As the lawsuit at Blizzard continues on, the Overwatch team have took action and removed a number of McCree’s voice lines from the game. The name Jesse McCree comes from a former employee at Blizzard who was recently revealed as a member of the Blizzcon group chat, “Cosby Suite”.
Following the ongoing lawsuit, McCree left the company, since then the Overwatch team has then made the decision to rename the in-game character Jesse McCree.
Reddit user ‘DoctorDeadeye’ took to the platform to share his findings when he discovered that almost every McCree line has been removed from the current build.
The post read “Back in September, Blizzard announced that Jesse McCree would be receiving a name change due to him sharing his name with a Blizzard developer who was implicated in the harassment lawsuit.”
“They also said that the original plan was to launch a McCree-centric story arc in September, but due to the rename that content would be delayed until later in the year and Malevento would launch in its place (Malevento was itself delayed so it wouldn’t distract from the news about the lawsuit).”
“Well, it seems like the first steps of that process have begun. Almost all of the voice lines and interactions that mention Jesse McCree by name have been removed from the current build of Overwatch.”
“McCree’s spawn lines and Echo’s ultimate line when she dupes McCree have remained – these are important gameplay information and are necessary for players to know what is going on.”
McCree’s own personal voice lines have remained in the game for now, but other characters will not have voice lines that address him by his name. McCree will be given a new name at some point in the near future, erasing the name Jesse McCree from the game altogether.