Blizzard is renaming Overwatch’s McCree

Overwatch’s rootin’ tootin’ cowboy who does the shootin’, Jesse McCree, is getting renamed following the Activision Blizzard harassment lawsuit. 

With Overwatch’s character being named after the former Blizzard employee Jesse McCree, who was the lead designer on Diablo 4, Overwatch has been in a difficult position since the real-life McCree left Blizzard following the recent lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. 

As a result, Blizzard has announced that they’ll be changing the Overwatch characters name, writing on Twitter to say that “as we continue to discuss how we best live up to our values and to demonstrate our commitment to creating a game world that reflects them, we believe it’s necessary to change the name of the hero currently known as McCree to something that better represents what Overwatch stands for.”

“We realise that any change to such a well-loved and central hero in the game’s fiction will take time to roll out correctly, and we’ll share updates as this work progresses,” the message from The Overwatch Team continued.

McCree was planned to be a key part of a narrative arc due to kick off in September, which would feature a new story and game content, however, Blizzard has announced that now they “will be playing the new arc until later this year.” Instead, Overwatch is getting a new free-for-all map this September. 

A message from the Overwatch team. pic.twitter.com/2W3AV7Pv6X

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 26, 2021

In this post from the Overwatch Team, they made the commitment that “going forward, in-game character will no longer be named after real employees and we will be more thoughtful and discerning about adding real world references in future Overwatch Content.”