I steered clear when the initial news drop wasn't followed with any concrete allegations. Glad I didn't because this is even more hilarious. What the fuck are they doing taking this to court? Might actually peer into this now that I have a handle on exactly how ridiculous this is.
To anyone: any recommendations for where to start regarding sources?
WoW thread should have plenty, might be more in others. don't think there was a dedicated thread for it.
as for concrete allegations, it was kicked off by a 2 year investigation by some department in california leading to a lawsuit, can't get any more concrete than that (well, it's california, that's why you got shit like "driven to suicide" after a break up and sex toys being brought to a company retreat and other nonsense).
after that it turned into another #metoo shitstorm where retards couldn't stop trying to out-victimize each other as "proof" how bad blizzard is; the performance review thing is based on a twitter post, where when told "to react less emotional" had her still "literally shaking" months later because the memory was so so bad.
Great, another Blizzard dumping ground to swim through. For a bunch of rapists, sexists, and right-wing gun-slinging mansplainers, Blizzard sure know how to move around without a pair.
well, blizzard has been shit for years, even when "the bad people" were still in charge and everyone was sucking their cock because of OW. but remember they are the reason blizzard is bad now...
WHY are those damn zomnics so hard to hit? They are slow. Their path is predictable. I've played this game for years why can't I hit the raggedy-ass robots?
WHY are those damn zomnics so hard to hit? They are slow. Their path is predictable. I've played this game for years why can't I hit the raggedy-ass robots?
I really do hate how thinly veiled this whole thing is about “doing better” as a company. As if renaming a character is somehow doing such a big service to society.
I really do hate how thinly veiled this whole thing is about “doing better” as a company. As if renaming a character is somehow doing such a big service to society.
Cole Cassidy works for a hero the same way Lena Oxton does. It's the real name no one in-game or in casual fan discussion ever uses because it is a lame, normal-sounding name for a lame, normal-sounding person. Not an outlaw cowboy with a robot arm and an aggressively old Western 'thang' going on in the year 2XXX.
The fact these hacks didn't give him a new code name is hilarious when this is explained in their already pitiful 'lore dump' as McCree no longer running from his past and embracing who he was. Real smart letting everyone know your birth name so they can connect even more of your life with the crimes and atrocities you committed in the year of our lord 'Overwatch is shit and the whole world hates us' + however many years it took Winston to make a phone call.
They didn't even look at their own playbook and give him the code name "Deadeye" or even "Peacekeeper". And it took them months to come up with this and that fart of a tweet. Beautiful.
"To make this new Overwatch better - to make things right - he had to be honest with his team and himself."
1. Everyone knowing your birth name means shit when half the old squad have faked a death to go shoot things without their real identities attached to it. Ana - arguably the most straight and narrow in the dead (but alive!) tango - played dead and cut contact with her fucking daughter and presumably the father of her child. Along with all of her friends and colleagues, who she appeared to be on good terms with. Other people from Overwatch have done far, far worse and McCree, even on the mission that seemed to have fucked it all up, did good. He's hilariously the least problematic bastard on this team, what the actual fuck and why would this be his reasoning.
2. Other reasons for him to change his name: instead of accepting the past he seemingly wanted to be free from and condemn, how about changing your name to DETACH from the person you used to be and embrace the person you have become? Signal his fucking growth. It being hilariously hokey would work even better in this context. "Who names their kid Cole?"
3. No one knowing this up to this point is fucking hilarious to me but also proves that no one gives a shit. Every other person on what seems to be current OW weren't in Blackwatch and yet Winston still invited this fucker over for tea and blood-pits. No one cares what you did, McCree. In their eyes he's far more than his past and making this the reasoning behind the name change in-verse is lazy and screams "yeah, nah, this is purely for the clout and we aren't even gonna TRY to make this work with our nothing lore and story." (No one was surprised. Just continuously disappointed.)
4. Retroactively butt fucks the name into ultra relevance story-wise because this implies Jesse actively chose his name rather than it being a name he happened to get at birth. You have now made this a plot point. You must now mention Jesse McCree in order to explain why he is now Cole Cassidy because it was literally the moniker Jesse chose for himself. Jesse McCree is fucking canon. They could have changed it and ignored Jesse ever being his name but nope, double-down while pussying out. Only Blizzard and woke creators in current year could pull off this magical act of stupidity. This took MONTHS by the way.
5. "Making things right" would naturally consistent of proper action to try and repent for, rectify, or find out why everything went wrong. Like finding out what the fuck happened to Reaper and what lured him to the Dark Side, holding Mercy accountable and examining what makes her differ from Moira in terms of her research pushing him into ghost-world, figuring out why Mercy fiddling with Genji so extensively caused no issue but Reaper was beyond saving, investigating Moira and her involvement. Or, I don't know, TAKING DOWN THE ORGANIZATION AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE CURRENT CHAOS AND (which ever so conveniently) HAPPENS TO BE INVOLVED IN THE DOWNFALL OF OVERWATCH AS A WHOLE. Oh, and taking the Deadlock gang to task.
But why do any of that when you can just change a name and say change has been made for the better, huh? Huhhhhh?
Every character on their roster has a great call out name. With the exception of Wrecking Ball (with Hammond actually working better because it's one goddamn word and calling a hamster by such a relatively normal name is fun, also Hammond/hamster), the team has nailed it in this department every single time. Every name matches the personality, play style, or overall vibe of the character. It's why these names have stuck, even more milquetoast names like Brig, Ashe and Baptiste.
How did you fuckers kick drop back around to COLE? Best part: still McCree on the official website. Everything changes on the 26th, yada yada, but if a name change was so groundbreaking and important you would think they'd hurry things along after weeks of brainstorming this amazing American Male Name Generator worthy wonder.
P.S.: Lena Dunham is a creep and I would not have sex with her. When's Tracer's name changing, Blizz? P.P.S.: The perpetuation and acceptance of violence against women in lesbian marriages pains me, Blizzard. W*dowmaker change when? P.ENIS: D.Va is a term licensed exclusively to STRONG BLACK WOMEN (please see Beyonce's song 'Diva' for in-depth history of the terminology and its meaning and power in the black community). When is her name being changed?
PSSJFIHSF: REAPER IS A LETTER AWAY FROM RAPER BLIZZARD I THOUGHT YOU CARED
So Blizzard is attempting to justify the name change in-fiction as McCree being a temporary outlaw identity now being discarded, but they're obviously never going to utter the name Jesse McCree ever again and continue to retroactively scrub out as many previous references as possible, This is despite the new backstory maintaining that the McCree identify existed for a significant part of the character's life, meaning that (a) there still ought to be some characters who'd call him McCree in-game, and (b) the pitiful story content, comprised largely of events prior to the game itself, ought to still have times in which the character himself was going by McCree.
This leaves me with several questions:
Since I imagine there's a lot of Overwatch players who are still going to use the name McCree for at least a while, similar to how WC3 DotA identities stuck for some time despite name changes into DOTA 2 (e.g., Furion), will Blizzard eventually punish them for doing so in-game and on official community sites?
It seems that McCree/Hanzo is by far the most popular Overwatch pairing on fanfiction websites. Will (largely female) fanfic writers abide by the name change henceforth? Will they go back to "correct" their previous work? What will happen to the by-character organization, filter, and search tags of fanfic websites in light of this name change?
What's going to happen to the existing McCree merch? Though I could be wrong, I don't imagine it being a simple task for Blizzard to call up Good Smile Company and order that all the printed materials for the McCree Nendoroid and Figma (not to mention GSC's own cataloging) henceforth replace McCree with Cassidy.
Are there any hard facts to the circumstances surrounding the real-life Jesse McCree and the reason why he was fired from Blizzard, or is everyone just running away with the assumption that he's a super rapist?
Since I imagine there's a lot of Overwatch players who are still going to use the name McCree for at least a while, similar to how WC3 DotA identities stuck for some time despite name changes into DOTA 2 (e.g., Furion), will Blizzard eventually punish them for doing so in-game and on official community sites?
It seems that McCree/Hanzo is by far the most popular Overwatch pairing on fanfiction websites. Will (largely female) fanfic writers abide by the name change henceforth? Will they go back to "correct" their previous work? What will happen to the by-character organization, filter, and search tags of fanfic websites in light of this name change?
What's going to happen to the existing McCree merch? Though I could be wrong, I don't imagine it being a simple task for Blizzard to call up Good Smile Company and order that all the printed materials for the McCree Nendoroid and Figma (not to mention GSC's own cataloging) henceforth replace McCree with Cassidy.
Are there any hard facts to the circumstances surrounding the real-life Jesse McCree and the reason why he was fired from Blizzard, or is everyone just running away with the assumption that he's a super rapist?
1. Official forums and sub-reddits will be actively scrubbed for a while. In game, McCree might get censored in chat and the name won't be available for use as a battle tag. Anyone who has played this game for longer than not at all will be calling him McCree for a while, if not indefinitely (as is the case with Wrecking Ball/Hammond). Habit, 'edgy humor', and/or plain refusal to roll over and take it will keep the name alive. That and over six years of history, search results, merchandise and content the company has no control over.
2. The wise will leave it be because they know they were writing about McCree, the fictional cowboy. The stupid will, at most, private or delete their stories or do a quick mass word changes on the work they deem worthwhile, or the most popular. The mega brains will continue using the name for the in-universe reasons you stated because they care more about the characters in Overwatch (for 1k words of smut, no less) than anyone at Blizzard. As far as I'm aware, sites like AO3 would simply keep or replace the tags with redirects or something to that effect. Goodnight, McHanzo. Rise, ColeZo. HanSsidy. CaZo. HaCassidy.
3. I like to imagine they're gonna make those items slightly less visible (if they do anything about them at all), sell the fuck outta that shit, grab the money and start pushing Cole after the name change goes live. This isn't actually something so important it should impact their bottom-line when it doesn't have to. They aren't replacing shit.
4. If there were, people wouldn't still be calling him McCree and this name change would have happened much quicker. Seems like it's the famed 'allegations of harassment and abuse' thus far.
They had this long to come up with an name and the best they came up with was "Cole Cassidy". Holy fuck, what was that pitch meeting like.
"Hey just pull up the wikipedia for 'Famous Gunslingers' and steal a name. Cole Younger? Butch Cassidy, boom done."
"We can't just steal a name, we don't need more controversy"
"Change it up a bit, how about Cole Cassidy?"
"Got it - no one will ever know!"
Completely lazy, phoned in, and terrible. They really can't get shit right over there at Blizzard.
