There’s a unifying factor between companies; it brings people of all political ideologies together, unites the left, the right, and everything in-between. Executives and shareholders alike may not agree with one another on abortion, or human rights, or freedom of speech, or social welfare, or pretty much any divisive issue you can imagine, but they can most certainly agree that one thing is more important than all the concerns of the little people: the profit margin.

Blizzard, the creator of massively popular games such as World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, proved exactly that this week. Chung Ng Wai, a Hong Kong-based player who is known by the name Blitzchung, won a game in the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament and gave an official interview. In the interview, he said “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” which is the standard protest slogan in the city. He was also wearing the goggle and face mask combo used to protect Hong Kong protesters’ from facial recognition and tear gas.

Blizzard has a rule against expressing a political opinion that displeases any portion of the public, so this was clearly against the rules. However, rather than empathize with a young man in a struggle for his human rights, they chose to take a leaf out of the Chinese government’s book and respond with full force. They suspended him for a year, took back all his winnings for the year, condemned him on social media, and even fired the two casters who were simply interviewing him. To use the colloquial term, shit hit the fan. Longtime supporters of Blizzard, including myself, were outraged. How could an American company take such a harsh stance against free speech? Not the kind of free speech where you say slurs, either – literally the most important form: criticizing an authoritarian government.

Professional gamer Chung “Blitzchung” Ng Wai appeared in an interview after a Hearthstone tournament. Photograph: Blizzard

Employees staged a walkout, covering up two of the “eight core values” of Blizzard which are engraved outside their HQ – “think globally” and “every voice matters”. US senators have condemned the company’s action, citing China leveraging access to its vast market as a way to reduce free speech globally. The former team lead Mark Kern, who helped spearhead the original World of Warcraft, began accelerating a scattered boycott by cancelling his subscriptions. He tweeted an emotional thread. He is ethnically Chinese and lived in Hong Kong for a time. He spoke of the corruption of Chinese gaming companies, claiming that they offer bribes for big budget titles and saying they tried to ruin his career with planted press stories because he refused kickbacks. “Chinese money now dictates American values,” he said, and I have to agree with him.

In China, every movie, game, app or book has to go through the General Administration of Press and Publication in order to be released to the public. it has strict censorship protocols, in which nothing negative can be said about China, past horrors committed by the government can’t be mentioned, and the publication cannot offend the culture of China. This means a big no-no on blood and gore, which means games censor bones, blood and guts. Blizzard actually does this, releasing censored versions of their games in China.

American companies comply with these ridiculous rules to get access to the colossal Chinese market. The NBA is experiencing this right now: the manager of the Houston Rockets simply stated his support for Hong Kong, and China blacklisted the Rockets from being shown on Chinese television. The country can cut your access at any time, for pretty much any reason they deem appropriate. Such as … a player of your game expressing support for a rebelling territory.

'Chinese money now dictates American values,' Mark Kern said, and I have to agree with him

I can understand from a business perspective why Blizzard would cave, and undoubtedly the Chinese government explicitly asked it to heavily punish everyone involved. Blizzard gets up to 12% of its revenue from Asia, and presumably a huge portion of that is from China. Losing that much of your revenue tonight could destroy your company by tomorrow. So is it justified? Was Blizzard just making the smart business decision?

Perhaps, but we should all be deeply worried about how tied up western companies have gotten with authoritarian regimes. They, and they alone, put themselves in a position where the Chinese government can gut their company at their leisure. Every company that willingly aids Chinese government repression should be deeply ashamed. We all know that it’s really corporations that run the world, and these corporations could cut their margins by a few per cent and stand up for values such as freedom of speech, but they won’t, because they don’t care about the little people.

Oh, they’ll throw the people a bone every now and then. They’ll make characters gay, they’ll make their conferences accessible to those who are hard of hearing, they’ll use buzzwords like “diversity” and “inclusion”, they’ll invent company values like “every voice matters” and “lead responsibly”, but when the rubber hits the road and they have to actually stand up and fight for basic human rights at the expense of investor profits, they fall, and they fall hard. Had Blitzchung said “Fuck Trump” on a Blizzard livestream, do you really think he would have received the same punishment? I doubt it. Try saying “Xi Jinping looks like Winnie the Pooh” and see how far you get.

It’s easy for ordinary people to feel that they are powerless. But we can all do something small, and the small gestures from thousands – or millions – of us will add up. I loved Blizzard; up until two days ago I was playing Classic World of Warcraft daily. I’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in its games. However I couldn’t, in good faith, continue giving it a single cent of my money. Its actions and complete disregard for human rights have disgusted me, and the entire community that plays its games.

It’s sad, it’s unfortunate, but I think we should all cancel our WoW subscriptions. Delete Battle.net from your computer, uninstall Hearthstone, delete your account, it doesn’t matter. Stop giving this company money. When you’re cancelling your subscription, mention Hong Kong, mention Blitzchung, condemn Blizzard on every medium you know. Get your friends to cancel their subscriptions, encourage each other to stop playing, find something new. Find a company that hasn’t picked profits over freedom, and give it your money instead.

What Blizzard gains in revenue from China, it must lose from the rest of the world. Gaming is normally a medium used to escape from a harsh world, but sometimes you have to stick to your principles and say “No, Diablo 4 isn’t going to fix this”. The company won’t change unless you do. We have to speak in the only language it knows: money.