This company has been exposed for mistreating women in their own workforce but won’t stop marketing itself as some LGBT friendly company. If you can’t even respect women how are you going to really be the most progressive company in this industry. Ok, so Blizzard doesn’t care about LGBT so what? Well, the problem is that Blizzard DOESNT fix their game and instead spends all their time trying to make the next hero come out or changing characters names even though nobody cares. I love this game but Blizzard has done so terribly handling Overwatch that I think the only other company that could have botched it harder was if EA released it.
Also, did anyone actually applaud blizzard for changing McCrees name to Cassidy? It really seemed like some really lame damage control that failed miserably.
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I’m sure there are numerous individuals who do, but the company, as a “whole”, probably just virtue signals because it drums up business, seeing as how LGBT support is broadly at an all time high.
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Agreed, I just think its incredibly disappointing that actions mean nothing nowadays and all you gotta do is just paint your company in rainbow colors and you are applauded. I personally think that companies should be taken to task after promoting themselves like this and fail to show any sort of alignment to these supposed values.
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How about we focus on making a good game instead of pandering to any one specific group for brownie points?
I’m sorry but does it honestly matter?
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Having no opinion on LGBT is pandering to people who like the status quo.
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It’s a good idea to separate corporations from the people who work at said corporations.
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While I agree, I feel like Blizzard actually made it worse by having LGBT representation. People resent Blizzard for virtue signalling and their failure in game balancing has probably done more damage to the LGBT community than if they just didn’t do anything.
Case in point: Soldier76, even people who are LGBT can agree that this was completely virtue signally and was poorly planned. It almost felt similar to McCrees name being changed to Cassidy, a lazy change to appease people complaining at the time.
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I hope nobody actually believes any mega corp cares about such things. It’s just a marketing strategy to them.
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In the words of Knuckles the Echidna
“anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of gender roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of gender equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo.”
When applied to LGBTQ+, by drawing attention to it, and not presenting it as a natural thing, it takes away from it and can be seen as pandering.
I believe that members of Blizzard do support LGBTQ+, but I would argue that most of the “pandering” is being pushed by activation for those juicy brownie points.
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Yes I know, it’s tragic that the people that fall for it the most are those in the LGBT community. I feel as though we are so desperate for acknowledgement that we worship all sorts of attention brought onto us. Unfortunately, it allows companies like Blizzard to make millions more out of something they really don’t care about.
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Yeah but it still can ostensibly do good. It’s like I don’t believe Blizzard genuinely cares about breast cancer but they sure did raise a lot of money for it. 
I think the days of Blizzard being a seperate entity are long gone. Games from activision have game developers working in Blizzard very often and most of the drama from this women workplace scandal was from the WoW and DOTA team.
In my opinion, people are too optimistic about Blizzard. It is part of activision and its not that one is corrupting the other, they are now one entity.
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In theory I suppose they could. It seems like they just collect money from people though.
They probably care more then riot (riot is owned by tencent).
what would you rather have?
Token representation that inspires SOME awareness and at the very least promotes tolerance?
Straight silence that does nothing?
Cause there is no way in heck you’re going to get an entire board to actually care and invest seriously in the cause while also upholding the values presented.
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But that’s completely different, breast cancer awareness is something everyone can agree to. LGBT issues are controversial and bringing awareness to it but showing that you yourself don’t really care is worse than not bringing it up at all. It gives off a message that if Blizzard is just using it to raise capital, its just one huge joke.
Just remember, China plays a major role in game marketing anymore. Don’t be surprised when the pandering suddenly stops. Frankly, the company has no ground to stand on in saying they care after everything that has come out.
Let them make a good game and enough of the tokenization of any group.
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Honestly, I rather they balance their game and have regular updates rather than having all this trivial stuff. Mind you, I am gay and my boyfriend would agree that they have done the LGBT community a disservice by virtue signalling. After the workplane scandal was released it really hit me. HOW can you care about LGBT if you don’t even care about women??? In the end its just a company ran by straight men who’s trying to make a quick buck. It’s just disapointing that they don’t even spend ample time balancing the game.
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The only thing corporations care about is money. There are definitely individuals on the Overwatch team who care about representation (sexuality, race, gender, etc.), but Blizzard as a whole does not care at all. They just do what will earn them more money.
I still believe that things such as the Cassidy name change and Tracer / Soldier being gay were decisions made by people on the OW team as opposed to the Blizzard overlords.
I mean, Blizzard has been shown to completely cave into China. You can catch up on the Hong Kong Hearthstone scandal in 2019.