Hot Take on the Name Change

[Cake-12334]

@Koechophe-11425

a powerful reminder of what Blizzard needs to stop being. They had a staff member

It’s easy to use Blizzard as a whole umbrella term and Overwatch team interchangeably, but it’s important to make the distinction in this case.

Jesse McCree was never on the Overwatch team. He worked on WoW and Diablo 3/4

@Koechophe-11425

And removing the name, to me, feels like an attempt to sweep the problem under the rug rather than dealing with it

They did deal with it, Jesse McCree the employee has been fired

@Koechophe-11425

I worry that removing it is just their way of saying “this never happened, let’s forget about it,”

The OW team is mainly changing McCree’s name not to sweep under the rug, not necessarily for assault victims in the world, but for themselves.

Quoting Dysvalence for truth:

@Dysvalence-1915

It’s for the dev team itself. They don’t want to be working on a character that reminds them of the that used to work down the hall.

They have no financial incentive to change it

A dev confirmed this in the same thread:

@AndyB-11735

It’s a keen observation that this decision was made with the people who work on Overwatch in mind. At the same time, I don’t want to diminish the fact that we also considered how players would respond to this change. We knew that this would be a polarizing choice.

For the last 5+ years we’ve all created a personal connection to the heroes of OW, Cowboy being no exception. It’s understandable that emotions are high, and feelings are strong.

It wasn’t a kneejerk reaction to quickly retcon an unsavory part of the game, they obviously thought long about it and decided its the best choice moving forward

And I agree

Everyone on the forums right now…

Don’t let a name have so much power over you

If the name stays, cool. It’s a cowboy af name and that’s the original reason they used it, not as some “tribute” to honor the Jesse M. employee, but just because it sounded cowboy and cool.

If the name goes, cool. Life goes on, all current voicelines and cinematics will not change.

Everyone’s probably gonna just call him McCree in voicechat anyway. The only thing changing is cutscenes/interactions in OW2