Overwatch 2's Weird Relationship With Representation 

As a bi person: we are all stronger than everyone else, we have 10% damage to all men, women, and enbies

Personally, soldier being gay would’ve made a lot more of a lore impact if he’d been in a relationship with reaper pre-fall of overwatch. The splitting of the team coinciding with their relationship would’ve added a lot of narrative drama. But nah, just have him dating some vague guy who we know nothing about and have never seen. And have Gabriel have some of screen wife we know nothing about.

Man, idk if its embarrassing but I only realized that there was a pride event like 2 days ago after talking with someone in comms, because the event is disabled in my country. I mean, its not like I live in a Muslim government or where I understand it would be disabled

what baffles me about the Soldier one is that Reaper was RIGHT THERE. like either way it was an obvious attempt to score points while deflecting from allegations, but they so clearly didn’t even try.

Fr like lifeweaver isn’t a femboy at all 😭. My bf and I were hype to have a guy with a “cute” aesthetic but while I love lifeweaver he’s more “pretty boy” than any other vibe. Anyways nice vid 👍

Fun Fact: The Loverwatch strictly states that the events are non-canon, but COULD happen. Meaning Genji, Mercy, and Hanzo are all technically confirmed as Bisexual

Also on the context of OW rep in 2016: I want to point out that back before Tracer was revealed to be a lesbian Geoff Goodman the Hero Designer at the time did an interview with Kotaku saying they wanted to reveal their queer heroes "organically" in their lore and story instead of "pandering" and it clearly bit them in the ass. Note after he left their "policy" clearly changed as Gavin and the new narrative team now aim to have their queer heroes' identity be baked into their character, instead of just finding a "plot relevant" reason to reveal this. And the part where you said Soldier: 76's sexuality was obviously added retroactively, that's 100% true. Fun Fact: Soldier 76 was Chris Metzan's OC that he created way back in the 90s. Thing is he was very eager to reveal OW's gay heroes during Overwatch's launch days before he left Blizzard so it was clear that 76 was planned to be gay from the start and he agreed to the change.

I think the people saying that the devs are doing queer content only as a cover up are forgetting that blizzard gets bad press like, every other day.

I actually thought S76 being revealed as gay was refreshing. He’s not outwardly very flamboyant and I know many gay men who are the same (myself included). That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with being flamboyant, I love flamboyant people, but many of us just aren’t

You only me mentioned it briefly but I really don’t like when people paint blizzard (or any company) as cowardly for not doing anything in countries where the pride content would get banned. I think most people don’t understand how serious this actually is - showing this kind of content is straight up illegal in those countries, there is nothing that blizzard can do about that. Their only options are not showing the content or just having their game get banned. And the ladder option would be horrible, not only for blizzards business but also for fans in those countries, who may get their favorite game taken away just so blizzard can get praised by western fans who have no idea what it’s even like to live in a country like this. It’s horrible that it’s like this, but people can’t expect blizzard to single-handedly change the law

As a straight guy I dont often think of watching videos like this but im happy I did as this was very thought provoking for me and I enjoyed listening to all the points keep up the great work

IDK if lifeweaver has an official ethnicity, but as indigenous, I identify w him so much. Additionally, being two-spirit is a concept that is heavily misunderstood because we already misunderstand gender, but LW is def that sensual lover type in touch w his masculinity and feminine side. Its so crazy to see a whole accidentally represented.

I wish they’d get some fucking PVE representation.

My gay friends in Saudi Arabia told me that their version of the game has no references to pride if you put the rainbow player icon on they would only see the default overwatch logo and the midtown map has no pride decorations

I think what annoys me about this discourse, and this is no shot to you, I'm sure you *know* this even if it doesn't always come through explicitly in-script, is that when people talk about Blizzard and criticize Blizzard, they're really referring to atleast 3 different entities, ABK (The Board, essentially), Blizzard Entertainment the developer, and the multitude of different teams within it, each of which are pretty massive. I get very annoyed when people bring up the harassment and the bro culture and the breast milk theft specifically in relationship to Overwatch because we have it on relatively good authority that they (Team 4) weren't involved in any of that (iirc it was mostly focused in the WoW and Diablo teams). Team 4, by all accounts has, atleast in terms of workplace culture, been the white sheep of the company pretty much since it was founded and having people bitch about the nebulous concept that is "Blizzard" like there's just one "Mr. Blizzard" making bad decisions and not a massive company of thousands with a complex hierarchy, just reeks of being disingenuous. I do want to praise you for the pinkwashing segment though, because it needs to be said. There's no grand conspiracy from Blizzard to hide their controversies. They couldn't even if they tried. There's always going to be some announcement coinciding with bad press because they're a big machine with many moving parts and both are *always* happening. And the constant conspiratorial hearsay is really insulting to the devs just trying to make shit happen. One thing that wasn't brought up is that running this event in countries with strict laws against LGBT+ *is* legitimately dangerous for both their regional office employees and their customers. There are places where people do legitimately get arrested for being found with these things, so I don't take them not running it in those places as any sort of slam against them, it's for their protection, as unfortunate as it is. I really can't agree with this criticism. They even went back on not running it in Romania and Poland after doing more research into it and deciding it was ultimately safe, so they'd clearly run it everywhere if they could. The fact they can't safely isn't their fault. Corporations are inherently self-interested and socially neutral. They swing whatever way they think will help them sell more products. That's the system we live in, and much like how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself, turning victims into abusers, I see rainbow capitalism in the same way. It's hard to take stands that go against profit in a system where profit has always matter above all else. But I see these progressive moves as small victories for both the devs that clearly fight for them and the players who deserve them. When they make content like this, I do believe that it is a genuine expression from the people who actually made them, and I don't think that should be discounted just because the coporation bodies that have to stamp approval on it may or may not have cynical reasons for allowing or disallowing it. Like you said, everything's complicated. (panrom ace, btw. I don't really like throwing it out as a disclaimer but I've had people dog on me for pride takes if I don't mention where I stand, so).

I love how Venture is UNDENIABLY queer due to their pronouns. There is no way to refer to them without acknowledging their non-binary identity, unless you're going to go out of your way to be ignorant or bigoted. I love that it's exposing a lot of the ignorant in the community and hopefully people can learn. If they weren't taking a commitment before, they sure are now. Even the VA for Venture is non-binary and goes by he/them/she.

HE DON'T MISS!! (also, i came out to my mom and it went incredibly well and she's super supportive of me :3)

baptiste my beloved, i love his interactions with lifeweaver and other way around (when lw pulls bap there can be special lines) anyway it's weird how overwatch falls between checking boxes and actual diversity representation but fails a bit on all ends but also makes people mad still like it's just kinda weird. it's nice to see in popular games but also still feels hollow? idk its a hard feeling to put into words but this vid does a good job of getting those words organized! anyway fuck money all my homies hate money.

The game that makes people v-tubers takes another victim

I remember not questioning the representation at all back in 2016/17. I was just so happy and excited that I ate those crumbs up, and I thought it was soo nice of blizzard to make the two characters that were essentially the poster children of overwatch queer. Now looking back, it was definitely questionable and I’m glad they finally committed to some actual in game representation. It’s just unfortunate that it comes at a time like this where there are basically no positive feelings towards the game, and bigots can just disguise their nasty comments as regular overwatch hate

Weird how people think any billion dollar company cares for them as a person lmfao

As a gay dude, I personally like the way they did Soldier and Tracer because they were made lgbt in mind for their backstories and it was just a part of who they were and not their entire idetity. They felt more special and organically revealed than the way they did Phara and Baptiste. Phar and Bap were just confirmed outside of the game with basically no previous hints or context that they could have been queer in-game. Im sure if Overwatch 1.2 actually came out with the PvE, it would have probably shown representation through the campaign story and feel more organic. I just find it funny thinking that soldier is this mean hard ass who you would think is the farthest thing from gay, ends up being a big gay grandpa.

5:06 thank you lol. Drives me wild hearing them call those prepubescent twigs daddy

Baptise _wasn't_ confirmed queer before? Damn

Just finished watching and this is another banger video! I always said Blizzard's approach with Representation with the "have it's cake and eat it too" was bad and it's also reflective on how they represent social commentary too. That being said you're completely right about it being super complicated as the political social climate is treacherous right now with queer folk and any positive rep is important BUT we still have to be critical of corporations. I believe this thought can absolutely co-exist . Also the "blizzard is too dumb to make these 5D chess plans of rainbow washing" part is 💯

The queer representation issue is even more bizarre when you take into context how Riot Games, wholly owned by Tencent, a chinese company, somehow has better queer representation than Overwatch which is owned and opersted by an american company.

@4:50 OMG! Thank you for saying this! 😂 IMHO Everyone is obsessed with categorizing any dude who isnt traditionally masc or has a dumpy🍑 as a femboy and its such an eye roll.

I find corporate pride less helpful as a means to tell the "morals" of a company, if they could be said to have any lol, and more as a barometer to see how small the group spreading hate actually is. Anti LGBT people are louder than ever, yet companies do stuff anyway meaning that the majority of people support LGBT rights, at least enough to make it the more profitable option

I can say as a fellow Yeehan supporter since day one, we were in pain, especially with Bap making eyes at Cassidy. But besides that, my sister made a good point: we may not see already established characters with non-straight identities anymore. They may not want a lot of their roster being rainbow because, ugh, we are unfortunately still a minority. Plus notice there's still no canon relationships, straight or not, between playable characters? Yeah. They will subtext until the cows come home, but they don't like confirming relationships in case it upsets those who don't either like those particular ships, or, idk, people don't want loveydovey voice lines. Then again, look at everyones reaction to Lifeweaver and his flirty af lovely self. Maybe they'll change their mind.

The most interesting thing about Overwatch's representation is the ults. Specifically how when your allies ult, you hear their English lines, and only hear the "native language" lines when they're on the enemy team (or when YOU do them). Contrary to Blizzard's goal of making Overwatch a team that welcomes diversity it makes you feel like you're a bunch of English-speaking Americans fighting against foreigners who refuse to conform to English standards. Of course, that's not WHY they did it, I'm just saying that's an unfortunately inference one can make.

Im commenting this at 6:38. I have no clue if it will be covered and I hope it does, but there feels like a lot of subtext with soldier. As a literal dont ask dont tell soldier. He is gay, but its quiet. Its almost silenced by his career in a very literal sense. While this is not really representation, its really akin to our real life situation as is-

As a cisgendered, white male with mental illness Im very happy to be represented by characters like Sigma & JunkerQueen

Still waiting for good representation of ace and aro characters which are actually human :')

And now we have nonbinary Venture...

this is an amazing video. this is my first pride being out as bi, something i rly wasnt admitting to myself. but seeing bap be bi was really cool. now im coming to terms with the corporate aspect of it all, its really sad hahaha

I think the funny thing about this is they would probably get less heat if they had less representation. People would look less to conspiracies and extreme theories about the company being homophobic or whatever if there was nothing to bring peoples attention to the topic. Kinda sad

In my opinion, I prefer it when representative details like this are not often directly mentioned. When a company makes multiple direct references to a character being gay, having autism, etc it feels more like a corporation trying to appeal to those groups to sell more, rather than the writers trying to make a genuine and representative story. In reality, having these identities shouldn't be the forefront of their character, because they are much more than those identities alone.

I guess Im in the minority of people who actually like Soldier as gay rep 😅

There is one thing I liked about Soldier: 76 being revealed as gay: Before the announcement that Tracer was gay, people were speculating who the secretly gay character was. The majority of people I saw had two answers: Zarya for women and Lucio for men. Zarya because she was a butch, pink-haired character. Lucio because he's the most free-love kind of guy but also the twinkiest and least manly of the bunch. The fact that the first two gays were poster children of the game, one of which being a masculine, tough guy who wasn't about flowers and pastels, gave me hope that gay men can stop being stereotyped by flamboyance while being seen as "men*" and that gayness can be perceived as being befitting of anyone because it's not intrinsic your ability to fit an aesthetic.

1:14 this is stupid, why can't we have characters that have autism with out it standing out? same with sexuality, instead of making extra content for a character being gay why not just treat all of the characters the same?

Me waiting for Soldier 76 and Reaper to be canon 👁️👄👁️

literally had no idea about queer daddy soldier or symetra being autistic. ty for teaching me something!

Apex is so incredibly real for representation. Most of the lgbt+ characters are just... themselves. Bloodhound is non-binary, loba, Valkyrie, and Bangalore, and Gibraltar are gay, Catalyst is transgender, and I might even be missing a few. They don't shy away from it, but also don't make it their whole personalities. It's part of who they are, just like how actual people are. It's very based.

You gotta put a warning before putting a picture of Bobby kotick. I was trying to eat and almost threw up😂😂

I love the philosphy talk for video idea, alredady got my vote

And now we got Venture a nonbinary

I think it's a little unfair to refer to everything that happens with Overwatch as a purely the whims of Blizzard, the monolithic entity. From the artists to coders, the OW team has a whole slew of queer-identifying team members that are also fighting for representation in the game that they themselves are making. You boiled down the reason for *any* queer representation as just being corporate pandering, but I don't think some high level exec was like "Make Midtown gay so we can extort the gays for money." That was an idea that originated with the team because they wanted to do something fun for Pride month. I'm not trying to be a corporate bootlicker or anything, but I'm tired of everyone forgetting there are actual, human people that work on the game and probably have a little more say in how it's produced now that the IP is profitable once again.

I don't like their philosophy around diversity, but I wouldn't change a thing about their characters. For me, it's really just fence sitting and boring writing. Lucio is my favourite character, but he rarely feels like he has a Brazilian perspective. Namely as one of the few characters from a developing nation. D.Va's from South Korea in a post-global war future that never addresses North Korea's implied continued existence. Symmetra is only autistic if you read a specific comic and notice a specific word. Soldier has one paragraph in a boring short story where he implies he had a gay partner. I'm glad Bap and Pharah are queer (PharMercy, let's go), but with so little lore content, a mundane conversation about them coming out of the closet feels company mandated

that’s exactly how i felt about Soldier, i still love him as a character but he doesn’t represent me but i’m glad there’s a group of people that soldier makes them feel seen

I am glad that the pride event is in the game. There's no taking away from the fact that having it is better than not having it. Even still, this feels like they're continuing with the tradition of just handing out enough crumbs to keep people from absolute starvation. Some name cards, icons, and a temporary glow-up of a map. It's all good stuff on paper, and I'm sure the devs wanted to do it. I know that a company so rife with controversy like ActiBlizz will always have something going on, so it's hard to believe anything released lately is truly genuine, but I'm confident this is. It's a shame that it's not enough for me anymore. If there was something like a free Drag skin, or some sorta free skins for some of the LGBT+ characters, then maybe there's a conversation to have. The part that I am hung up on is how Call of Duty, with no fanfare, launched its latest title with a whole host of pride flags as their version of name cards. No cost, no fanfare; just...put in the game. That is how I feel it -should- be nowadays. Any bit of fanfare almost feels as though they're asking for applause; which just reeks of marketing to me. I bring this up because it feels like the name cards and/or icons could've launched with OW2, and then we get this event for the first June that OW2 is out. While that sounds odd, why not just group the release of the two together, like they did? Because that's hypocritical. We've got the devs several times now saying that, for OW2, they don't want to keep grouping up stuff to release at once. They want to release things as they're ready, so that players can get a continuous stream of content. Despite that being the message delivered to us for months now, I can't help but feel that these icons and cards were held on to, rather than released when ready. tl;dr: I want to be thrilled, but the fact this is a bar that other titles under ActiBlizz, like CoD, are able to clear with less issue, tells me that this is just marketing for the sake of optics.

I just realized this is basically the subways surfers of overwatch analysis.

Really enjoying the little speaking avatar more than I thought I would, nice touch

I always agreed with Overwatch's representation being lacklustre. Soldier being revealed as gay wasn't making much sense and was ticking a box unlike Apex and Valorant where they have interaction voicelines and canon ships (eg LoValk, RazeJoy etc). Also we have to respect how Opera GX has their logo as two black guys kissing for Pride instead of just a rainbow version of theirs.

honestly before "as you are", there was a really good case for overwatch absolutely failing lgbt poc. while we got some hints of baptiste's bisexuality in "what you left behind" considering that mauga was later confirmed by the writer of that short story to have been written as baptiste's ex boyfriend, it was telling that the two white people were allowed to be confirmed as gay meanwhile when it came to their characters of color it was always just left subtextual. im glad that theyve corrected that but it shouldnt have taken this long.

Soldier 76 being gay just further drives home the massive missed opportunity to make him and reaper exes.

Funny that the 3 new lgbt character have parental issue/no parents 💀 and to all we know could be the same with soldier and tracer

20:48 The struggle of a gay men that is playing LiS true colours, "do i be gay and pick Steph or straight and pick Ryan?"

no because i was genuinely surprised when i found out soldier was gay. before i started playing overwatch, the only queer character i knew was tracer and didn’t think much of it , and when i started playing the game and mained soldier for the first month or two is when i finally noticed he was gay. like he would’ve been the last character i was think is gay. and i just think that proves that they did a good job with making him gay. it’s not stereotypical, it’s not straight out in your face, and it’s genuinely just not a big deal. THATS how you’re supposed to make queer characters and give representation; make them a normal character that just isn’t straight.

In my future, they are all pan.

I can say as someone who's known Blizzard since 1996 with the original Diablo, it's horrifically incredible to see how far they've fallen by today's standards.

Being a straight guy , its weird how i love playing weaver, love the flamboyancy of the character and the attitude. Makes me feel sexy and cool somehow lol.

Love your commentary! Voice! Aesthetic! EATING IT ALL UP! THANK YOU

so glad I found your channel!!

got to this video late, it was quite a venture to get here

Close to 10K congrats man!! 🎉

It's not that they made made character gay after bad news. Pride month is a yearly tradition and it would be so easy to wait before pride to announce literally one of the worst information for future of overwatch. Decision of canceling PvE must have been known for months cmon

Another great video! Honestly was very informative, I’m a huge fan of the game (2700+ hours) and had no idea about pharah, bap and symmetra; much less the more detailed topics you explained.

two videos in one day? wonderful

Good video, nice job!! really updating us on blizzard's and OW 's misdoings regarding representation, i hope many people get to watch this.

Small correction, emily also appeared in an OWL spray alongside Tracer, Winston and Mei. I think it was the 2019 season or smth

Soldier 76 coming out as gay felt like a republican getting caught on grindr.

How specifically American is this regressive trend toward homophobia? Is this happening everywhere?

LMAO a GSA meeting w/ guns = SRA

my friend I love your videos!!! You talk very quickly and its hard to follow sometimes you don't need to rush it! You have good takes and it seems like you are just speeding through. I'm sure people wouldn't mind if the videos were a bit longer. much love

In regards to lgbtq+ representation in Overwatch, I really want enby rep (which is my rep) because the closest things I have are things that match my aesthetic, like Lifeweaver, Bastion, & the new Slime Echo skin. At least I can come up with my own enby hero concepts in workshop I guess.

OW could honestly use some straight representation at this point

Roadhog Better Be Canonically Married To Mercy Still

Bgm choice is on point for this video, monokubs theme slaps

Honestly I feel like even without representation outside of Pearl and Marina, Splatoon *feels* more queer than overwatch in a way that's hard to put my finger on.

when everyone's gay, no one isn't.

Bastet came out in 2019, not 2017!

As a female attracted person, Mercy x Pharah makes me uncomfortable. Cause, didn't Mercy know Pharah when she was a kid ??

I've noticed how more and more bigoted comments appear on videos talking about anything remotely talking about queer stuff or just the person in question being queer and it's honestly very worrying. Even on videos that don't mention anuthing political. Like a simple video from eskay doing Lucio rollouts is enough to attract the bigots and they'll comment straight up transphobic messages targeting her when she didnt mention anything about that.

To be fair, i think they did a pretty good job at letting us know in game that symmetrya was autistic because all you have to do is look at her play style lol. But yea I'm super glad they came out with all the pride icons and I hope in the future they confirm more characters to be LGBTQ+

BLIZAAAAARD MAKE THE SITUATIONSHIP OF PHARA AND MERCY CANON AND MY LIIIIIIIIIIIFE IS YOURS.Loved your video man

I didn’t know about that female blizzard employee… I had heard that they had a sexist scandal because their partnership with Lego ended.. but wow. I’ve been upset with blizzards standards, as it seems they’d like to ban people who are cheating more often than the ones in vc telling me to bash my head in, or that they won on midtown because they’re a homophobe. I feel like sitting here and taking the abuse is starting to become the norm with this company/game and I’m tired of it.

I think a company who makes a game about HEROES, should step up to the mantle of a HERO. This fact that the ball gets dropped so often is disappointing. I want to believe they're trying, but that's tough.

So I dont like look at the lore stuff or anything but do the straight characters also like get sprays and stuff? I haven't equipped new sprays since like 2018 just curious

Lets not forget the implied ex-relationship between Mauga and Baptiste

Old video is old but I do wanna say: The Overwatch Team is Team 4. And Team 4 isn’t really involved with the drama and bad shit that keeps popping up in Blizzard. The “boys club” atmosphere described by the lawsuit was mostly coming from the WoW and Activision departments. Team 4 was always described as kinda insulated from all that. Apparently it was Jeff Kaplan keeping them separate (aka protected) and after he left they stayed pretty insular. So anytime people accuse Team 4 of pandering to cover a Blizzard scandal I roll my eyes because by all accounts Team 4 is the exception. Like Blizzard isn’t a monolith where all the teams are huddled in one office building floor and the WoW people are walking through Overwatch meetings and pitching ideas. They’re separate groups under one umbrella corp.

as a straight man I don't get why people hate LGBTQ+ homies so much and I'm truly sorry for that...However!!! What I do understand is this!!! The colour pink is so good! (sorry for the nothing comment, pink is my favorite colour specifically pastel pink that is...other pinks are fine. Pastel pink though, man...You ever see a colour and it like, screams at you "yeah, I'm the one your eyeballs are addicted too, ME!!" I guess this comment turned into something after all huh? Oops...)

The cosmetics we got makes me wonder if the next few queer characters we get will be of those identities though I find it unlikely as most of them of them are apart of the extended acronym correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure Non-Binary is the only identity that isn't a part of the acronym that has cosmetics, though NB is pretty well known so it doesn't surprise me they'd include it Also one thing I want to say is that Overwatch does do a good job at having their representation being mostly human like off the top of my head Lynx 17 who use they/them pronouns is our only queer omnic, the reason I think this matters is because it helps show queer people are human and natural, alot of queer people are used to their only good rep being nonhuman (especially those that are gender nonconforming and/or under the Aro and/or Ace umbrellas) so the fact Overwatch isn't relying on the Omincs as their main source of rep is a good sign (because if they really wanted to they could probably reveal most of the Omics characters as some part of either the Ace or Aro umbrellas maybe even both it they're feeling adventurous) this issue isn't just a queer one though for example it's very common for autistic characters to be robots as well at the moment Sym is our only confirmed Autistic character, Though Echo is implied to be Autistic and I wouldn't be surprised if she gets confirmed to be at some point down the line, I don't hate Robots or other nonhuman characters being representation I just hate when they're the majority of representation it just comes across as dehumanising

Disco elysium mention :OOOO

one thing i want to point out is the difference between overwatch devs and blizzard (corporate)- obviously you can’t completely separate the two, but several devs have pointed out how they will try to do something nice for the game, and blizzard (corporation) will use the timing of their announcement to drop some awful news without alerting the devs- the devs are More upset than the fans in many cases, bc they will work hard for months on something only for it to be overshadowed by something awful coming from corporate- not to say to never be skeptical of rainbow capitalism, but rather that sometimes the issue isn’t as clear as it seems on the surface- it was never blizzard as a company pushing for pride, it has always been queer devs hoping to represent themselves in the art that they’re putting out for us

Great video, you explained the good, the really bad and the indifferent. A thousand thumbs up ❤❤❤❤❤

Not to tokenize your identity or anything, but I've lowkey been waiting for this video from you since the start, and it did not disappoint.

Why not "Hanzidy"?

i want someone to look at lifeweaver's sit emote then tell me if they still think he's a twink lol

It's likely that there's a bunch of employees at blizzard behind the scenes and have been pushing for more visibility, and that the corporate management wasn't allowing it. I mean the people behind the game did put in references to LGBT relationships through certain characters even in the beginning. I think a lot of this should have happened sooner but at least the damn broke and there's no going back at blizzard (hopefully) Blizzard wants to make money but I firmly believe that artists employed by Blizzard want to break the mold and want to do something bolder with their work. I think the character development team is extremely good at adapting different cultures and diverse characters into the game, But they need to do better with visibility. And suddenly they really are pushing through a lot of bigotry and ignorance with Venture. Once you have an openly non-binary character that uses Non-Binary pronouns, It's at least a sign that they can't really go back. So there's a lot of corporate pressure, no doubt but, people work in these systems and I bet a lot of people working under certain video game companies are constantly trying to push for stuff like this even when they can't get it to happen.

as someone who was a baby lesbian in 2016 (the female Overwatch cast were actually lowkey my gay awakening, particularly Zarya), the Tracer lesbian reveal was pretty cool but I could still clock the "corporate PR" aspect from a mile away. I was like "who's Emily. this is nothing." It was kinda striking that they went with Tracer though since she's the face of the game (or at least was at that point)