Like I said, Accusations or the lack of one is not indicative of one side or another. You have to consider ALL available information and as far as I am concerned there is more than enough. Many walk around doing terrible things and go for a long while (sometimes their entire lives) with any consequences. Often because they hold positions of authority or high social status.
Why do you think California has done a 2-3 year investigation on it? Obviously if an environment does not feel safe enough to talk to anyone in the company the last thing they are likely to do is mention they dislike someone with the influence to make your job a living hell. It’s clear that there were many reports of toxic actions within the company made to the state as they felt it was their only recourse.
Right, so he just happened to be associated with a group of toxic people but was a good guy himself? He wasn’t named in a lawsuit but they felt he should be removed just because of a photo? It just so happens that his name is the one of concern on a fictional character?
I am sorry. I am far less likely to believe that this so happens to be that one in a million chance of worst coincidence ever rather than the far more likely that he was a bad egg amongst other bad eggs and Activision wanting to remove them due to them being the core issue.
I am also not willing to believe that an innocent man would choose to allow his reputation to be smeared to such a degree that he most likely won’t ever be able to find a job in the gaming industry again. Call me crazy but it would take far more money then what blizzard would have to pay in harassment suits for anyone who is truly innocent to just take some money and run.
It further does not add up that Blizzard themselves amidst a lawsuit would perform actions that further the narrative of issues within the company by acting on those reports and/or associations. This would only serve to HURT their position. Not strengthen it.
It just does not add up as behavior of an innocent man. Nor does the circumstances add up to him being an innocent bystander condemned by association.
This is sadly the case in many occasions. You’re not debating on an individual level, you’re fighting a mob and it’s always a loss. Bowing your head down and letting the storm pass is pretty much the only way to do it. Justine Sacco comes to mind, I can’t stress enough how important that TED talk is.
Or, you can see it as them cleaning house to perceptually make people believe that the things pointed out publicly are being solved. As you mentioned it was a long investigation. Actiblizz is settling the lawsuits and no higher ups other than the visible scapegoats are feeling the blunt of their negligence. And that’s kinda telling.
I think some introspection would help. Imagine, for a second, that you’re Jesse Mccree… and one day you wake up and it’s all raining on you. Eventually, as they’re cleaning house, blizzard offers you an unspecified good offer for leaving the project, with the perspective of getting a letter of recommendation. I feel the alternative would be a dangerous path of litigation, uncertainty, etc.
Again, to me the most telling thing is that no management position or HR position lost their job despite literally being the ones that ignored the pleas from the workers. I guess telling them to destroy evidence is kind of a double edged blade if you try to get rid of them later.
PS: You can have “bro” friends /colleagues you like to hang out with and still not know that they’re doing workplace harassment (since you’re from different teams). The implication that guilt by association is a thing also means the OW team knowingly put the name of a bad person on Mccree. You believe that to be the case?
PS: I’m not discrediting your account of things. It is certainly a possibility, but their actual course of action as to who to “let go” feels very transparent to me in terms of damage control. You don’t know the name of the HR person that dismissed the complaints about Afrasiabi, but we do certainly know all the names from the members of the photo. My only complaint is calling someone something very loaded term like sexual harasser when we barely have a hint.
In this thread, people unabashedly refuse to acknowledge that immortalizing someone with problematic behavior is bad, and want to continue to perpetuate it proudly.
To be fair, you also weren’t intentionally and deliberately named after the person who did that stuff.
For example, if my last name was Hitler and my parents deliberately named me Adolf in reference to the actual Hitler, I wouldn’t want to keep my name then. Similar to how this Jesse McCree was named after the real life guy, entirely intentionally.
Your name was coincidental. Theirs was not. Big difference.
I don’t think anyone cares that Jesse McCree shares the name with someone else who was an abuser. If someone had the name Jeffrey Epstein would changing his name change anything? Im sure in that context it wouldn’t as its an entirely different person.
As much as many people would like to see McCree be McCree again it was done for the workers. Which I am sure some have already pointed that out. I still feel like it was a major distraction of the entire problem at Blizzard. It was probably green lit to hide more things originally from the public and had everyone raging, like we are about his “New” name. The fact that we are still arguing about his name means in the end that Blizzard actually won on some level to hide some of the truth away from us.
Yeah but notice in your example your named after Adolf after the fact. McCree was named before scandal meaning it was never in dedication of an abuser and the name itself carries no ill intent. The people who are offended made up the offense out of their own desire to be offended over something that was never offensive. This is ridiculous because then anybody could choose to be offended by things what if I said that my Grandpa died in a war by a sniper and that silentstrike makes me uncomfortable because that’s how a sniper kills and I chose to be offended by your name. Even if you comply with my request then you got multiple people being offended by everything and anything they want and that’s the danger of it
Think of the words offensive and offended it implies that there’s a certain action taken by another that caused the offense but in this case a name cannot do that a name carries no ill intense neither was it created with ill intent the offense comes from themselves.
Regardless of the fact (I personally don’t mind either name), Blizzard as a whole doesn’t want any real life references in their games anymore. They changed multiple real life references in WoW, too. Even if the person had nothing to do with anything at all. They even removed Jeff’s reference from NY in OW2, and he was known to be a great guy.
They stated they don’t believe real life references belong in their games and will strive to keep their games entirely fictional.
Yeah as a consequence of people being offended by name’s since it wasnt there stance before the shenanigans. I don’t know about their game not referencing anything and being entirely fictional though it does reference a lot of major nationalities and real world locations.
You won’t be able to remove literally everything. That’s just physically impossible, but in Blizzard games, they never reference things like real religions either. The closest thing we have to that is Diablo with Heaven and Hell, but even that game doesn’t have any non-fictional religions.
So things like race is more manageable as long as you’re not stereotypical or racist about it. But if real life references can bite you in the butt, why not just play it safe and not do that anymore…? Protects you from any bad PR or potential lawsuits.
Yeah but all you need is for that one person to find something to be offended about and put social pressure on it. For example I could say “is sombra a theif? because she’s mexican?” They did btw give her a rather stereotypical latin fiesty attitude. Then I know Lucio’s pretty much the black guy listening in the beats stereotype. Realistically I’m not mad about these things but somebody could find something if they want to. And this is kind of the same thing as finding a name offensive you could if you want to dig into this game deep enough and find something to be offended at, but allowing those types of things is exactly what i don’t want.
To be fair, Lucio is Brazilian, not a black stereotype. But I get where you’re coming from.
For me personally, I don’t mind either name, but Blizzard knew the backlash they would get. This was an internal decision for their team, not us. I’m personally willing to accept that decision, but not everybody will.
People like you are the only reason why I think he should have his name back. I wouldn’t care if they renamed him to McPickle, but I really think its a bad idea to just make whole names taboo just because ONE guy with the name did something bad.
Would you change your name if I went by “Tamramx” and then burned down an orphanage full of babies and puppies that was ran by the guy who made those cookies that are half covered in chocolate?
So to be black you must be from africa? I don’t think “black” works that way the same way that “white” people can be said to be technically German or technically Russian or technically British but all the term does is just lumped in together because of their skin color and appearance is basically that of a “white” person. In a similar sense you have words like Hispanic which, encompasses Mexican, salvadorians, Brazilians, and Spaniards, Spaniards are also pretty white Spain is right next to Italy which is considered to be “white” people. They’re not really the most solid terms but you know. I’m pretty sure the reasoning you give me of Lucio technically being a Brazilian is exactly what they felt so comfortable making Lucio the black stereotype though lol.
I’m willing to accept the name change I’m just not happy with the reasons they did it because I see it as what you would call a “slippery slope”. The more we allow these things to happen, only allows more of these type of things to happen and more ridiculous.
Where I draw the line is that if object A is to be guilted for offending object B, then object A must have of its own volition initiated some kind of offense with the intention to offend. Another example would be a baby that tries to pronounce a word but but fails to pronounce it correctly and instead says a bad word for an inappropriate word… in that case I would not guilt the baby of saying an inappropriate word because it was never intended to be that way or carried no ill intent. Just like the naming of McCree never carried intent either but was later decided that it should be removed as if we’re guilty of something. I know you could say it’s because it made them uncomfortable but they’re uncomfort is illogical. and I’m not one to propagate illogical discomforts either.
Exactly what information do you have on him that we don’t know? To date no reason was given for his departure so you are talking out of your hat.
Small minds punish video game characters and the players invested on them that have the same name as a real person. This move was a white-knight feel good move for publicity that literally was a slap in the face to reason and everyone who was invested in the lore and just wasted time and resources and literally didn’t change facts of what might have happened.
But I get where you’re coming from.