Table of Contents
As a journalist who has covered the video game industry for years, I’ve become accustomed to the cycle of corporate scandal and the carefully crafted public relations maneuvers that follow.
When the news broke on October 22, 2021, that Blizzard Entertainment was renaming one of Overwatch‘s most iconic heroes, my initial reaction was one of weary cynicism.1
For five years, the grizzled gunslinger was Jesse McCree; now, he was to become Cole Cassidy.
To me, it looked like a straightforward, if necessary, PR move—a corporation scrubbing a stain from its billion-dollar intellectual property.
It was a story I felt I had written a dozen times before.
But the sheer scale of the community’s reaction and the complexities of the situation suggested this was something more.
The simple explanation felt incomplete.
The real turning point in my understanding came when I stopped thinking about it as a software patch and started viewing it through the lens of a completely different public square drama: a city council voting to remove a prominent statue of a disgraced historical figure.
Suddenly, the story wasn’t just about taking something down.
It became about the disgraced figure himself, the closed-door meetings of the committee that made the decision, the new monument erected in its place, and the heated, passionate debate that erupted in the town square.
This report will use that framework to investigate the full story behind the cowboy’s new name.
We will examine the disgraced figure whose actions catalyzed the event, the corporate council’s calculated response, the new identity built to replace the old one, and the divided community left to grapple with the change.
This is the story of how a name in a video game became an unavoidable flashpoint for a real-world reckoning.
Part I: The Disgraced Founder: Unearthing the Toxicity Behind the Name
The decision to change the character’s name was not a proactive creative choice but a direct and necessary reaction to a legal and ethical firestorm.
The catalyst was a lawsuit filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) against parent company Activision Blizzard in July 2021.1
The lawsuit was the result of a two-year investigation and alleged a pervasive “frat boy” culture within the company, rife with sexual harassment, gender discrimination in pay and promotions, and a systemic failure of leadership and Human Resources to address these issues.3
The “Cosby Suite”: A Symbol of Rot
Among the most shocking and visceral allegations to emerge from the lawsuit and subsequent reporting was the existence of the “Cosby Suite”.4
This was reportedly a hotel room at BlizzCon 2013, informally nicknamed in reference to the alleged rapist Bill Cosby.
According to reports, this suite was a venue where male employees, including senior figures, would drink heavily and allegedly harass female colleagues.4
The existence of this space, complete with a large portrait of Cosby, became a sickening and powerful symbol of the toxic culture described in the DFEH lawsuit.4
Connecting the Character to the Controversy
The critical link between this toxic environment and the Overwatch hero was forged when reporting by outlets like Kotaku unearthed a photograph taken in the “Cosby Suite”.4
The photo depicted several Blizzard developers posing with the Cosby portrait.
One of the men in that photo was Jesse McCree, a veteran designer at the company after whom the gunslinger character had been explicitly named.5
This connection transformed the situation from a general corporate crisis into a specific, targeted problem for the Overwatch brand.
The issue was not merely that a character shared a name with a disgraced employee; the problem was that the character was an in-game tribute to him.6
This honorific nature made the name untenable.
For employees still at the company, particularly the victims of the alleged harassment, having to work on, voice, and interact with a character that served as a monument to an alleged abuser would be a constant and painful reminder of their trauma.8
The name’s removal became not just a public relations decision, but an essential human resources consideration.
The power of this visual evidence cannot be overstated.
While the lawsuit contained pages of horrific but abstract allegations, the “Cosby Suite” photo provided a tangible, shareable, and unambiguous piece of evidence that the media and public could latch onto.4
It translated legal claims into a concrete image of toxic behavior, directly implicating the character’s namesake and creating a crisis that was impossible for Blizzard to ignore or downplay.
Following these revelations, Jesse McCree was confirmed to have been terminated from Activision Blizzard in August 2021.1
Part II: The Committee’s Decision: Deconstructing Blizzard’s Corporate Response
Facing an undeniable link between a beloved character and a toxic scandal, Blizzard’s response was a carefully orchestrated exercise in corporate crisis management.
The strategy was twofold: address the immediate problem while simultaneously insulating the company from future liabilities.
The Official Announcement and Its Language
On August 26, 2021, the Overwatch team released an official statement announcing the impending name change.5
The language used was deliberately aspirational, framing the decision not as a reaction to a scandal but as a proactive step toward upholding the game’s values.
The statement read, “We built the Overwatch universe around the idea that inclusivity, equity, and hope are the building blocks of a better future…
we believe it’s necessary to change the name of the hero currently known as McCree to something that better represents what Overwatch stands for”.5
This messaging strategically reframed a reactive, defensive decision into a positive, forward-looking one.
By avoiding direct mention of the lawsuit or the specific employee, Blizzard attempted to control the narrative, shifting the focus from “We are removing a name tied to a scandal” to “We are actively pursuing our values.” It was a classic crisis management technique designed to absorb the negative event and re-brand the response as a commitment to a better future.
A Two-Pronged Strategy: The Change and the Policy
Blizzard’s response went beyond a single name.
The team also announced a new, overarching policy: “in-game characters will no longer be named after real employees”.5
This was justified as a way to “reinforce that we’re building a fictional universe that is unmistakably different from the real world”.13
This broader policy shift was a clear form of corporate risk mitigation.
The McCree situation demonstrated that the once-charming practice of honoring developers in-game had become a significant business risk.
Each character named after a real person was a potential future liability, a PR time bomb waiting for a real-world scandal to detonate it.
The new policy effectively created a firewall between the company’s valuable intellectual property and the unpredictable behavior of its employees, permanently altering Blizzard’s creative process to prioritize brand safety.
The name change also had tangible consequences for the game’s development.
Blizzard announced that a narrative arc planned for September, which heavily featured the character, would be delayed to properly integrate the new identity.7
This confirmed that the change was not a simple find-and-replace function but a complex undertaking that required alterations to story, art, and likely a significant amount of re-recorded voice work.14
Part III: Erecting a New Monument: The Lore and the Retcon
With the old name slated for removal, Blizzard faced the challenge of creating a new identity that felt authentic to the character while serving the corporate need for a clean break.
The New Identity: Cole Cassidy
On October 22, 2021, the new name was revealed: Cole Cassidy, scheduled to go live in-game on October 26.1
The name was clearly chosen to maintain the character’s classic Western aesthetic.
Fans quickly pointed out the potential historical allusion to Butch Cassidy, the infamous leader of the “Wild Bunch” gang, which thematically aligned with the character’s outlaw past as a member of the Deadlock Gang.17
The Lore Justification: A Hard Retcon
Blizzard’s official narrative explanation for the change was not one of in-universe evolution but of retroactive correction.
The company decreed that “Jesse McCree” had only ever been an alias the character used to hide from his past.
His real name, they stated, had always been Cole Cassidy.6
The tweet announcing the name was accompanied by a narrative blurb designed to cement this lore: “The cowboy he was rode into the sunset, and Cole Cassidy faced the world at dawn”.1
This framed the change as an act of the character reclaiming his true self to “make things right”.14
This decision represented a choice where brand safety took clear precedence over narrative depth.
The writers had an opportunity to craft a compelling story where the character, as part of his redemption arc, consciously sheds the “McCree” name and its dark associations to forge a new identity.
Instead, they chose a “hard retcon”—a retroactive alteration of established fact.
A narrative of change would have required acknowledging the old name, keeping “Jesse McCree” as a canonical part of the character’s history.
The corporate goal, however, was not storytelling; it was the complete erasure of the toxic name from the brand.
A hard retcon accomplished this “clean slate” far more effectively.
This approach was confirmed with the release of the five-issue comic series Overwatch: New Blood in 2022, the first major piece of lore featuring the character post-change.19
The comic does not depict a moment of transition.
It simply begins with the character already being called Cole Cassidy by old friends like Ana Amari, who would have only known him as McCree.21
This cemented the change as a retcon, a point of contention for fans who felt a narrative opportunity was missed.23
This very public act of erasure, however, produced an unintended consequence.
A significant portion of the player base was previously unaware that the character was named after a developer.25
For them, “Jesse McCree” was simply a cool cowboy name.
The highly publicized name change, intended to distance the character from the scandal, inadvertently served as a global announcement of the name’s toxic origin.
This is a perfect example of the Streisand Effect, where an attempt to suppress information only makes it more widespread.
The change became the biggest advertisement for the very controversy Blizzard was trying to escape.
Part IV: The Town Square Debate: A Community Divided
The announcement of the name change ignited a firestorm of debate across social media, Reddit, and Blizzard’s own forums.
The community reaction was not monolithic but a complex and fractured spectrum of anger, support, confusion, and pragmatism.
The discourse revealed a fundamental conflict between the lived experience of the game’s developers and the established experience of its players.
The entire debate can be distilled down to a clash of two valid but conflicting viewpoints.
On one side was the player’s perspective: they had a multi-year emotional attachment to a fictional character, and the change disrupted their gameplay experience and the game’s established lore.
For this group, the name “McCree” was divorced from its real-world origin.
On the other side was the developer’s perspective: the name was an honorific for a real person tied to real trauma within their workplace.
For them, the name was inextricably linked to its toxic origin.
The controversy forced Blizzard to decide whose perspective held more weight: the comfort of the consumer or the safety and well-being of the creator.
The company ultimately, and necessarily, sided with its employees.
The table below categorizes the primary arguments that defined this heated public debate.
| Stance | Core Argument | Key Supporting Points & Quotes | Representative Sources |
| Against the Change | “Performative Virtue Signaling / Empty PR” | The change is a “lazy,” “dumb and pointless” gesture that does nothing to fix the underlying toxic culture. It’s seen as a way to “get the fans off our back” without enacting real change. “I want them to tell us what they are ACTUALLY going to do to keep their staff safe.” | 26 |
| Against the Change | “Disruption of Player Experience & Lore” | After 5+ years, the name is ingrained. The change is “jarring” and will cause confusion with in-game callouts. The lore implementation was “cringe” and a clumsy retcon that ruined narrative potential. “You can’t just change a name that has been a staple to a character for nearly 6 years.” | 23 |
| Against the Change | “Anti-Cancel Culture / Overreaction” | The change is seen as caving to “woke” or “outrage culture.” Argues for separating the art from the artist. “Cowboy mccree is not the same person as ex-employee mccree.” Some believe the community is smart enough to make the distinction. | 27 |
| For the Change | “Necessary for Employee Well-being & Respect for Victims” | Blizzard employees, especially victims, should not be forced to see or work with a name that honors an alleged abuser. “Imagine seeing this beloved cowboy with the same name of your rapist.” It’s a matter of basic empathy and creating a safe workplace. | 8 |
| For the Change | “A Necessary Corporate Disavowal” | A company has the right and responsibility to not have its products associated with or honoring individuals involved in serious misconduct. It’s a necessary step to disavow the actions and the person. “Jesse McCree the person definitely doesn’t deserve the honor and I’m glad they changed it.” | 9 |
| Pragmatic / Neutral | “It’s Just a Name, The Real Issue is the Culture” | This group focuses on the bigger picture. The name itself is less important than the sexual harassment that prompted the change. “It’s really not that big of a deal… what is a big deal is sexual harassment.” Many express they will adapt or just use a generic callout like “cowboy.” | 8 |
A fascinating cultural ripple effect of this controversy was the emergence of a meme within the community about the “McCree Mandela Effect”.32
Players began to humorously claim that a character named “McCree” had never actually existed and that people were simply misremembering the name “Cassidy.” This collective in-joke serves as a unique cultural artifact, demonstrating the community’s method of processing a jarring, corporate-mandated change through humor.
It is a coping mechanism that simultaneously acknowledges and trivializes the entire affair, creating new community lore out of a painful real-world event.
Conclusion: More Than a Name, A Reckoning
The change from Jesse McCree to Cole Cassidy was far more than a simple patch note.
It was a messy, public, and painful process of a company being forced to confront the ghosts of its own making.
Revisiting the statue analogy, the removal was not clean.
It left a fractured public, with some mourning the loss of a familiar landmark, others celebrating the removal of a painful symbol, and many simply confused by the empty space.
The new monument of Cole Cassidy was erected on a foundation of controversy, its identity and lore forever shaped by the real-world sins it was designed to erase.
The McCree-to-Cassidy affair stands as a landmark case study in the modern games industry.
It proves that the barrier between the creators’ world and the created world is fragile and permeable.
It highlights the immense liability of naming conventions in an era where developers are public figures and corporate culture is under intense scrutiny.
Ultimately, while the story is about a name, it is also about accountability, the complex dance of crisis management, and a global community forced to reckon with the uncomfortable truth that the games they love are made by fallible, and sometimes deeply flawed, human beings.
The cowboy’s new name will forever be a reminder of the day the real world broke the fantasy.
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