Overwatch 2's 2023 Pride Event and Their (Brief) History With Pride

In exciting news on May 30th, 2023, Overwatch 2 announced they would be having a pride event, which began June 1st. Rumors about the event had been drumming up since around April 2023 with a few articles detailing what to expect from the upcoming event. Content creators on YouTube uploaded videos to the platform displaying skins, maps and more to look forward to. There was an overall excited and positive response amongst me and my friends, with the event reviving the interest of old friends who hadn’t touched the game in ages. As for the queer community, some members such as myself had low expectations due to Blizzard’s cold silence that comes with each June. The event was a pleasant surprise to me with many positive takeaways from the experience, but since then, I’ve also had time to reflect on Blizzard’s history with pride and what I hope for the future.

Overwatch 1 opened up its beta to the public on October 27th, 2015, and was released on May 24th, 2016. The colorful, aesthetically pleasing, action-packed team FPS was an instant hit for me and many others, with a player base estimated to be 50 million, such as at the start of 2020 for example. I was late to discover it, a friend introduced it to me during my first year of university in September of 2018. Overwatch 1, to their credit, was created with multiple LGBTQIA+ characters from its beginning and a range of diverse ethnicities, languages, backgrounds, and more. Multiple main characters, such as Lena (Tracer) Oxton, and Jack (Soldier: 76) Morrison, are gay, bisexual, or pansexual.

As you may be familiar with, especially if you’re a GOATs & PROs, is that the online gaming community is often associated with and sometimes overrun with the culture of toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity can include verbal (via voice chats, video calls, voice calls) and written (via team and match chats and community forums) statements, often misogynistic and bigoted that promote a set of stereotyped behaviors and attitudes regarded as “having a negative impact on men and society as a whole” by the Oxford Dictionary’s definition. This can range anywhere from light teasing to unwarranted advances, stalking, slurs, hate speech, and even death threats. Which – sadly – can even be treated as normal and accepted amongst the unlucky group of people you may be forced into a competitive match with. To be clear, in no situation are these acceptable to say to someone online; there’s a real person behind the other screen and your actions have consequences.

These very real issues are statistically known to be a problem at higher rates for people in the LGBTQIA+ community. The high rate of queer players being the target of hatred, bigotry, verbal and written assault, and more online is parallel to the high rate of queer people being victims of threats and crimes, and LGBTQIA+ people of color experience even more victimizations compared to their white peers who are still “9 times more likely to experience violent victimizations than non-LGBT people” according to a study from Williams Institute. These tangible and very real issues can affect queer people in their online and offline lives. Because of this, you can imagine it’s disheartening to experience, in my opinion, empty “allyship” such as the "Rainbow" icon released in June of 2021.

At its initial release, as gay people, my partner and I were excited to finally show our pride and we would always wear the “Rainbow” player icon as we would grind endless hours of competitive together. The issue with this player icon is in the name itself – “Rainbow”. Blizzard chose not to explicitly name it “Pride” or “Pride Flag” and there are multiple reasons you can argue why not, but in my opinion, none of them are reason enough to not explicitly state your allyship for the LGBTQIA+ community in such a small, harmless way. This left me rightfully skeptical of Blizzard, a Fortune 500 capitalist corporation in the years leading up to the new Pride 2023 event.

Logging into Overwatch 2 in June 2023 was not a disappointment! I knew what to expect thanks to Niandra’s amazing YouTube video covering all the upcoming changes and new content for the Pride event. My first game was in Midtown and I was amazed by the diversity of the flags and the amount of them. Flags ranging from non-binary, agender, and transgender pride to pansexual, asexual, and bisexual pride were hanging all around New York. Flying proud and tall above the first capture point was a progress pride flag. Crosswalks had been painted with vertical rainbow stripes across them and were littered with the rainbow confetti that was swirling in the air and fluttering down through the warm summer air. It was a beautiful map design and it brightened my spirits, even if only just a little, every time we played it. My partner and I were grateful to have felt seen and represented.

The queer community appreciates being heard and included in all the phases of the design process including future updates to the game. It can be obvious when groups of people and their concerns are an afterthought, but even if that is the case, genuine change and revision are appreciated and encouraged. As part of the Overwatch Pride event for 2023, the police cars in the Midtown map were reskinned to be normal-looking vehicles, following feedback from the queer and POC community concerning systemic racism and bigotry amongst the police force and the higher rates of police brutality against queer POC people. While this change to the cars was an easy and rather low-risk option for Blizzard developers, for many of us who feel strongly against the police force, it was an amazing thing to see and I enjoyed the change thoroughly.

Other changes that came with the event were the addition of pride voice lines between characters such as on Circuit Royal when Baptiste offers himself as a date for Lifeweaver who wants to take someone to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Some characters were confirmed queer, such as Fareeha (Pharah) Amari who is Lesbian, Niran (Lifeweaver) Pruksamanee who is Pansexual, and Jean (Baptiste) Augustin who is Bisexual.

Additionally, Overwatch added a healthy selection of multiple player icons and name cards with different pride flags and characters on some of them – free to (almost) all players! There are 14 player icons, all of different flags, and 24 name cards with different flags, designs, and characters on them. Most impressively, all of them are appropriately named such as “Intersex Flag” or “Aromantic Flag”.

In my and many others’ experience, the 2023 Overwatch 2 Pride event was well received by the queer community and general public. Not to say it isn’t hard to find negative comments from the discontent regarding the event online, there will always be those who have room to educate themselves and grow, but the majority of players seemed neutral or pleased with the changes for the month. During my time playing in June 2023, I noticed most people didn’t have much to say in a negative regard about the Pride event and would say an average of at least 1 player per match (aside from my party) would have a pride player icon or name card equipped.

While I’m quick and happy to celebrate successful change that is inclusive of queer people, I also try to remain thoughtful of Blizzard’s intentions in their show of support for the LGBTQIA+ community and aim to hold them to higher standards when it comes to their allyship. This year’s Pride event may have been a large step up from what it was before, but what it was before was next to nothing. As a game company that will often prop up their token queer Overwatch characters in proof of their diversity and inclusion, real action should be put forth to back up said support for the LGBTQIA+ community and the queer players. There are many ways to support the queer community, whether it be financially via donations, grants, and partnerships or by spotlighting queer creators on their platforms. Blizzard could also consider hiring a more diverse LGBTQIA+ inclusive staff to be directly involved in the design process at all phases as well as hire LGBTQIA2S+ speakers to hold workshops and be a part of company events to educate staff of all levels. You can review Blizzard's current Diversity and Inclusion page here on their website.

The choices made during these multiple design phases have real consequences on the audience the content is put out to. Both bad and good consequences should be accounted for – not only should the negative consequences be avoided, but also be mindful of what positive change can be invoked through Overwatch’s content. Such a massive platform that reaches millions of users daily holds a lot of power and seeing representation can be extremely meaningful, especially to a younger audience.

In a time when LGBTQIA+ people and especially transgender people are under attack, seeing a massive company with a huge game such as Overwatch 2 plaster transgender pride flags all over a map can feel like a small beacon of hope and relief.

It is my expectation and hope that with years to come each new Pride event will be better than the last, just as any other event would be treated in this game. That diversity and inclusivity become even more deeply engrained in Overwatch in both the game itself and also in what goes on behind the scenes with the creation of Overwatch 2. Overall, I am pleased with the event and applaud Blizzard for the inclusion of a wide range of pride flags, including intersex, agender, pansexual, and others. I recall months prior I had repeatedly told my partner I would be extremely disappointed if a transgender pride flag wasn’t included in the event, so it’s safe to say my expectations were exceeded. My challenge to Blizzard is to wow me again next time!

Happy pride and cheers!