In Blizzard's hero-shooter Overwatch, there is a character called McCree, named after one of their developers. But that individual has been personally accused in an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit. So McCree, the character's name, is changing, and here's all the information we know so far on what it could become.
For anyone that keeps their ear to the ground on gaming, this won't be surprising. If you hadn't caught the news, though – Blizzard have been accused of encouraging a toxic work culture and tolerating numerous cases of sexual harassment. Apparently the male staff were promoted ahead of female employees and would often harass them at work while 'cubicle crawling'. More harrowingly still, there was a 'Cosby Suite' at Blizzcon – but for the details on this case we advise you to check out this article.
But where does that leave their games? Well, one major issue is that Blizzard had a tendency to honor devs by putting them in games via characters that honored the real-life counterparts. Now, a lot of the real-life counterparts have been accused of such heinous crimes, that the in-game characters need to be addressed...
Why Are They Changing McCree's Name?
Blizzard are currently the named defendants in a lawsuit filed by California's Department of Fair Employment & Housing, and a certain developer - who McCree is named after – is allegedly guilty of numerous cases of sexual harassment. For obvious reasons, they can't have someone like that honored in the game, so they're changing his name.
As well-intentioned as the move might be, many fans were left agreeing with Tweets like these:
Renaming Mccree doesn't matter either way for me, although I don't feel like it's necessaryStatement gives a virtue signal vibe thoOne good thing to come out of this is the removal of in-game chars named after devs/real peopleHurts immersion and seems narcissistic https://t.co/rzDqJucctN
— Zack (@Asmongold) August 27, 2021
It does feel like too little too late, but then I think it would have been more controversial to keep the accused's name in the game entirely unchanged. So they really can't win here.
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What Will McCree's New Name Be?
We do not yet know and Blizzard have been clear that this is a big character, and they won't jump to commit to a new name unless it really fits. As they outlined in this statement:
A message from the Overwatch team. pic.twitter.com/2W3AV7Pv6X
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 26, 2021
But maybe they'll announce it alongside Overwatch 2 – they were talking recently about reworking McCree's mechanics anyway, so this could be the perfect opportunity to commit to a whole reimagining of the character.
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