Game Politics - when good turns to blind

In case you don't know it already, gamepolitics.com is a great website for anything remotely bringing gaming into the political world (and vice versa). It's brought me numerous stories for SK over the years - especially the WoW vs China debacle - and a great deal more that don't really come under the esports banner.

Hell, even the comments are intelligent and readable from time-to-time and we all know how rare that is on the intrawebz.

However, sometimes the commentators' zealousness goes a little too far. Anyone with even the slightest bit of self-awareness has to admit that gamers aren't always right and that sometimes their critics are correct. I can understand the defensiveness in a world where ignorant politicians and officials use games as a scapegoat, but once in a while, rarely, the system is correct.

But what makes this particularly relevant now? Well in the last few of days, i've read a couple of stories about Blizzard taking on hackers in SC2. The majority of people reading this (can you have a majority when there's only two people?) would see this as blatantly being a good thing. Yet some comments on the story in question were defending hackers, claiming they had a right to edit the single player campaign and play the way they wanted.

Now, firstly, these people are obviously from a whole different world of gaming to you and i. I realise that a lot of people who play Blizzard games couldn't care less about online play, let alone esports, but i assumed - wrongly, it seems - that they were at least aware of it. The issue of hacking in single player is completely moot since Blizzard includes their own cheats in just about every game they make. Clearly, the bannings and legal action are about people who make maphacks and the like for online play. How you can defend people who are ruining the game for 90+% of the community is beyond me.

It's simply a case of ignorantly defending people who are "sticking it to the man." I'm fully aware of the dislike for the new Activision version of Blizzard, but ruining a fantastic game is not the way to make that dislike known and defending the people who do it is nothing short of moronic.

Good job, Blizzard - keep up the good work!