First and foremost, I don’t know exactly how to start this discussion without having to make sure that I 100% agree any action taken against the sexual assault. People like this should be jailed. Other than that, here’s by point:
Changing McCree’s name doesn’t do anything for the game except bring confusion and break immersion (yes that sounds dumb when you think about the context but hear me out)
Look if they didn’t change the name I think legit millions of people wouldn’t even have KNOWN that McCree was named after someone. Hell, I had to specifically LOOK UP why all of this was happening, and if nobody wouldve told me that McCree and the assaulter had something to do with eachother then I and probably many other people wouldn’t have even cared.
I am 100% in favor of whatever comes to the assaulter, jail him for life even, but that doesn’t mean that the entire overwatch community should have to deal with the backlash of a namechange- A namechange that doesnt even remove McCree from the damn game mind you! he is still called McCree in the lore, still McCree in the voicelines, if the goal was to sever ties between the two then good luck, because you made this game with strings attached to everything!
Seperate the game from the people damnit.
I personally think its ridiculous that they put effort into changing the name. Everytime something isnt synced up, people are gonna have to explain why its like this and then the whole story has to be told over and over about the sexual assault over at blizzard.
Bloody hell blizzard you don’t have to throw a wrench in the ALREADY existing mechanics that have been built up over many years.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, you Just had to change his name… to “Cole Cassidy”.
Why.
Why don’t you name him Jimmy Jonathan for god sake, if we are gonna go for names that don’t fit cowboys.
Alright to recap: sexual assault bad, very bad, **** that guy. But specifically changing the ingame name of a character because of something like this is just plain stupid and unhelpful.
Edit: I am open to any feedback/opinions that comes my way, please tell me what you think.