Popular Twitch streamer and former World of Warcraft streamer Asmongold has slammed Blizzard over its new World of Warcraft update, which censored two in-game paintings of women. One of these paintings featured a woman in lingerie laying down. This painting is now a basket of fruit. The other painting featured a robed woman. This one hasn’t been completely removed, but the character’s cleavage has been covered up. As you would expect, these changes have been getting a lot of attention, including plenty of criticism and backlash.
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Replying to a tweet relaying word of the changes, Asmongold replied with “What a f*****g joke lol.” This response prompted a reply asking if the changes annoyed the streamer, which he responded to with the following:
“To see developers retroactively go back and change content because it doesn’t conform to their world view and message they’re trying to use the game to promote, yes it annoys me,” said Asmongold.
Naturally, this also attracted plenty of replies, including one asking Asmongold if developers shouldn’t have control over their own game or if it was just the messaging that he was bothered with, which prompted the following response:
“I have a problem with the message, I think it’s stupid and reductive,” said the streamer. “There’s nothing wrong with cleavage or sexuality, but there is something wrong with pretending like there is.”
At the moment of publishing, it’s unclear why Blizzard made these changes, but as you may know, this isn’t the first time Blizzard has done something like this with World of Warcraft. Back in 2019, The hero artwork for Jaina was also randomly changed, without explanation, to cover up the character’s cleavage. In other words, speculation that this has something to do with the ongoing investigation by the state of California into Activision-Blizzard — which has already unearthed a wide range of behavior ranging from unprofessional to appalling, often at the expense of women at the company — may be off the mark.
As always, we will be sure to keep you posted as the situation develops. We don’t expect Blizzard to address the changes, but it does, the story will update accordingly. In the meantime, feel free to hit the comments section with your thoughts or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there. Do you agree with Asmongold?
