Yesterday, we reported on Blizzard’s announcement that it’ll be changing the name of Overwatch’s character McCree, who was named after Jesse McCree, one of the developers removed from the studio following the uproar generated by the Activision-Blizzard sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit and scandal. As we noted, the change will require a change in development plans with a new arc and has prompted Blizzard to say it will avoid naming characters after real people in the future.
But McCree isn’t the only character getting a namelift, and the Overwatch toon wasn’t the only one that bore his name. According to The Washington Post (yes really), Blizzard is removing references to McCree in World of Warcraft as well, along with nods to Luis Barriga and Jonathan LeCraft, all of whom exited the company this month, ostensibly for their role in the scandal. References to Alex Afrasiabi, who was mentioned by name in the lawsuit, were of course pulled not long after the suit went public. The news comes unofficially by way of unnamed sources within the company, so we wouldn’t be surprised if the formal announcement is made soon – Friday afternoon would be a good bet.
If you aren’t a hardcore World of Warcraft player, you might not have even realized that some of these characters were inspired by real people at all, let alone by these specific ousted developers; Icy Veins has a solid list:
“Aside from the obvious Mac’Aree city/ruins on Argus, the characters mentioned would be Jesseriah McCree, Jessup McCree, Marshal McCree, Jenny McCree and Jessera of Mac’Aree for Jesse McCree, while Crafticus Mindbender, Torturer LeCraft and Jonathan Le Karf might be the ones related to Jonathan LeCraft, and at least Senior Scrivener Barriga for Luis Barriga.”
Further reading:
