Blizzard Gives the Cold Shoulder to GLBT-Friendly Guild
In a strange, and rather eyebrow-raising bit of community moderation, Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, has cited a guild member under their “Harassment - Sexual Orientation” policy.
Sara Andrews did what all good guildies often do: try to recruit members from general chat areas in a game. What she didn’t expect was her message to get flagged by Blizzard moderators as inappropriate. What did she say wrong? Silly Sara mentioned that she was recruiting for a GLBT-friendly guild. Not a GLBT-only guild…not some offensively ‘out and proud’ guild, but a guild that would welcome GLBT members into a supportive gaming environment. Confused, she emailed Blizzard to see if the flagging had been a mistake, and to her further surprise, the company upheld the decision based on a clause in the game Terms of Use that states:
This category includes both clear and masked language which insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or other players.
I wasn’t exactly sure how Blizzard considered the recruitment to insultingly refer to much of anything, although they kindly cleared up that little bit of confusion by also saying that
While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a ‘GLBT friendly’ guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to ‘be temporarily suspended from the game.’ However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning.
How kind of them to only issue her a warning.
Rather than foster a community of understanding, Blizzard seems more willing to ban inclusive guilds in order to keep the peace in an already unruly online world. It seems easier, at least in their opinion, to keep things simple, and keep things straight, than to have to deal with the fracas and potentially hateful reactions of other WoW players.
As one reader suggested in the comments to the article when it hit Slashdot, “Blizzard has a LONG history of turning a blind eye to assholes and jerks, simply because they’re a large portion of their fan base.” Oo…unhappy fans in the Blizzard camp. Unhappy indeed.
If you’re interested in this issue, have a good read through the In Newsweekly article “Blizzard of GLBT Gaming Policy Questions” and make darn sure to read the comments on the Slashdot piece, they’re worth their pound in gold. I suspect the debate will have started to wind down now, seeing as this news is, like, so last week, but it’s interesting to think that some feel that the easiest way to protect GLBT players is to keep their existence under the table.
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10 opinions for Blizzard Gives the Cold Shoulder to GLBT-Friendly Guild
Ingrid
Feb 1, 2006 at 4:15 am
Was she seeking people in-game?
A lot of people recruit for glbt-friendly guilds in the forums - or at least they did when I lived there and checked their boards religiously to see what was going on. I don’t know what’s going on these days.
I know there was a gay guild getting started toward the beginning (back in the day), and the message board was a billion pages long and full of supportive comments and people interested in participating. Dunno if Blizzard ever interfered with that, or not.
Thanks for the post. I honestly hadn’t thought of this as an issue in WoW. It’s ridiculous of Blizzard to send out a warning for something like that.
Tor
Feb 1, 2006 at 4:15 am
Would someone pleaaaae explain what the… GLBT is?? *dies of annoyance for not knowing what it is*
Ingrid
Feb 1, 2006 at 5:56 am
LOL.
Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender
Tor
Feb 2, 2006 at 11:22 am
oooh…
Cyranu
Feb 2, 2006 at 7:13 pm
That must have been one bigoted GM who answered that ticket.
the play girlz gaming blog: because guys aren’t the only players » Blizzard Apologizes to Gay Friendly Guild Founder
Feb 13, 2006 at 2:21 am
[…] Erin posted not too long ago about the incident between Blizzard and a WoW player attempting to recruit people for a gay-friendly guild. For her troubles, player Sara Andrews was given a warning by a Blizzard costumer representative and told she was in breach of the game’s Terms of Service. […]
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Feb 26, 2007 at 9:03 pm
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May 14, 2007 at 12:52 am
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Dennis Hoppe
Apr 3, 2008 at 9:29 am
Why did she feel it was necessary to give ANY sort of sexual orientation while recruiting? She could simply say she is “recruiting” .. period..
Saying that she is GLBT friendly, implies that others are NOT. I for one, recruit without knowing or caring what their sexual orientation is. Its a non-issue. If she is allowed to state that she is FOR it.. then others must also be allowed to say they are against it. IE.. recruit for an anti-GLBT guild..
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