The Angry Fag

News and Views from a Man Who Likes Men

Blizzard CEO Hopes to Put Gay Friendly Guild Issue to Rest

Posted on | March 12, 2006

In hoping to put the criticism his company received, Blizzard Entertainment CEO Paul Sams spoke out about the company’s response to a recent incident where a World of Warcraft player was punished with a warning after publicly advertising her gay-friendly guild in the game. For those of you not familiar with the incident, World of Warcraft player Sara Andrews made a public post advertising her guild for recruitment and billing it as gay friendly. In response, Sarah received a warning for violating Blizzard Entertainment’s policy of harassment in regards to sexual orientation. When Sara appealed, the warning was upheld even though she used the term GLBT in a positive, politically correct manner. The incident sparked an uproar and even prompted Lambda Legal to contact Blizzard Entertainment because of legal issues that ran contrary to the actions taken.

In his statement, Sams shrugged off the incident as an "unfortunate mistake". I would probably call it a stupid mistake personally. He also says:

"It is expected and accepted that players will discuss a wide variety of topics, based on both the game world and the real world," Sams says. "Players are free to discuss personal characteristics if they wish, to include their sexual orientations and gender identities."

In order to attempt to please everyone, because the reason why Sara was given a warning was because someone might have been "offended" by her advertisement, Blizzard added a separate channel for guild advertisements so that people have to opt to see what is being said there as part of a patch pushed out in February.

You just have got to love damage control.

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