You are correct. They are a private company, and they don't have to explain themselves. However, they ARE a corporation in a consumer industry and therefore must answer to the consumer in order to continue in this industry.

They could, as a private company, suddenly halt and delete EVERYTHING WoW related, destroy all the servers, and say tough luck. They won't however have the respect of any of the ten million people signed up to play this game which would make future endevors virtually impossible.

Consumer opinion is the only thing that keeps Blizzard in line. Everything they do is to keep as many people happy and paying as possible.

What they did here is ban someone for pointing out what he percieved to be flaws in the system. People have as much a right to be enraged by this as Blizzard does to do it.

Blizzard is not a privately-held company they are a division of Vivendi games which is a publicly traded firm.

Even though they are a publicy traded company (as being part of Vivendi) they still don't have to answer to anyone but Vivendi. They don't have to answer to the consumer.

The consumer can scream and holler and complain all they want, until it starts to hurt Vivendi, nothing will get done. One Huntard on the forum isn't going to hurt Vivendi. So get over it.