What do we know about this guy other than a single message implying he was involved with the toxic culture??? That’s all I saw from him, yet people act like he was gaming Harvey Weinstein. Feel free to point me towards anything else that came out about him.
Sure, it’s bad regardless, but is it really worth all this? Nobody associated the name “Jesse McCree” with this schmuck, and the story of how now-unnamed cowboy got the name was as simple as seeing the name and thinking it sounded like a good cowboy name.
This has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen a video game company do.
Apparently nobody else in the entire world also has the name Jesse McCree and I guess we’re all totally incapable of separating a fictional cyborg cowboy from a real life guy.
Blizzard has absolutely no limit on how dumb every action they do can get.
They wouldn’t seek his permission and tell everyone all about it, if he wasn’t named after the guy. Just because it wasn’t done as a tribute, does not change that it was named after him.
Then again blizz HR was destroying documents (allegedly).
Hard to see it as anything else but “you’re too hot right now so we’re gonna let you go with good severance”.
As you said, nothing else transpired and right now it’s hard to get any truth. I want to believe he was formally accused internally and they somewhat had solid proof and that’s why the OW team is doing this… but it’s really hard to know tbh.
Well, the group he was part of (The Cosby Suite) was named as part of the lawsuit. When the photo came out, there was employees quick to defend the name of an innocent employee who was also in that group text. Another quickly distanced himself. McCree said nothing and was defended by nobody. Blizzard conducted an internal review, and Blizzard fired him and is changing the name. Given that the employees chose not to defend him before it blew up, but were so quick to defend another showing they were aware it was about to, I think that speaks volumes personally.
Technically they didn’t have to. They just did as a courtesy.
Context.
They talked about it when they talked about naming characters in general. They didn’t like make it a point to bring it up and talk about it, they talked about how they named a bunch of other heroes too.
They specifically said that existing media would remain unchanged. Most likely, “Jesse McCree” is an alias and he’ll be going by a different name (like “Joel”, you know, that name that’s already been referenced in game).
He doesn’t just happen to share a name with a bad guy, he was specifically named after the bad guy. If you thought about it for half a second you would’ve realized that, so the only conclusion I can come to is that you don’t actually care if your arguments are good or not. You’re angry and this is an argument that agrees with your position, so you say it.
They deserve to be attacked for this bs. Blizzard is dead, they are just a bunch of untalented diversity hires that care more about political correctness than about the actual game.
They did it because they were naming the character after him. That’s what happens when companies name things after their employees, they seek their permission. They didn’t have to tell that story, they thought it was cool that it was named after their employee. They emphasized it was not to honor him, but the nevertheless thought it was cool that one of their employees had such a great cowboy name, and that they were able to get his permission to use it for their character.
It was named after him, it may not have been done in tribute, but that doesn’t change that it was named after him. To name something after someone is usually done to pay tribute, but not always. I’m named after a TV show character IRL. My parents weren’t trying to pay tribute to the character, they weren’t even big fans of the show. They just thought the name was beautiful.
Maybe because he was closer to the guy who did the deed, or who condoned what he did based on friendship. Lots of variables to follow to be sure. He’s still not named in the lawsuit afaik and it was all done through a sweep of the named one’s facebook.
Remember that blizzard is doing a code blue move and trying to clean their image. Anything that can seem like they’re getting the bad actors is worth it for them.
This is the same blizzard who says they’ve done changes so the lawsuit came “late” as they already implemented measures, but a sexual harasser that’s worth de-naming a staple character for OW is still employed?
They should change only McCree’s first name, Jessie, since that would not remove the iconic name McCree, but still remove the association to the real person. It would still work as a statement.
Changing the last name as well would be a bit weird. Sends the wrong message. We should not feel the need to change the name of a fictional character because they happen to chare ONE name of someone that did something bad. How many names would be left in the world then?
I wonder what they’ll do when they find out there are some really bad people that have the name Joel.
So? It’s still just a name. A name that up until now has been the ONLY name we’ve known the cowboy as. In fact most people don’t even KNOW the real guy and only recognize the fictional gunslinger when they hear “McCree”.
We might as well call the ground he walked on cursed.
