other than minutes of Hearthstone) and didn't get this prompt.. Just got an e-mail telling me the account deletion is in progress, so we'll see how that goes..

[Teddy07]

2 hours ago, sowon said:

I was pondering if I should too request a deletion of my Blizzard account

Me too because I gave up video games alltogether forever. I am done! I doubt however that I can delete my account becuase I literally put XXX as my last name.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, JoostinOnline said:

Lots of people are sure it's because they're getting money from the Chinese government. Which honestly isn't all that unreasonable, except nobody has been able to find me any proof.

You completely missed the point - they did this because they don't want to be banned from doing business in China, not because they somehow got money from the Chinese government to ban this one guy from the tournament.

 

That's the charitable interpretation, too. Anything else would mean they are actively against the HK protests.

31 minutes ago, pas008 said:

no didnt know it was competition but i am just pointing out

everyone thinks they entitled to free speech even on others platforms

It's not a violation of free speech to be banned from a private platform because you violated their terms of service. It IS a violation of free speech when a government applies economical pressure on that platform to ban you when they otherwise wouldn't have. It's not rocket science.

49 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

I still wonder how this got blown up so much though. It was obvious, everyone knows already what would happen, ban is not a surprise, there's tos and contract, it's known. 

There are many more messed up things that there's not even half of an outcry as this. Possibly and partially due to Blizz being so known and such. People don't boycott more important things on daily basis and are outraged when know rules get broken result in a ban. 

Almost all corporations do disgusting things to protect their interest all the time. This just so happened to go down in an extremely public way. I'm not going to shed any tears for AB though - just because other companies are just as bad doesn't mean they don't deserve to be called out. It shouldn't be the customers' responsibility to hold them accountable but I'm not going to complain if they do.

31 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

New, and if true a Massive GDPR violation. I hope people are reporting them to get this looked into.

 

23 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Worth checking what the GDPR defines as due diligence in these cases, or they may find themselves at a European court soon (again ), even if they win.

You'd have to prove that they are doing this on purpose for that to go anywhere. I think it's plausible that they're just getting a lot more requests than usual and their system is crumbling under the pressure - that's fairly normal for customer service in situations like this. Not that this makes them look any better.

[pas008]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

.

It's not a violation of free speech to be banned from a private platform because you violated their terms of service. It IS a violation of free speech when a government applies economical pressure on that platform to ban you when they otherwise wouldn't have. It's not rocket science.

 

where is this proof?

they cut the video stream

so in those seconds china called blizzard and said hey cut the feed?

 

casters knew it was wrong ducking away

video cut away to commercial  which shows almost everyone knew it was wrong

 

guy gets disciplined and millennials cry

 

and funny thing is he can play in a year lol

[RejZoR]

Banning casters is even funnier. Like it was their fault that some dude decided to voice his message. But Blizzard sperged with banhammer anyway. Someone in China must have been really butthurt and demanded shit or else they'd lose market in China.

 

Btw, Tencent owns 5% of Blizzard according to info I found.

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

Well they're not particularly strict, and breaking the rules to protect human rights is something lots of people would let slide, but okay.

 

Their decision isn't even settling well with Blizzard employees, who staged a walkout in protest.

Honestly if they had banned him for simply protesting on his own time I would be outraged but what he did was particularly stupid. It doesn't surprise me that he got banned and I can not understand the outrage. He broke the rules and got punished like any other person would. I don't believe he should get a pass simply because other people agree with his point of view. Either they allow all people to do the same or they allow none of it. It shouldn't matter what particular political stance they have. I do find it ironic because if it was someone who had an unpopular opinion and they got banned nobody would care at all but now that it is something people agree with they are outraged. Seems dumb to me. 

[RejZoR]

18 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly if they had banned him for simply protesting on his own time I would be outraged but what he did was particularly stupid. It doesn't surprise me that he got banned and I can not understand the outrage. He broke the rules and got punished like any other person would. I don't believe he should get a pass simply because other people agree with his point of view. Either they allow all people to do the same or they allow none of it. It shouldn't matter what particular political stance they have. I do find it ironic because if it was someone who had an unpopular opinion and they got banned nobody would care at all but now that it is something people agree with they are outraged. Seems dumb to me. 

What "rules"? The rules state if you state something that offends certain group yadidadida. Oh right, this offends the Chinese. It's not like he said "suck it Chinese bitches". That I'd maybe understand lol...

[Brooksie359]

Just now, RejZoR said:

What "rules"? The rules state if you state something that offends certain group yadidadida. Oh right, this offends the Chinese. It's not like he said "suck it Chinese bitches". That I'd maybe understand lol...

The gist of the rules is that you aren't supposed to bring up things like politics which is exactly what he did. I'm sorry but if he thought a hearthstone tournament was the right time to bring up politics and protest then he is incredibly wrong. It doesn't take a genius to think about the action and realize most companies would be mad about it. You go on their tournament stream and start bringing up politics out of nowhere most companies are going to be upset and will punish them. The stream is about a hearthstone tournament and not politics. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

 

You'd have to prove that they are doing this on purpose for that to go anywhere. I think it's plausible that they're just getting a lot more requests than usual and their system is crumbling under the pressure - that's fairly normal for customer service in situations like this. Not that this makes them look any better.

Well, it would be enough for them not complying with a given requirement of "timeliness", if such exist. However, I wasn't thinking on Blizzard crossing the threshold of lisng, only the threshold of getting sued, which isn't as high. I mean...

Spoiler

 

[pas008]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Banning casters is even funnier. Like it was their fault that some dude decided to voice his message. But Blizzard sperged with banhammer anyway. Someone in China must have been really butthurt and demanded shit or else they'd lose market in China.

 

Btw, Tencent owns 5% of Blizzard according to info I found.

they got let go because they ducked away allowed for this premeditated shit to happen they knew

 

damn stream even cut out and went to commercial

 

did the chinese cut the stream out too?

 

whats next

for the domino effect

 

hey I won

post interview

vote for xxx, dont vote for yyy

free these people

holy land belongs to xxx

 

fuck that doesnt belong there

 

banned lol suspended for a year

 

 

[Valentyn]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

You'd have to prove that they are doing this on purpose for that to go anywhere. I think it's plausible that they're just getting a lot more requests than usual and their system is crumbling under the pressure - that's fairly normal for customer service in situations like this. Not that this makes them look any better.

You don’t have to prove anything. You file the complaint and let them look into it. That’s it.

 

If the infrastructure can’t handle it, that’s still a violation as under the law, as they have to be able to provide that service, without obstacle.

Which still makes it a Blizzard issue.
 

My company has a 100% compliance rate because the fines can be massive. Two fuck ups on your part and you’re gone. 

[Suika]

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

where is this proof?

Why do you need proof to believe that a government, known to be oppressive, is using its market to pressure foreign companies to conduct business in a way they see fit, but you don't need proof to believe that the casters were in on the entire event and that they weren't fired solely to appease an oppressive regime?

 

Do you really like that Winnie the Pooh lookin' President Xi or something?

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

guy gets disciplined and millennials cry

You use the word millennial but I don't think you know what millennial means.

1 hour ago, GodSeph said:

They own shares in Activision Blizzard, as well as Epic games, Grinding Gear Games, Bluehole, Riot, and have given over $150 million in funding to Discord.

Tim Sweeney, CEO and controlling share owner of Epic Games, has publicly stated that Epic Games supports the rights of players and content creators and will not be censoring like Activision-Blizzard has.

 

It's also worth noting that Tencent has a 40% share of Epic Games, but only a 5% share of Activision-Blizzard. I don't believe Tencent is even a factor in this discussion if that's the case, then.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Happened to me yesterday , i attached this as my govt ID