Blizzard remove “sexy” victory pose from Tracer (Overwatch)

You’ve probably all read about this already but what the hell. A Battle.net forum poster who asked for the “over-the-shoulder” victory pose to be removed from Tracer, citing that it undermines the characters “sillyness” and that it forces Tracer into the role of another “bland female sex symbol” has had their request granted.

User Fipps, went on to say that as a parent he has “a young daughter that everyday when I wake up wants to watch the Recall trailer again. She knows who Tracer is, and as she grows up, she can grow up alongside these characters.”
Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan responded to the poster by saying:

We’ll replace the pose. We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.
Apologies and we’ll continue to try to do better.

This of course led to an outcry of censorship from some gaming communities and has led to a number a satirical video from TotalBiscuit, who mocks the Battle.net user in a short video decrying the archetype of the character Winston and his ripped body.

Notch himself, waded into the mire of posts and chastised Blizzard for giving in. Simply stating that “The solution is to give the male characters the ability to make the same pose, Blizzard, not to cowardly let the outrage bullies win”

Now to go along with the initial post, another user posted a rebuttal (I have snipped the post as the link appears to have been nuked, you can see it by clicking below). Immamookin wrote a long post sounding out her gaming history with Blizzard and how she feels disappointed with the, soon to be in effect, change. She takes aim that the game is aimed at a teen audience and shouldn’t be played by a younger audience whilst also lamenting that Blizzard won’t allow her to be strong and sexy in her character choice.

My thoughts are plainly on the side of Notch, Jeff Kaplan stated that it was a pose that they were not happy with initially. That they already had a new pose as an alternative, if that that is the case then surely they can’t be happy with the pose being performed by other characters as well. Surely they are not trying to damage control. From the image linked in the initial thread, Tracer looked quite cheeky performing the pose with a wry look on her face.

As with most things, expect this to be blown over in a few days…