Who is "blitzchung" - and what is the scandal about?

Normally, computer games are not a political matter. In the case of "blitzchung" it's different - and the case is making ever higher waves. We explain what's behind it and why the scandal is so explosive.

The Hearthstone player "blitzchung" had to pay dearly for his political commentary.

"blitzchung" (real name Ng Wai) is an eSports professional from Hong Kong, his parade discipline is Hearthstone from the US developer Blizzard.

"blitzchung", Hearthstone and the Hong Kong protests: That's what it's all about

Background were (and are) the protests in Hong Kong, which have been going on for weeks and were proclaimed to fight for more democracy.

• The player "blitzchung" comes from Hong Kong and expressed himself in the live interview of a Hearthstone tournament per revolutionary movement.
• This is known to be directed against the Chinese government. Since Hearthstone developer Blizzard is 5 percent owned by the Chinese company Tencent Games and "blitzchung" is a well-known figure in the eSports scene, Blizzard felt compelled to react. Moreover, the Chinese market is extremely important for Blizzard's Heathstone business.
• As a result, Blizzard banned "blitzchung" for one year and also retained his tournament prize money. In addition, the company officially apologized to China and condemned the player's action.
• This caused a shitstorm of proud proportions: The entire gaming scene as well as large sections of the media condemned Blizzard's reaction as support for a regime that vehemently suppresses freedom of speech.
• The fact that Blizzard is a U.S. corporation makes the situation particularly explosive - in the U.S., after all, free speech and democracy are seen as important guiding principles.

Blizzard was thus able to avoid further trouble with Chinese investors, but in return suffered a blatant loss of image in the West. As a result, many players symbolically deleted their Blizzard accounts and called for a boycott, and on Reddit the Blizzard subreddit was even temporarily closed. As if all that wasn't enough, BlizzCon 2019 is just around the corner - it doesn't take clairvoyance to predict that the "blitzchung" issue will be very present there, even if Blizzard and Tencent will try hard to prevent it.