Why sexy Overwatch fan art is so abundant

Blizzard’s approach to the Overwatch fan community, including the more sexual aspects of that fandom, has been fascinating.

We’ve talked about why the fandom is so passionate — albeit in a slightly cheeky way — but the video above goes into much more detail about why so much of the fanart is sexual in nature.

Blizzard often seems to go out of its way to make these characters feel like they belong to the fans, and the company implicitly encourages those fans to take up that emotional ownership and build upon it. You can check out the official cosplay reference kits, for starters, although there have been takedowns issued over some of the more graphic videos that are often used commercially.

So if you’re drawing a comic strip about two characters falling in love and/or having sex? That’s likely going to be fine. If you’re creating adult videos and then putting them up against ads in order to make money? That may not be so fine.

Anyway, exploring the sexuality of these characters is an important part of the fandom and, as a kind of bonus, it’s likely an area of their lives that will never be canonically proven or disproven by Blizzard itself. No matter what happens in the official animated films or whatever Blizzard says explicitly about these characters’ sexual preferences, rarely will there be anything that exists in the game that would completely rule out any combination of characters from hooking up.

You can watch the above video for a deep dive into this subject, or you can just be happy that Blizzard went out of its way to create a universe where, no matter what you’re into, you’re likely to find someone or several someones hot as hell.

It’s a conversation that often begins with people reacting all:

Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon

Before rapidly switching into being all:

Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon