Last year was a rough one for Gearbox Software head Randy Pitchford. He had this awkward and downright horrible song performance, and he also released the game Battleborn, which we ranked as one of the biggest disappointments of 2016.
Battleborn was released around the same time as the game Overwatch, our unanimous game of the year selection. The games are somewhat similar, but Overwatch is clearly overshadowing Battleborn on every level.
Possibly in a creative way to bring more attention to his failed game, Pitchford has decided to share a link to the game’s porn subreddit.
VERY NSFW, but I have received reports that BattlebornRule34 is now a thing on Reddit. LINK WITH CAUTION: https://t.co/laA7tR4Dgs
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) January 16, 2017
Now, fair warning, a lot of the stuff on this subreddit is NSFW, but people on the Internet decided to have some fun.
This went well. pic.twitter.com/XYtDA0H4RP
— Aoife Wilson (@AoifeLockhart) January 17, 2017
Like the games themselves, Overwatch porn is clearly the better quality cartoon pornography. Since Overwatch’s release, the Internet has exploded with the manufacture of realistic game pornography, even prompting a major adult film studio to make a live action version. While the Battleborn porn is uninspiring, the Overwatch variety uses quality, in-game animations to provide a truly immersive experience.
Randy himself is still trying to figure out what to do with this sudden porn takeover.
What's the correct response for an IP owner when folks try to turn your IP into pr0n? This is just… wow.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) January 16, 2017
Blizzard, Overwatch‘s creator, attempted to crack down on the porn pandemic to save children from seeing a XXX Google image search when researching the game. But Blizzard failed horribly, and Overwatch porn is as popular and accessible as ever.
According to the laws of the Internet, any kind of effort to censor content just makes that content spread even faster. Pitchford and Gearbox Studios risk a proliferation of Battleborn porn if they attempt to publicly go after it.
And it’s not just Battleborn that is failing. According to Pitchford, Gearbox was talking with Nintendo about making games for the new Nintendo Switch, but that didn’t pan out.
@dECU_nutt I do not see that as happening. We were talking to Nintendo, but that stopped for some reason. They have other priorities.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) January 15, 2017
It’s a shame to see Gearbox fall this low. After developing classics like the Borderlands series as well as an entry in the Duke Nukem franchise (not to mention the Half-Life PlayStation port), it’s shocking to see them have to resort to porn in order to bring attention to their games.
