https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191030/13430743293/blizzard-loses-first-sponsor-due-to-stance-hong-kong-speech.shtml

Just a quick update on Blizzard and the ongoing backlash against the company over its attempts to muzzle its eSports competitors from making "political" comments about "politics", which mostly means not pissing off the laughably thin-skinned Chinese government over the fact that Hong Kong exists. It started when the company yoinked away prize money and issued a 1 year ban to a Hearthstone player, continued as it then issued more bans, then got weird when it decided to try to appease the backlashing public by halving that original ban, all of which led to basically everyone other than Beijing remarking on how totally shitty Blizzard is.

There has been a sense thus far that Blizzard believed it could lighten its punishments and run out the clock on the backlash, as the public moved on to whatever the next outrage would be. How is that going? Pretty fucking terribly, given that Blizzard just lost its first corporate sponsor due to its anti-speech actions.