It's been 3 years since our criticisms of OW because of the unnecessary exclusion of unambiguous Black Women and this is what they do during US #BlackHistoryMonth after *checks notes* VICE mischaracterized their response to the SEC filing made regarding diversity recruiting. https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/1358860902573957126

It's true Western diversity practices do not apply in every country, diversity does not look the same everywhere and in every business org. Sales may have a higher % of male employees whilst HR may have a % of female employees.

Some areas are more likely to have more diversity than others however that doesn't mean you leave them in the state they are in.

And on the note of original character design art, this isn't the first time we've seen a non-white character become a white character at roll-out.

In 2017, Jeff Kaplan responded to Vivian Phillips' letter on the lack of Black Women in game saying many positive things but also *checks notes* "We shipped the game with only 70 of us and now we number 100. So it's impossible for us to represent all walks of life."

....Now, how can this ring true when some original character art represents Black & Brown characters but the playable shipped characters become White?

How can this ring true when white women/male/non-binary characters, vastly out number any other raciall
grouping in game?

How can this be true when there are 6 non-human characters is representing a Black woman so obscure of a task?

And it's not a case of planning, because a Blizzard has also stated characters like Ashe were not planned to be an in-game hero.

Since then, Blizzard have announced that Sojourn a Black female character originally shown in art for OW1 will be released as a playable character in OW2.

But this is definitely late. And whilst many of us who criticised Blizzard for this were left fighting anime avatars on why Winston, a talking Gorilla, is not a Black Women or why Symmetra is a wonderful Indian character however does not count as a Black Women; (cont'd)

Other games such as Apex, Rainbow six siege & Paladins, picked up the slack at shipping or released playable characters after seeing the wave of criticism.

All of this leaves us to think what is changing within Blizzard. Who is consulting with Blizzard, what push back are they receiving, *IS* anyone consulting with them? If at least with their social team so tweets like this don't rub salt in the wound.