Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Overwatch holiday comic banned in Russia after character is revealed to be gay

By

overwatch comic russia tracer queer
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Blizzard’s recently published Overwatch holiday comic book has been blocked in Russia for portraying a tender, romantic kiss between two women. The comic, an innocuous and heartwarming story that follows some of the characters from Blizzard’s first-person multiplayer online battle arena game during the holidays, confirms the character Tracer as canonically queer by depicting her kissing her partner, Emily, after giving her a gift. Twitter user Malkythera noticed and shared that the comic is blocked from viewing in Russia.

Hey, side note:

The comic is blocked in Russia. pic.twitter.com/Ufai38oIZN

— 🍹🤖Pasochan.moe on bski 🚲🐙 (@PasokonGal) December 20, 2016

Fellow Twitter user YellowAfterLife translated the text on Malkythera’s post as follows: “In accordance with russian law we cannot share this comic with our players on territory of Russian Federation” [sic]. The particular law to which the block alludes was passed in 2013 to protect children from “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships.”

Recommended Videos

Blizzard subsequently clarified to Eurogamer that the company withheld the comic voluntarily, in order to be compliant with the law.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Businesses or individuals distributing material that is perceived to promote or normalize non-hetero-normative relationships can be subject to fines or deportation if they are non-Russian. Russia has a long history of being conservative with regard to homosexuality, but President Vladimir Putin’s regime has been particularly aggressive in its anti-LGBTQ stance, earning the ire of human rights organizations and activists around the world.

Related

As is traditional on the internet, many fans had already made Tracer queer in their headcanon. There’s even a subreddit for fans shipping the pair of Tracer and the sniper Widowmaker.

Lead hero designer Geoff Goodman actually teased the reveal in a November interview with the Kotaku gamer’s guide: “There is an LGBT character in the game. It’s difficult, because we don’t want to just be weirdly heavyhanded with this. We have comics and a bunch of other media to show this. We don’t want to force something in the game that is just going to feel like it’s in people’s face. We don’t want people to be like, ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’ There is a character, though, and we’re going to go into that more soon.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Will Fulton
Will Fulton
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
Despite its rocky start, I’m still optimistic about Overwatch 2’s future
Lucio and other heroes attack enemies in Overwatch 2 story missions.

Overwatch 2’s launch year didn’t exactly go as planned.

In the lead-up to its October 2022 launch, the excitement for the hero shooter sequel was sky-high, largely thanks to a planned Hero mode. As its release date approached, several choices during development would erode that hype. That would include the departure of Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan, a controversial swap to five-player teams, and plans for a revamped battle pass and microtransaction system. Even more complaints arose when new characters were initially locked behind a battle pass and Blizzard ditched its planned PvE campaign -- which was arguably the biggest justification for creating the sequel in the first place..

Read more
Why Overwatch 2’s show-stealing new hero took an extra four years to debut
Mauga poses in Overwatch 2.

With the switch to 5v5, Tanks became a make-or-break part of any Overwatch 2 team. While Support and Damage players can rely on another player of their class to pick up their slack when they struggle, tanks no longer have that privilege. As a more casual Overwatch 2 player who’s not competitively viable, this has discouraged me from playing as a tank. While I do like the abilities of characters like Junker Queen, I’m hesitant to play as them because I’m worried about being the player that causes my team to lose. Mauga, the latest Overwatch 2 hero, looks to change that, but it took years of ideas and concept reboots on Blizzard’s end.

Unveiled at BlizzCon 2023, Mauga is an aggressive Samoan tank allied with Talon that can tear through enemies with his two chainguns and dash that makes him invincible. That makes him enjoyable for those who like more offensive Heroes, but Support fans will find some stuff to love with abilities that can heal other players or give them infinite ammo. I had the chance to play Mauga at BlizzCon 2023, and for the first time since Overwatch 2 was released, I’m eager to go back and play as a Tank.

Read more
Overwatch 2’s story missions are the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel
A giant turret in set up in Gothenburg in Overwatch 2's story missions.

Overwatch 2: Invasion finally brings three PvE story missions to the competitive shooter, but it was an arduous process to get here.

When Blizzard Entertainment first announced Overwatch 2 in 2019, the game’s main hook was new cooperative story missions that would finally give players the Overwatch narrative content they yearned for alongside more replayable Hero Missions and a Talent skill tree system. When Overwatch 2 eventually launched into early access in October 2022 after several leadership changes, it was free-to-play and lacked any narrative content. To make matters worse, a May 2022 announcement from Blizzard that it canceled work on the Hero Missions system put the future of PvE story content into question for many Overwatch players.

Read more