James Ferguson, CEO of Immutable, the creators of Gods Unchained, talks about how the video game recently doubled its number of users. In early October, after a winner of a Hearthstone tournament said, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!” in an interview, had his winnings revoked and was banned from the game for a year, Gods Unchained offered to pay the player, Blitzchung, the amount of his winnings, plus invited him to play in its first tournament next year. Ferguson describes what happened next, ranging from a DDOS attack on Immutable’s servers to some American University students making a similar pro-Hong Kong message, getting banned by Blizzard and switching to Gods Unchained. He talks about the benefits of decentralization and how the incident has gotten more true gamers (not crypto enthusiasts) interested in Gods Unchained.

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Episode links: 

Immutable: https://immutable.com

James Ferguson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesanthonyferguson/

Gods Unchained: https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained

Blitzchung: https://twitter.com/blitzchungHS

Quote from interview: https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1181065339230130181?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1181442535962632193&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fnews%2Fblizzard-pulls-blitzchung-from-hearthstone-esports-tournament-over-support-for-hong-kong-protests%2F

Article summarizing what happened with Blizzard, Blitzchung and Gods Unchained: https://www.cnet.com/news/blizzard-pulls-blitzchung-from-hearthstone-esports-tournament-over-support-for-hong-kong-protests/

More on the ensuing controversy: https://esportsobserver.com/blizzard-criticism-hong-kong/

Gods Unchained tweet offering Blitzchung payment for his lost winnings and a ticket to its $500k tournament: https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1181487505180258304?s=20

Blizzard subreddit set to private after Blitzchung was banned and stripped of his winnings: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-08-blizzard-punishes-hearthstone-pro-for-voicing-hong-kong-support

Now open Blizzard subreddit still awash in pro-Hong Kong memes: https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/

DDOS attack on Gods Unchained: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-10-09-blizzard-backlash-escalates-following-hong-kong-supporter-ban https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/sydney-startup-under-fire-online-for-supporting-pro-hong-kong-protest-gamer-20191009-p52z2g.html https://decrypt.co/10154/coinbase-backed-gods-unchained-cyberattacks-chinese-censorship

American University students who protested Blizzard also banned, now playing Gods Unchained: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3akzz/three-college-hearthstone-protesters-banned-for-six-months

Gods Unchained also offered donations to Electronic Frontier Foundation per viewer watching Gods Unchained on Twitch: https://twitter.com/GodsUnchained/status/1182589990850584576

Blizzard allegedly preventing people from deleting their accounts by deactivating four methods of authentication: https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/10/gods-unchained-hit-with-cyber-attacks-while-mei-becomes-mascot-of-free-hong-kong-movement/94841/

Why Ethereum: https://hackernoon.com/the-blockchain-gaming-revolution-why-ethereum-will-revolutionise-a-100-billion-dollar-market-148badaecb2a

Chris Clay, previously of Magic the Gathering, joins Gods Unchained: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurenorsini/2019/08/08/magic-the-gathering-executive-leaves-for-blockchain-based-gods-unchained/#7557a9b8419f

Weekly News Recap:

To see the links in this week’s news recap, go to https://unchainedpodcast.com/congress-in-the-news-and-on-the-pod/