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Pressure on Blizzard (and other companies and institutions in cases like) to act before guilt has been established comes on the back of two things :
- Public awareness increase at the failure to get convictions in criminal courts for abuse and rape. They are embarassingly low, in nearly all Western countries, where we actually consider ourselves ahead of the global curve on the issue. Our legal systems are rightly founded on a principle of assumed innocence before proven guillt. But proving guilt in these kind of cases is notoriously difficult. Conviction rates fluctuate between values as low as 1 to 5%. This has caused people (largely women) to lose faith in the legal systems, which has lead to...
- Social media and activist pressures, and mob like behaviour. It is the inevitable outcome of a judicial system failing it's people.
It is not an easy problem to solve, but fundamentally, conviction rates must increase to appease the masses, restore faith and silence the cries of inherent patriarchy.
As for Blizzard and Zalae - they should have waited but, due to my second point, it is inevitable they will not, Zalae has very little value to them relative to what they might lose otherwise.
Yeah, pretty funny you can crap on zalae all you want on a forum, but suggest the accuser is lying out of spite and the mods could go after you. Seems fair in a yet unresolved case
This thread is quite amazing. I'm not sure if I should be surprised or proud of everyone participating, able to hold a fairly civilized discussion of the events at hand... whereas threads about the actual card game that this site was designed for often boil down to flaming and childish whining without any constructive feedback.
Regardless, it seems like Blizzard has a right to do what they did, even if it feels wrong. I mean, saying someone did something bad, and then punishing that person before it's proven to be true just doesn't seem right at all. But it must be the correct move for Blizzard, so they will do it.
Same as how they choose to monetize Hearthstone. Some people complain, some people say they are greedy, but it's their right to do it however they want for their benefit.
As the audience that is effected by all of these actions, we simply need to decide whether or not we will continue to support the company that makes these decisions.
Seeing as we're all still here after previous fiascos, I guess I already know the answer to that.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the allegations are true. Zalae was an asshole to his viewers and people near him. He was toxic af. I personally feel like this is karma coming back to bite him in the ass.
I don’t know where you are getting the figure for convictions between 1-5% but everything I am finding has it between 40-60% on the Bureau of Justice Website. Based on my own experience, the difficulty the state has in proving these cases often comes down to a victim’s willingness to participate. You can read that however you want (I.e., Vic doesn’t testify because the allegations are false or fears retaliation or changes their mind because they don’t want to see the Defendant prosecuted despite the allegations being true or is embarrassed or scared about what a jury would think) Domestic Violence is a weird and scary thing for these reasons. I believe public discourse on the topic has more to do with raising awareness about these issues and less to do with virtue signaling or some Feminist attack on patriarchy.
Secondly, I think Blizzard did wait a long time. These allegations came to light in January, they waited until the day before the tournament to announce their decision. They’re a game company, I don’t exactly expect them to investigate in the traditional sense. Their not suspending him immediately is a sign that they aren’t judging him before all facts come to light. But there is simply no way an entertainment company in 2021 is going to take the risk that they either are seen as endorsing or supporting an abuser or allowing their event to be overshadowed by his allegations.
It's an understandable reaction given that Blizzard and HS have their own image to protect (tarnished enough as it is).
The allegations aren't new, either. The way I see it, if they were "just" allegations, Zalae has had time to speak about it. Blizzard has taken time to do their own internal review and this is the decision they came to.
Forgive for using an English rather than US source, but here.
1.7%
"New Home Office statistics suggest the alleged perpetrators of more than 98 per cent of rapes reported to the police are allowed to go free."
Pretty awful thing to get schadenfreude over, evaluate yourself
you for real now?
I'm not saying this to attack any particular poster, but in order to try to move the conversation forward, a couple of things really need to be settled.
1. We all have the right to do a myriad of things that morally, societally, psychologically, any number of other "ally"s we shouldn't do. I see zero posters arguing Blizzard doesn't have a right to suspend Zalae. The discussion is at LEAST focused on whether it's a good thing to do in a societal sense, and in my case, focused on much larger ramifications in other areas of life. Spamming the response that Blizzard has the right to do this is just repeating a point no one is arguing.
2. On the subject of conviction rates, I don't want to try to go into assault as a whole because there's too many different types and the definitions vary slightly from state to state, but in terms of rape allegations, approximately 3% of charges filed with authorities result in a felony conviction. Approximately 2-3% depending on your standard of proof result in a finding of fact that the accuser made knowingly false accusations. Therefore, 94-95% of all rape allegations end in no conviction, which encompasses a large amount of scenarios including never making it to court, dropped charges, and "not guilty" verdicts.
Sourcing for all of that is most readily available in the articles written in conservative press to refute certain claims made about the Kavanaugh accusers and the statistical likelihood that a woman is telling the truth when these sorts of accusations are made. A lot of folks who were against Kavanaugh used the statistic about only 2-3% of allegations being "proven" false to suggest that 97-98% of allegations are true, when in reality, the huge majority of accusations are neither proven nor disproven.
Helpful Clarification on Forbidden Topics for Hearthstone Forums:
Enjoying Americans winning in the Olympics is forbidden because it is political. A 14 plus page discussion of state-sponsored lawsuits against a multi-national corporation based on harassment, discrimination, and wrongful death allegations is apparently not political enough to raise an issue.
I mean he isn’t alleged to have raped her, he is alleged to have grabbed her and attempted to smother her. Where I practice, that would be Assault in the Second Degree. I don’t know what rape numbers have to do with anything.
you keep bringing up Kavanaugh as if that’s more relevant than discussing Hearthstone Esports suspend[ing] Zalae which is literally the title of this thread. And while I would acknowledge the claims against the Justice are meant to highlight an example of cancel culture and compare it to Zalae’s situation, I don’t even think Kavanaugh’s would be considered an outrageous example—rape in most states has a long statute of limitations, it’s a serious and violent allegation that deserves to be investigated. Maybe more troubling examples of cancel culture could be found in instances where a person used a racial slur in their youth or went to a racist party and are now being cancelled years later when presumably they’ve outgrown that sort of behavior. But I digress—the topic here is a company’s decision to suspend a player for assaulting someone.
Again, I'd be using UK numbers rather US, but the reason abuse and assault numbers often get bundled with rape is they are both generally highlighted in relation to women and pitifully low conviction rates. I imagine the US justice system is much the same.
The implication is that the numbers are so low, that even the most staunch mysogynist would accept that, despite the variances you get from case to case, false accusations, dropped charges, etc that huge numbers of women (and likely huge majority compared to actual convictions) are being failed by the justice system. Women's rights activists would also point out that however many false accusations and such there are, these are vastly outweighed by the number of women who chose not to press charges in these circumstances, for fear of the system failing them, which arguably drops the % to truly abysmal sub-1% levels.
This creates the atmosphere in which companies have to be proactive in cases such as this Zalae's, and it's bad for everyone.
I'm not 100% sure of how everything has played out or how the victim has proceeded with her claim but I feel that if someone has feelings these strong about their abuser they should first make a police report. That also means publicly shaming or revealing all details would damage her claims as they have not been through due process. If she made those claims online and changed any part of her story she would lose, not very smart on her behalf. She also claimed that she didn't want to affect his career but that is exactly what she did, there are many ways to deal with this before doing what she did. Not saying he's innocent but I'm getting the sense that she's a scorned woman. There's a difference between making something known (after due process) and enlightening the public or her fans after he has been Convicted or with small details that will later be revealed. Whether he is guilty or innocent I believe she has shown her true colours, she's obviously not innocent herself. If he's convicted.....see you later bud, if not his career and public image is still damaged. Not to mention she highlighted parts of their sex life, what she said was not even close to relevant to anything related to this. I don't want to minimize the effect of any domestic abuse or the seriousness but she's not making a good case in my eyes based on the way she's handling this.
This, we do seem to be moving further and further away from actually proving somebody is guilty of an accusation.
Every action should be taken to investigate an allegation such as this and any potential victim should be supported in doing so.
But, and its a big but, supporting an accusor and investigating and somebody being found to have committed the accused are not mutually exclusive.
We had an incident in the UK with two actors from a soap, both accused of being inappropriate with children. They were suspended on full pay and retained the support of the company until the legal process had taken place. They were cleared on all charges and returned to working on the show.
The problem with immediately treating an accused as though they are guilty is it actively encourages others to make false accusations. Regardless of the validity of the original claim and this is why these things shouldn't just be public discourse.
In fairness to Blizzard, they haven't black listed him (that I know of) and I understand them looking to avoid what could be a very public circus if he was competing at an Esport event.
I don't think it's helpful to discuss specific cases in a public forum, none of us will have anything close to enohfh information to make any sort of judgement of either individual but I can already imagine both parties being subjected to abuse and hounding.
I hope she gets appropriate support in ensuring this is investigated and if there's evidence of the behaviour described, then he is dealt with appropriately. At the same time, I'd hope he is given the benefit of disputing what she's said (if he even chooses to do so).
As heartbreaking as these things can be to read, I feel an awful lot of damage can be done before any facts have been determined at all and this isn't helpful what so ever.
I don't actually feel like the general public can be trusted to act rationally with these types of cases and don't feel they should really be discussed specifically, at least not at this stage.
I have a son and a daughter and often consider the different dynamics either could find themselves struggling with in a situation like this and all I would hope in that situation is that privacy was respected and people are allowed to do their jobs to try and determine what happened.
Might help to define terms on this sort of thing. This could mean different things to different people.
Seems so he said she said. Both sides saying the same with one being louder than the other.
Also IMO Zalae was quite toxic and mean to many people in the last year of streaming which is why I personally quit watching him regularly before he got with this accuser. The few times I did peak into his streams and saw these two together they sure seemed quite odd and were quite physical (touching each other frequently/etc.).
Which is awful but I haven't seen anybody raise a good way of solving this.
Reducing the bar regarding the standard of evidence is not a solution. It isn't even an option in my opinion.
arrested and prosecuted? fof being an asshole? give me break. ex gf will say and do anything to get back at their ex. I read here allegations. He asked for sex everyday, and they had a fight one nite, he told her to stop, held her down in bed for a second. then broke it off next day;.
doesnt sound like a crime to me at all.
I had the same thought. It seems fine to shit on Zalae in this discussion, despite any proof that he has committed any wrongdoing. Not a cross word can be said of the accuser, though. Feels like white knight posturing for the mob, "We shall not stand for victim blaming, and there can obviously be only one victim here!"
Sounds an awful lot like they were in a verbal argument and she hit him twice. At which point he subdued her from hitting him again. After a night sleeping on it he told her to leave because she was physically abusive. Words aren't violence. Violence is violence. What a jerk she is. Also sounds jealous. This is an overstep from hearthstone esports. You're not a court of law.