Activision Blizzard has been rocked with a lawsuit filed by the state of California accusing the company of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, a toxic workplace, and a variety of other issues. The fallout from this lawsuit has had a profound impact on Activision Blizzard and its games, with Overwatch being no exception. One of the Blizzard developers who allegedly engaged in toxic workplace behavior, former Diablo 4 lead designer Jesse McCree who has since left the company, had been immortalized by having his namesake in Overwatch, with popular Damage hero McCree named after him. However, it seems that will be changing at some point in the near future.
Overwatch has finally addressed the elephant in the room, responding to fan demand to change McCree's name. The team has released a statement saying that it is necessary to change McCree's name to "something that better represents what Overwatch stands for." Blizzard says that it's going to take time to do this name change correctly, but that this will take place as part of a planned story arc that was originally going to start in September. This new story arc has since been delayed to December so Blizzard can integrate McCree's name change into the narrative.
Instead of kickstarting this new Overwatch story arc, Blizzard will be releasing a new Free for All map in September. It's unclear if this is the previously leaked Malevento map, which was reportedly supposed to be added to the game in August but pushed back at the last minute due to the lawsuit, or if it's a completely different map entirely.
To avoid situations like this in future, Blizzard has also said that it will avoid naming in-game characters after real employees. "We know that actions speak louder than words, and we hope to show you our commitment to making Overwatch a better experience in-game and continue to make our team the best it can be," it said in its statement about the impending Jesse McCree name change.
It will be interesting to see how Blizzard changes McCree's name in Overwatch in a way that makes sense with the universe. Perhaps it will be as simple as McCree taking on a codename, or maybe it will be something more drastic. There's been some debate about whether or not Overwatch should kill off heroes, but that could be another way to solve the problem. The McCree character could bite the dust and be replaced by someone with identical abilities, though that could have the unintended consequence of turning McCree into a martyr.
Overwatch fans will find out exactly how Blizzard is going to handle this situation later this year.
Overwatch is out now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.