Blizzard is a hypocritical company. You will only add LGBT items in countries where there is no more homophobia, but not in countries where it is persecuted. What’s the point of having a pride month, blizzard??? Pride month is all about fighting homophobia and intolerance, and in doing so, you simply ignore the countries that need it the most!
With such a policy, it would be better if you did not hold a pride month at all; you’re only cashing in on a popular topic where it’s essentially worthless and safe for your business!
You do not care about LGBT and our problems. You are just hypocritical pieces of sh*t!
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meh
the event can’t be put online in regions where such content is illegal, the two options are to leave the game online without the content or to take it offline in those regions entirely
taking the game down in saudi arabia or whatever might be the more principled stance but i don’t think anyone can expect that from a for-profit company of blizzard’s size. this is definitely better than no public rep at all, expecting the frontlines of the battle for progress to be billion dollar companies is pretty delusional
What’s the point then? What is the point of holding a pride month where it is no longer particularly relevant, ignoring the regions where this problem is extremely relevant? This is just hypocrisy and wiping your feet on the very essence of the pride month. For this goes against the very principle and MEANING of this event.
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pride is absolutely relevant pretty much everywhere, if youve read the news at any point in the last couple years then you’d know that queer rights are far from a solved issue even in the liberal west
Anyway, I think that this decision is hypocrisy and disrespect for our community. Think only about liberal countries, where problems, of course, exist, but are far from being as acute as where it is more needed.
It would be better not to have this event at all in OW.
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Shocking: Company has to follow local laws.
I know it’s a sensitive topic and much of the criticism is justified but the alternative would’ve been to break laws and have the game’s access be potentially restricted for all players in those countries. I prefer to have it this way, and this is how other games have handled it in the past.
Honestly I’m glad we can have an event like this taking place at all.
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Except they don’t?
They could choose to pull out of the country.
Which they did for Russia at some point in time.
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That’s my point. The alternative would be to have Overwatch inaccessible in these countries. I prefer to have it this way.
Yeah, I don’t like how Blizzard treated this PRIDE event at all.
They’ll remove LGBT content so Overwatch is still fine in other countries, but they refuse to remove lootbox in Diablo Immortal so it can be played in Belgium.
Which would be the more radical approach to actually enact change.
Since if a country loses business then they might actually be forced to reconsider their position.
But Blizzard takes the easy route where they can still profit.
Trying to have their cake and eat it.
True change requires sacrifice and sometimes that requires that the people of a country be put through a temporary inconvenience in order to force progress.
Yeah I don’t think this is a solid take. Overwatch single-handedly will not change the situation in those countries. The governments would lose practically nothing by restricting access to Overwatch, while players there can’t play the game and Blizzard handles a dozen lawsuits. Blame local laws for this one, not Blizzard.
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What is this “Pride Month” people keep talking about?
It’s Dino Month for me. Jurassic June, celebrating everything dinosaur.
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That’s not a good argument.
That’s like saying that a single household doing recycling won’t stop global warming so why bother.
When in fact the accumulation of small efforts leads to a greater change.
If you (by you I mean Blizzard not you personally) want to send a message then you need to make bold moves and walk the walk.
but I don’t understand some things: because riot managed to bring them to League of Legends last year politically justifying them with “more bright colors” or “spring colors” (especially russia and turkey)… but not overwatch?
I’m not blaming blizzard’s choices… but it honestly seems strange to me that there isn’t the same treatment.
Whilst that would in theory work, it doesn’t really do what pride is meant to do does it.
well yeah, denying it publicly isn’t fair but… a video game company vs a government’s laws is a bit of an unequal fight 
. but IF with a semantic subterfuge they can include LGBTQ colors (like riot did)… why not?
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I agree. The why not would be interesting to know.
I suspect the answer is both sensible and really boring lol
Has there been any explanation for why the event isn’t available in European countries that do not have explicit laws against this kind of stuff?
The countries I heard of that this applies to are Romania, Hungary, Poland and Lithuania. I can’t comment on all of these countries but as far as I know there are no such laws in Lithuania.
Don’t get me wrong, queerness isn’t widely accepted over here, however I’m not aware of any laws that would prevent this event from being available here. Isn’t that the whole point of such pride events anyway?
Source: I’m Lithuanian and the event being unavailable really sucks.
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If there isn’t any specific laws, they should have a little more backbone and just do it. But I guess they’ve got trading agreements that have clauses that mean they can’t.
Sad, but the discussion needs to be with your government as to why they’ve put such things in place.
The issue here is that I don’t know of any such laws/agreements. Which is why I’d like to know the exact reason the event isn’t available here, them pinpointing an agreement would be useful so I could learn about it and then partake in organizations to repeal/prevent such things.
However if there is no such thing preventing the event from being displayed here then it would explain why there’s no clarification from Blizzard (well, either that or just that the issue isn’t big enough to comment publicly), as it would mean ignorance or cowardice from their end.