Social Issues
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Real World Matters In-Game
There has been much heated discussion about the recent Blizzard PR debacle stemming from an incident in which a player was reprimanded by a GM for advertising for her gay-friendly guild in a general chat channel. The discussion expanded to debate the “visibility” of a player’s and/or a character’s sexual…
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TN Boffins Ask Blizzard for Public Statement on Harassment Policy
Several of the Terra Nova folk have written an open letter to Blizzard. They ask the publisher of World of Warcraft for a formal statement saying that their Game Master was wrong to sanction player Sara Andrews for recruiting for her gay-friendly guild in WOW‘s public chat channels. They also…
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Lambda Legal Gets All Up in Blizzard’s Grill
Lambda Legal has issued a letter to Blizzard (full text posted on Kotaku): Although Blizzard is well within its rights to insist that players avoid referring to other gamers in an “insulting manner,†Blizzard cannot issue a blanket ban on any mention of sexual orientation or gender identity. There is…
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Player Seeks Clarification on Blizzard’s Harassment Policies
I found a post containing a player’s commuications with Blizzard regarding the LGBT issue. The player sent emails requesting clarification on sexual orientation and role-playing situations. The gist of the communications seems to be that, if anyone in the game takes offense to the actions of a player, Blizzard may…
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Blizzard: We Like Gays, Just Don’t Talk About Them
GamesIndustry.biz has an official statement from Blizzard Entertainment regarding their position on the issue of in-game recruiting for gay-friendly guilds. Blizzard states that polarising issues like religion, politics, and sexuality tend to result in conversations that result in harassment. Therefore all such “sensitive real-world” topics are banned from conversation in…