Overwatch – Blizzard Announces New Name for McCree

Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of Overwatch, has announced a name change for Overwatch cowboy hero McCree after his namesake was implicated in a sexual harassment lawsuit.

The game publishers announced that starting from October 26th 2021, the hero will no longer go by the name McCree. Instead, his new name will be Cole Cassidy, and it will be officially rolled into the game as a new patch on the live Overwatch Servers gets activated.

During the creation of Overwatch, the Blizzard team named the cowboy character after one of their lead game designers, Jesse McCree. However, Jesse was implicated in so many sexual harassment lawsuits by some employees brought against the company earlier this year. The case was filed on July 30th 2021, by the California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The allegations, which bordered around sexual harassment and assault, gender-based discrimination against women, among other such vices, shook up the company and brought them to public scrutiny. Later, 3,000 employees of the company signed a letter urging the management to act swiftly and address the plights of the victims.

After employees protested and even staged a walkout, Activision Blizzard has effected quite a couple of changes in a bid to clear their name. First, the accused developer is no longer a staff of Blizzard Entertainment, and now the company has changed the name of the cowboy hero to totally disassociate the character from the disgraced ex-employee.

Overwatch had earlier in August announced that they would be renaming McCree, and ever since then, players had been lobbying to influence the hero’s new name. While waiting for the official announcement of the new name, many Overwatch League casters and staff have been very careful not to mention the hero’s name on the broadcast. They also made conscious efforts to take out most of the lines involving McCree.

While this new name, Cole Cassidy, may sound alien to many Overwatch fans as it isn’t related to any staff of Activision Blizzard, the western fans will most likely associate it with Butch Cassidy, the notorious 19th-century outlaw whose story inspired the Red Dead Redemption 2 and a couple of other books. While it may take some time for players and fans to get accustomed to referring to the cowboy hero as Cassidy, we do not deny that the name seems perfect, especially when related to the Butch Cassidy and his criminal “Wild Bunch” gang.

The Overwatch team also indicated that they will be amending the game’s lore to incorporate the new name and wipe most of the details directly involving McCree.  However, in all of these, many people still regard the name change as a performative distraction. They believe that making the name change a big deal is the company’s performative way of distracting fans and making them think that they’re complying with the demands of the protesting workers. In the same vein, others believe that this name change is one of the baby steps in a marathon race geared towards ridding the company of all inappropriate activities and creating a new pristine image for the giant game manufacturing company.