Blizzard Doesn't Like Overwatch Porn

[someguy1231]

I'm really not sure why people think there would be any significant PR problems if they were seen to be condoning porn. Sure, there might be a handful of people yelling "think of the children", but cracking down on porn would piss off far more customers than allowing it, especially with current tensions over fair use.

Besides, every single game/movie/show/etc that has achieved even a basic level of success has plenty of porn based around it already, yet I don't remember a single instance of this really being a PR problem. Creators get criticized for having sexual content in their work, and people who create porn get criticized for sexualizing certain characters, but I don't think I've ever seen the creators of a work get criticized for not aggressively abusing copyright law to crush porn they themselves never created. I'm sure there's probably some lunatics out there who would do so, but I'm not seeing any evidence of this being a large enough trend that we can assume this to be happening here.

Probably the closest thing I can think is with MLP and Zootopia. Although there might have been some people urging the respective companies to crack down on porn, the criticism was aimed at those creating the porn, and that was really only due to these works being clearly aimed at children. Overwatch may not be adult only, but it's not really aimed at children either.

I agree with much of what you say, but never underestimate the "think of the children!" crowd. And it's not just the religious/family values types that would make that argument. I'm sure a certain feminist critic whose name begins with "A" would also have something to say about this if Blizzard is seen to be condoning pornographic art of their female characters.

EDIT: Especially since there's no real evidence for them actually cracking down on porn. One guy got their video flagged by a third party company apparently in some kind of business arrangement with Blizzard. Not exactly what I'd call a trend.

Last week, when I searched for "Overwatch" on Pornhub, I got over 200 results. Just now, I got only 29.

 

[Erttheking]

You know, if you read the article, it says they took down ONE video. Dick move? Yes. Bit of a gap between that and "scrubbing the internet of porn." Yeesh guys. *Sigh* Well this is the internet. The land of hyperbole.

 

[Kreett]

You know, if you read the article, it says they took down ONE video. Dick move? Yes. Bit of a gap between that and "scrubbing the internet of porn." Yeesh guys. *Sigh* Well this is the internet. The land of hyperbole.

I went to check up on one of my favourite animators and his entire catalogue had been replaced by sprites of the Overwatch characters he'd used accompanied by a salty comment and a link to the takedown notice he'd gotten

 

[Erttheking]

You know, if you read the article, it says they took down ONE video. Dick move? Yes. Bit of a gap between that and "scrubbing the internet of porn." Yeesh guys. *Sigh* Well this is the internet. The land of hyperbole.

I went to check up on one of my favourite animators and his entire catalogue had been replaced by sprites of the Overwatch characters he'd used accompanied by a salty comment and a link to the takedown notice he'd gotten

Ok then, that's a bit more evidence to support the claim. I'm saying the article itself had a pretty weak evidence that this was an internet wide thing.

 

[Evonisia]

The moment they dropped the first trailer it was too late to stop the onslaught of porn, it's only gonna get more widespread regardless of what Blizzard does now that the game's actually out.

 

[loa]

You know, if you read the article, it says they took down ONE video. Dick move? Yes. Bit of a gap between that and "scrubbing the internet of porn." Yeesh guys. *Sigh* Well this is the internet. The land of hyperbole.

I went to check up on one of my favourite animators and his entire catalogue had been replaced by sprites of the Overwatch characters he'd used accompanied by a salty comment and a link to the takedown notice he'd gotten

Ok then, that's a bit more evidence to support the claim. I'm saying the article itself had a pretty weak evidence that this was an internet wide thing.

An animator I watch removed their entire work catalogue from their blog because they received a strike so I'd say it's legit.
Real classy move to drop the hammer on people who give enough of a damn about their franchise to pour tons of time into creating animations.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Blizzard needs to take a hint from Comiket in Japan, been goin for decades based almost entirely on technically infringing fanworks, a lot of which were of sexual nature. What Japan knows is that this kind of work is more of a boon in the form of free publicity and positive word of mouth from the fans, so kuch so that it widely offsets however little royalties they miss out on and whatever harm occurs to their brand by a few of the weird ones.

My guess is that blizzard thinks they're big enough to not need fans to do their advertising for them and would rather protect their "image", a silly and arrogant stance to take. That or they want to do negative reinforcement and want to see tons more porn made out of this game, which is sure to happen now, in which case hats...or I guess pants off to you blizzard.

 

[Diablo2000]

Oh. I did not see that one cuming.

 

[Laughing Man]

Is there anything that can stop Blizzard's rampage of SJW-ness?

Yeah we stop buying their games.... then again I suspect that the end of all time may come before people actually stop buying their games... in fact chances are people will stop making porn with their in game figures long before people stop buying their games.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

From what I can gather from the article this has less to do with them making porn and more to do with them using assets ripped straight from the game.

 

[BarkBarker]

Seems odd you do such a sexualized design and physique of pretty much every female in the game short of the pink haired one and say "oi no lewding", you provided the bait dammit.

 

[crimsonspear4D]

Seems odd you do such a sexualized design and physique of pretty much every female in the game short of the pink haired one and say "oi no lewding", you provided the bait dammit.

Oi, Zarya IS the lewdness.

She got muscles fo dayzzzzzzz

 

[Azure23]

You know, if you read the article, it says they took down ONE video. Dick move? Yes. Bit of a gap between that and "scrubbing the internet of porn." Yeesh guys. *Sigh* Well this is the internet. The land of hyperbole.

I went to check up on one of my favourite animators and his entire catalogue had been replaced by sprites of the Overwatch characters he'd used accompanied by a salty comment and a link to the takedown notice he'd gotten

Ok then, that's a bit more evidence to support the claim. I'm saying the article itself had a pretty weak evidence that this was an internet wide thing.

There was a rather in depth look at the overwatch porn scene on kotaku last week, with comments from several nsfw animators who had all experienced dmca takedown requests from a third party hired by Blizzard. Of course I can't blame you if you don't wish to read a kotaku article, but it was rather funny. I know they spoke to an animator who goes by T'soni for the article who had almost all of their overwatch work taken down.

As for my two cents? I'd say that any of these animators have a fairly good case to argue transformative fair use. If videogame footage with commentary over it is fair use, I'd say adding new meshes and points of articulation to models, voice acting in some cases, and original animation is even fairer.

Of course some companies (nintendo) take issue with gameplay footage with commentary, so the fair use protections haven't exactly been enshrined in law to a workable degree. Not when the appeals process takes place AFTER the work in question is scrubbed, sometimes for months at a time.

 

[Azure23]

EDIT: double post

 

[Chaosian]

Must be kinda strange for the developers though, to have so much pornography dedicated to what you worked on? If I were a developer like that, I probably wouldn't wanna look that up to be honest.

 

[BX3]

It appears that Blizzard, a colossal mega corps that probably has more executives and lawyers then creative talent, hired an outside company to cover copyright/trademark claims. That company, which is also primarily made up of executives and lawyers, is likely just following a simple contract to the letter of the law, pursuing all copy right claims so they a) don't get sued for not doing their jobs and b) because it's a 'soulless corporate machine' which, because of how the law often works out, is better off squashing every single ant it come come across, rather then just focus on the hills.

I'm fairly certain 'Blizzard The Creative Machine,' the people who actually made the game, don't give a shit. The executives and lawyers probably don't care either. This is just how the world works now.

This is the most likely case. The internet's been around for long enough where I'm sure companies are aware that porn's gonna happen. Seems more like just your average everyday copyright bullmalarky. Which in and of itself is pointless bullshit at the best of times, but still, that's probably all it is.

Must be kinda strange for the developers though, to have so much pornography dedicated to what you worked on? If I were a developer like that, I probably wouldn't wanna look that up to be honest.

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/955/955620.png

 

[RaikuFA]

Might not matter in a month if the game can't grab everyone's appeal.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

It's not so much that they don't like porn, it's that the porn they're after is using assets from the game itself. Anything else seems fair game.

I guess it's understandable they probably don't want people rooting around in the game itself, and doing who knows what else.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Might not matter in a month if the game can't grab everyone's appeal.

You say that like Overwatch wasn't a huge success even prior to it's release, and like they didn't actually run out of physical copies of the game. The game is a monster by just about any metric imaginable. It's sold a ton, even after a week long open beta that would have killed the game if people didn't like it.

Perhaps you're thinking of Battleborn?

 

[FogHornG36]

Make sexy characters, get pissed off with what people want to do with sexy charicters
rs