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.
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.”
Blizzard subsequently clarified to Eurogamer that the company withheld the comic voluntarily, in order to be compliant with the law.
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.
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.”
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.