At this point its safe to say that the lively and energetic Tracer has become the official mascot for Overwatch, and with such popularity come ridiculous amounts of nitpicking.

Time time around the complaints are centered on Tracer's victory taunt that has her looking over her shoulder towards the camera in an "uncharacteristically sexy pose", and while these sort of "discussions" almost always devolve in to a virtual shit-flinging match, this one has managed to remain relatively civil with both sides bringing up interesting arguments. Here's an excerpt from the main post:

"When we look at the way she's portrayed in promotional media, lore, and art in game we know a few things about her...

She's Fast.

She's Silly.

She's Kind.

She's a good Friend.

Her body seems to be comprised of about 95% spunk.

Then out of seemingly no where we have this pose:

WHAT? What about this pose has anything to do with the character you're building in tracer? It's not fun, its not silly, it has nothing to do with being a fast elite killer. It just reduces tracer to another bland female sex symbol.

We aren't looking at a widowmaker pose here, this isn't a character who is in part defined by flaunting her sexuality. This pose says to the player base, oh we've got all these cool diverse characters, but at any moment we are willing to reduce them to sex symbols to help boost our investment game."

Even though my initial response to this sort of a complaint is to simply ignore it, the poster does have a somewhat valid point and his arguments are well presented. If we're going with Tracer's lore, she should be in a much more taunting/cheerful position than the generic one presented here, simply look at the cinematic trailer as an example.

However, even with all of this considered, most of the time the story would end here and no one would really care, but Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan materialized out of nowhere and stated that they would be removing this victory pose from Tracer and replacing it with something better:

"We'll replace the pose. We want *everyone* to feel strong and heroic in our community. The last thing we want to do is make someone feel uncomfortable, under-appreciated or misrepresented.

Apologies and we'll continue to try to do better."

As you might imagine, this sort of a statement quickly brought out the best and most articulate forum members who engaged in a mature discussion about censorship, patronization and the problem of Blizzard backing down from their ideas after a single complaint... by which I naturally mean that people got angry, loud, and disrespectful.

Although, I do understand where they're coming from because Blizzard has a history of bowing down to even the tiniest of pressures, as they've proven by removing a ship called "Tyrande's Silence" (which is a pretty cool name if you ask me) from World of Warcraft because at one point in the entire story someone told Tyrande to stop talking.

I mean, can you really fault them for removing this monstrosity!? (image source)

Thankfully Kaplan came back and reassured everyone that they weren't happy with that pose themselves, and that the community complaints simply reaffirmed what they were already thinking. And most importantly, that the Overwatch team is not willing to sacrifice their vision just because of some complaints:

"We weren’t entirely happy with the original pose, it was always one that we wrestled with creatively. That the pose had been called into question from an appropriateness standpoint by players in our community did help influence our decision—getting that kind of feedback is part of the reason we’re holding a closed beta test—but it wasn’t the only factor. We made the decision to go with a different pose in part because we shared some of the same concerns, but also because we wanted to create something better.

We wouldn’t do anything to sacrifice our creative vision for Overwatch, and we’re not going to remove something solely because someone may take issue with it. Our goal isn’t to water down or homogenize the world, or the diverse cast of heroes we’ve built within it. We have poured so much of our heart and souls into this game that it would be a travesty for us to do so."

While I generally don't care about such silly issues, I'm glad that Jeff Kaplan got involved in all of it and explained the team's stance on the controversy, rather than simply letting the situation devolve in to an endless cycle of rage and accusations.

As a final note, is it hilarious to anyone else that people are complaining about Tracer's pose while she's 90% legs with her chest being so small I doubt her heart is even able to pump blood all the way down to her feet. Ahh... silly Internet complaints are silly Internet complaints. At least this whole mess spawned some rather interesting discussion, and even got Blizzard involved in it, so I guess everything worked out fine and dandy in the end.

Next up, we must stop Hanzo from being objectified, poor guy has to wear baggy pants so people don't stare at his butt all day! (That's a joke, please don't actually complain to Blizzard).

[Update]: A new pose has been introduced, both sides are happy, Internet outrage is thankfully over.