Blizzard Censorship Disputed on Warcraft Forums

Censorship is a hot button in today’s technological society, and it appears that the video game industry is no different, even when it comes to something as simple as posting on an internet forum.

Over on the World of Warcraft forums on Battle.net, a thread has been created relating to a deleted comment by Blizzard, regarding the U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. Forum member Ronaldosouza started the thread, stating: “Why is it that on an American based MMO I can’t talk about our president elect in the slightest? When Obama was in office people weren’t censored for approving of his leadership. Yet the same can not be said once Trump was elected.” Ronaldosouza is referring to a comment made on a different thread, that read: ” “it’s Trump’s America now boy”, which has since been removed.

Straight out of the blocks, member Sanni raised the point that “It’s Blizzards property, they are allowed to censor whatever they want.” This point was reiterated by user Waraila, emphasizing that political comments have no place in a gaming forum: “Because freedom of speech does not apply on a private forum. Not to mention this is a gaming website not a political one.”

The majority of comments appear to side with Blizzard from the get-go, with the consensus among peers that the thread has no place on the Warcraft forums. A separate thread was even referred to by Daemonium, who posted a link to a thread to deter members from posting their political standpoint on the WoW forums, and to save them for other outlets such as Facebook.

At the time of writing this, the discussion continues here. Given the nature of the subject however, it might be only a matter of time before Blizzard take it down.