Blizzard dev says there’s no internal comms over Hong Kong fiasco: ‘It’s pulling our teams apart at the seams’

Blizzard has yet to publicly respond to the widespread outrage over its decision to ban professional Hearthstone player Blitzchung following his statement of support for protests occurring in Hong Kong. This is already well-known (and let’s face it, if a public statement had been made, you’d have seen it here immediately). But there’s good news: According to an anonymous employee speaking with Vice, the company has also failed to respond to the outrage internally!

Looking back, I started that sentence with “but there’s good news” when the news was anything but good. My bad.

The anonymous employee states that not only have employees been regularly gathering at the wolf statue (which also hosts the covered-up signs claiming “Every Voice Matters”) but that no leadership has given any direction about how to respond, and in fact there has no communication from the top at all:

The internal silence is deafening. Besides two brief “I’m listening” emails from our president, we’ve heard nothing of substance. No one is helping us process what this means for us as a company, as individuals, or is identifying a path forward. No one has been told what to say or do in the aftermath of a legal yet insupportable decision.

At the time of this writing, a video is supposed to be released today addressing the issue, but has not yet been made available internally or elsewhere. It remains a matter of speculation whether this is due to legal teams examining their options or simply a confused mess even at the upper levels of management, but the lack of communication makes it impossible to be sure regardless.

If you’re still catching up on the developments on this self-inflicted terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for Blizzard, our roundup is just below.