Blizzard Entertainment Punishes User for Recruiting LGBT-Friendly Guild Members

Posted on | January 31, 2006

It never ceases to make me laugh when a company attempts to go out of its way to avoid controversy and finds itself hip deep in it. In its attempt to make Worlds of Warcraft politically correct, Blizzard Entertainment gave player Sara Andrews a warning for "harassment - sexual orientation". What did Sara do? She was recruiting other players for her guild which she publicly advertised as LGBT friendly.

When Sara appealed the warning, Blizzard still decided that her non-offensive, politically correct use of the term "GLBT" was in error. They also felt that, in spite of the fact several gay guilds in existence on the service. Blizzard however upheld the warning by stating that the "advertisement of a ‘GLBT friendly’ guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise." The other gay guilds in turn have preemptively contacted Blizzard for clarification of the policy.

The policy in question forbids discussion of various controversial topics listing political, sexual, and religious topics as some of the topics not to be discussed. Blizzard has said it will revise the policy for more clarification. Of course by this they mean they will attempt to do PR recovery but there is a pretty active thread in their forums already talking about the issue.

I recently got sucked into the realm of Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) by my brother who plays Star Wars Galaxies. Not only am I openly gay on that game, but both of my characters on the Shadowfire galaxy are "gay". Sony has never come down on me for it. I have been harassed a couple of times but I shrug it off because some people do lack emotional maturity and so forth. I do not even bother to report them to Sony. Instead I just play with their heads by making comments about their Reaction Formation, their grasp of the obvious, and other such things. It is much more fun and, to be honest, reporting someone for calling me a "fag" or "homo" is plain, old tattling and in my opinion is just as childish as these kids lobbing the insults at me in the first place. Shit like that is was what the /addignore command is for.

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