You may have heard something recently about the sudden, not-at-all-surprising proliferation of Overwatch... well, porn. Kotaku did an impressively in-depth report on the phenomenon a few days ago, but the short version of the story is that some people want it, and so other people are making it. And in a few instances, to startlingly high standards—or so I'm told. But it's recently come to light that someone, presumably Blizzard, is working to have it all taken down.
A Redditor by the name of Spornm, who uses the Source Filmmaker to make his movies, posted an image of a message he received from Pornhub, which removed one of his videos after it was sent a notification of infringement. He said he'd had a second video taken down for the same reason, and linked to an image of yet another takedown notice, for a different video (created by someone else) that had been sent to Gfycat.
As PCGamesN points out, the Gfycat takedown comes not from Blizzard, but from Irdeto, a “digital platform security” company that works with “pay-media operators, content creators, software application providers and connected device manufacturers to protect valuable digital assets.” It's possible, I suppose, that Irdeto has taken the initiative on this without Blizzard's knowledge, but the greater likelihood is that Blizzard has contracted the company to get this kind of thing off the net.
As for why it's showing this sudden zeal for cracking down on the digital naughties, the Kotaku report indicates that at least some of the models used in these videos are ripped directly from the game, which differentiates them from, as Spornm put it, “that Tracer artwork you drew in class,” and presumably gives Blizzard more of a reason to drop the hammer. I've reached out to Blizzard to confirm that it is in fact behind the takedown notices, and I'll let you know what I hear. But as Overwatch drama goes, this one is no buttroversy.
