Blizzard Entertainment Will Be Renaming Other Characters Amid Sexual Harassment Scandal

Earlier this week, Blizzard Entertainment announced that they were renaming the Overwatch character McCree after the employee that the character was named after, Jesse McCree, was fired from the company as part of Activision Blizzard’s efforts to clean house amid the sexual harassment and discrimination scandal that’s gripping the company.

In addition to requiring extra man hours to roll out the changes, it also threw a wrench into the team’s development plans since McCree was supposed to play a key role in an upcoming narrative arc that was planned for release in September. That arc has been delayed to later this year.

Going forward, Blizzard says that they will no longer be naming their characters after real-life employees and will be “more thoughtful and discerning” in using real-world references in their games. Probably a good idea considering how much extra work they need to do, since apparently McCree isn’t the only character that’s going to be renamed, nor is Overwatch the only game that will be purged of anyone connected to the scandal.

According to The Washington Post, Blizzard will also be removing any references to Jesse McCree in World of Warcraft, along with nods to other employees that were also recently terminated from the company, including Jonathan LeCraft and Luis Barriga.

As we mentioned in our earlier report, most players might not even be aware that these characters are named after real-life persons and that these changes are probably aimed at the media to as a show of the efforts that Blizzard is going through to clean up the mess. Hopefully, Price won’t be getting a name change but, as always, we’ll let you know if any other characters are going to get fresh new identities.