I don’t see the need for it to be removed or locked at all. If someone is personally triggered by these skins, or has some form of PTSD related to police then they should seek therapy. I don’t mean that lightly at all. PTSD is a very serious disorder.
ACAB started in the UK, it is a british phrase. Unfortunately cops aren’t just bad in the US lol.
I like the idea that Blizz is going to unlock things “whenever a controversy dies down.”
Like we’re going to see a forum post with “Hey everyone, now that the racism and police brutality controversy has died down we’ll be unlocking police-related skins for you to enjoy in Overwatch once again.”
i agree with your first statement on police, but the noose thing is pretty out of control, tbh
people are actually being hanged, like, multiple people, this year alone, in the USA
using that knowledge, it’s quite literally used a form of intimidation, and
clearly, it’s an actual threat, as it’s still happening, and it holds a very heavy racist history
this is completely different than someone threatening someone with a gun, and having guns in-game, or whatever other “logic” would be used in comparison
unlike with guns or “police outfits”, white people aren’t being shot at/arrested for simply being white
it’s only poc that are being hanged, literally for nothing more than their skin color, as seen in its history, as well
there’s more than likely valid reasons why there are no icons/sprays resembling a swastika, despite it being Sanskrit in origin and more linked to religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which can be loosely tied to Symmetra and Zenyatta
sometimes, awful things happen, and you just have to accept that you’ll need to agree that, no matter where you come from around the world, you can take part in being on the right side of history by simply saying “this is an atrocity, i agree that there should be no more of this”
religion is questionable at best to link to games, but a noose has no ties to, well, really anything “good” at all, therefore, it stands to reason that it’s even less than just “questionable”
also inb4 “cancel culture” or whatever;
history books exist for a reason, we don’t absolutely need to have reminders in a game for its history to be remembered, and given the literal recent events actually occurring, actively removing it and sparking discussion is perfectly fair and valid, to take a stance against it it still an acceptable choice
also, all of this said, i really don’t even agree that they should have removed the noose to begin with, not unless they came out with a statement along with it, which i still don’t believe they have done yet, unless i missed it…
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Maybe, but it doesn’t mean much.
Some areas have a history of overt corruption, and others have police forces that can’t be bothered to do anything, regardless of how strong or weak organized crime is in the area.
The difference, as far as I can tell, is that the Police skins are clearly not American police where a noose is universally a noose.
The police skins can also not be used for targeted harassment in quite the same way that the noose spray could - people weren’t able to switch to a Police skin mid-game if they saw the enemy was running Doomfist or Baptiste, for example. They could, however, ‘hang’ every Doomfist/Baptiste they killed.
There are, of course, other implications to the noose spray too - an OWL player was just penalised for telling someone to kill themself. It’s not hard to see the noose spray being used in similar ways.
Yes, the noose was a reference to a movie. Unfortunately, people turned it into a tool for harassment. That’s the nature of the internet. It’s far easier for Blizzard to remove the means of harassment than to deal with reports.
As many have said :
“This is why we can’t have nice things”.
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Basically, yes.
i mean… racial lynchings predate the internet…
but, yea, accurate
What if we just use reasonably good judgement, and not put racist stuff in video games? Maybe when you go to have fun you shouldn’t have to deal with that b/s?
I mean yeah, I happen to totally agree, but Overwatch is more of a globalized product where people probably won’t make the correlation between D.va’s and Brigitte’s skin to their origin (Korea and Sweden), which is disappointing, but I think it might be true. Just a wild guess with how uninformed people are, especially regarding the video game they play.
Obviously. I was referring to the spray specifically, not nooses in general.
That’s precisely my opinion. There’s no point deleting it, but there’s also no denying that plenty of people are choosing those skins to make an abhorrent political message. So yeah, locking them for a while is a good idea.
It actually really is. I’m Australian and it’s quite tiresome to see everything on the internet aimed at America. But it’s bigger than that - When something big happens in the US, it gets aired on Australian TV, too. Tell me about my own country please, not one on the other side of the world.
To be fair, most people outside of the US wouldn’t associate it with that. Personally I associated that noose with the common (no longer used, depending on where you are) execution method for criminals, and…a word that starts with ‘S’ that I shan’t mention.
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how is police racist ?
they are people that put their life’s for other peoples safety, every spouse of a police officer is glad every day he comes home safe.
Do you think a country like america with a murder rate of 5/1 lakh be non policed.
There are bad eggs every where and when they are in positions of power it results in horrible things like it happened now, that doesnt mean the whole lot of them become a symbol of racism.
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Some people believe in the whole “silence is violence” sentiment. Personally I consider it ridiculous, but it’s a justification to their viewpoint nonetheless.
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Blizzard themselves opened this topic and made removing the police skins a possible ask when they removed the noose spray. If something is offensive to a small group of people then it can now be demanded to be removed.
A lot of people were upset during the Hong Kong riots because of Brigitte’s skin and wanted it removed, however Blizzard never did anything. I can’t imagine they would change their minds with this situation.
Well we can’t all be Patrick now can we?
I mean, if we want to XD
I’m not saying they ever will because it’d be ridiculous for them to do so. As an American who hates the police and having to see officers unjustly kill, beat, taze, pepper spray, and all around physically abuse people with no punishment every single day, police piss me off to a point I can’t even describe. As someone who has had multiple guns pointed at their head over a tail light not working and an officer mispelling my name when checking their system. I get the shakes and am extremely nervous around any police officer I see IRL. That being said I’d never support the police cosmetics being removed from the game. That’d just be ridiculous and doesn’t help the actual problem in anyway whatsoever. Which is why I was against the removal of the noose spray. It set the tone to cause anyone who is offended by anything in the game to demand said thing to be removed. Again, as someone who has been yelled at with racial slurs while walking with a group of biracial friends, and has experienced racism too many times to count, especially by the police, the noose was an absolute non issue and did nothing to help the problem of racism and bigotry. Me and my best friend (who is one of the biracial kids who has slurs constantly yelled at him) would always use the noose spray because he is a McCree main and I’m a mercy main and he would always hang my cute spray. It was a fun way to interact with the sprays, and having it removed did nothing for the issues he actually has to face in life. To get back to my point, removing a cosmetic has now been acceptable if a group of people are offended by it for any reason, no matter it’s original purpose, no matter how small the number of players who abuse it, no matter how much of a non issue it is, Blizzard has now made it accepted to demand things to be removed. I’d say get used to the conversation and the demands because they are now going to be around forever
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