Blizzard Entertainment stepped on a landmine recently when it agreed to replace an “overly sexualized” victory pose for Tracer, one of the heroes in its upcoming team-based shooter, Overwatch. Now that the replacement pose is finally out, and somehow the studio seems to have miraculously satisfied almost everyone.

Background

The whole fiasco started when Overwatch forum user Fipps criticized one of Tracer’s victory poses (above, left), which is shown on the win screen after a match is over.

“What about this pose has anything to do with the character you’re building in Tracer?” Fipps said in a post on the Overwatch beta forums. “It’s not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol.”

Game director Jeff Kaplan responded to Fipps’ post, saying that he agreed that the pose did not fit Tracer’s character, and it would be replaced in an upcoming patch.

This sparked a storm of controversy among Overwatch fans, many of whom felt that Blizzard was caving to the demands of one person in order to make Overwatch more politically correct in order to not offend anyone.

Many fans opposed to the change pointed out that while Tracer may be a silly, spunky character, that does not mean that she can’t be sexy as well.

Kaplan later responded to the people criticizing his decision, saying that the design team had not been satisfied with Tracer’s pose in the first place, and the choice to replace the it was only partially influenced by Fipps’ forum post.

“That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor,” Kaplan said. “We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better.”

The new pose: Same butt, more Tracer

Yesterday, Blizzard introduced the replacement for Tracer’s pose (above, right), and while the new one is not as butt-centric as the original, it certainly is not trying to hide it either, and so far, the reception for the new pose has been overwhelmingly positive.

Many fans who wanted the pose replaced are happy that Tracer’s personality is more prevalent in the new pose, and fans who opposed the change are happy that they still get to stare at a fictional character’s butt—oh, and also something about censorship.

Some internet detectives on Reddit determined that the new pose was inspired by a classic pin-up design from artist Alberto Vargas, which seems to have made the anti-censorship crowd even happier.

Screenshots by Eric David | SiliconANGLE