I’m sure at this point most people are familiar with Blizzard’s Overwatch and the success the game has had commercially and critically, but the game has also been very popular in the world of erotic fan art. And while erotic fan art is nothing new for the internet, some creators have gotten a cease and desist.
So many different creators have been making Overwatch pornography using Steam’s Source Filmmaker software. This software allows you to take models from games and animate them, so there were a lot of Overwatch videos that had the characters do a variety of naughty things. Many of the creators that used source filmmaker were recently hit with a cease and desist like the one below.
Now these notices haven’t been handed out by Blizzard but from Irdeto, a digital copyright protection agency that protects a company’s digital assets. Blizzard might have hired them to protect the Overwatch assets online, which in this case were used for porn.
What’s interesting is that these copyright claims are only being sent to people who used Source Filmmaker, not artists who hand drew the characters in erotic situations. It seems that Source Filmmaker is being targeted specifically due to creators using assets from the game.
One of the source filmmakers who was hit with copyright infringement posted his response on the Overwatch Reddit. Many news sites have posted how the creators used assets from the game, but according to the Reddit post that is not completely true. As user Spornm explained “The models used in the most porn videos have been modified, a lot. For one there is the obvious fact that the models are nude or can be made to be nude. Fun fact Blizzard didn’t make that part…Often the model makers add a ton of extra little things and all of this isn’t done in sfm.”
So it’s not fair to say that these artists completely stole the assets from the game, as they have been heavily modified. Also mentioned by Spornm is that there are many non-pornographic SFM videos that use the games models, and these haven’t been taken down. It would be one thing if the source filmmakers were trying to profit off Blizzard’s work, but all of these videos were made for fun.
Of course, over the last few months Overwatch’s characters have been the subjects of a lot of porn. After the game’s beta dropped on May 2, Pornhub saw %817 increase for Overwatch porn searches. You’ll notice some significant spikes in the searches on March 30th, which is when major gaming news outlets were reporting on the Tracer Pose Controversy. Even though Blizzard replaced Tracer’s pose, it seems like the character had already made quite an impression on players. In the tidal wave of Overwatch porn, “Overwatch Tracer” was the top search. And hey, while were here, Pornhub’s statisticians also found that South Korea searched for the most Overwatch Porn, with the US not even making the list.
While Blizzard has every right to protect their license, it’s strange that the Overwatch SFM Porn videos were targeted for copyright infringement. Considering that fans have had no legal troubles making SFM porn out of huge franchises like Mass Effect, Uncharted, Bioshock Infinite, The Witcher 3, and Borderlands, this situation is questionable. Perhaps Blizzard just wants to protect children from accidentally discovering Overwatch porn due to the sheer volume of it. If you just search “Overwatch widowmaker” in google images, within the first 20 results you’ll find a pornographic image. Considering that Overwatch is rated T for Teen and is very popular among a wide audience, maybe Blizzard wants to keep the porn more hidden while the game is still new. Which is ironic since me, and many other outlets, have already written about it.
