I agree with you, and I think most people do, that disrupting a tournament with political speech deserves some kind of punishment, perhaps up to a ban, though ideally not for the first offense. The punishment should be made clear in the rules and enforced objectively rather than selectively.
But note that what actually happened is much worse than a minor punishment: full ban for a year, confiscation of prize money that had previously been won, firing both the (Taiwanese!) interviewers for a crime that was extremely close to just being unavoidably in the wrong place at the wrong time, having the company representing Blizzard in China issuing an apology about defending China's "national pride".. it feels like a set of consequences that were likely dictated by China, or at least planned explicitly to try to please them.
You can object to a specific punishment without objecting to the idea of giving a punishment, and I think that's what's been happening here.
I think you gave me the most pause in this argument so far.
I do think punishing the player itself, even in the original 12 months / 10k way before they relented, was .. acceptable? Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly. Which I think was the case here, completely ignoring what he was advocating.
You're bringing up good points about the rest of the disaster though. Unless they were secretly in on this (and all coverage I saw makes that highly unlikely), the casters are complete bystanders and not responsible in the slightest¹.
I won't weasel around and say "It wasn't _Blizzard_ directly who apologized" or stuff like that. The apology is - in my opinion - the worst part in all of this and the single part I find a little disgusting.
Ban/Fine the guy? Yup. Fire casters: That's stupid. Apologize to China: Ewww..
I guess what made me burn my karma in this thread is that so far I've seen a lot of discussions focus on "Freedom of Speech" (not applicable on a private platform, not a global/unified concept anyway) and actually .. supporting the gamer.
Player vs Blizzard: Both fucked this up. The former intentionally², the latter incompetently. I don't see why Blizzard alone gets the hate and is painted as the bad guy.
① One might mayyyybe wonder if the production team could've cut to a commercial, but again.. no use blaming other people.
② I've never watched that player myself, but I extend him the courtesy to believe that he knew he was doing something stupid/risky way in advance
> Linking to my earlier comparison with professional athletes: You can lose your title, be fined and be banned for behaving improperly.
This wasn't improper behavior that affected the result of the athletic event, though. Is it true that people are getting year long bans from their sport just for behaving improperly? Like, isn't Nick Kyrgios' on-court tennis behavior worse than this and yet he's still at events? I think as an athlete you have to be doping -- actually affecting event results -- to get this severe a punishment.
Another reason to be more lenient is that while Blitzchung knew some trouble would come, this was an unprecedented situation and the amount of trouble wasn't predictable by him.
But note that what actually happened is much worse than a minor punishment: full ban for a year, confiscation of prize money that had previously been won, firing both the (Taiwanese!) interviewers for a crime that was extremely close to just being unavoidably in the wrong place at the wrong time, having the company representing Blizzard in China issuing an apology about defending China's "national pride".. it feels like a set of consequences that were likely dictated by China, or at least planned explicitly to try to please them.
You can object to a specific punishment without objecting to the idea of giving a punishment, and I think that's what's been happening here.