When Blizzard suspended professional Hearthstone player, Blitzchung, for expressing his support for Hong Kong on a very public platform - the Hearthstone Grandmasters stream - one thing it probably didn't account for was the outpouring of support and the furore that followed. Long-time players threatened to boycott Blizzard games. Employees staged walkouts with umbrellas, a key symbol of resistance in the Hong Kong protest. United States senators, Ron Wyden and Marco Rubio, as well as representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mike Gallagher and Tom Malinowski, signed a letter to Blizzard, requesting the ban be fully reversed. And in Hong Kong, an anonymous group of game developers witnessed the far-reaching impact of his actions and was inspired to make a game about being at the frontline of the protests against the barrage of attacks by the riot police. The result was the protest game, Liberate Hong Kong.
"The initial idea [behind] this game is the incident of Blizzard. Blitzchung Ng just said eight words, [and] it created a large influence over the world," one member of the team, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from the authorities, told Eurogamer. "We want to replicate this effect to promote the protest in Hong Kong."
And it worked. Liberate Hong Kong was covered extensively in international media, from the BBC to Bloomberg, which helped draw widespread condemnation for the Hong Kong police's brutality against protesters.