Overwatch Playboy Magazine Shut Down Via Copyright Claim By Blizzard

Overwatch, like many games that feature voluptuous characters in skin-tight body suits, was and is a hotbed for … shall we say "risque" images created by the fan community. Sometimes for fun and other times for profit.

These X-rated exhibits have caused quite the headache for Blizzard who has publicly opposed their existence, issuing tons of DMCAs last year to get content from websites like PornHub taken down (although, as sites like r/OverwatchNSFW prove, that content is still readily available, but that's besides the point).

But, Blizzard porn-related ban hammer struck again recently, this time targeting the fan-created Playboy-style Overwatch magazine "Playwatch." Their website, PlaywatchMagazine.com, now only has one page available, a message from the creators saying "We have received a notification from a digital copyright protection agency that claims Playwatch Magazine infringes Blizzards' intellectual property rights. For that reason, we have contacted Blizzard directly and decided to close the website until we have an answer from them."

We did an interview last month with the one of the creators of Playwatch – who also run a general Overwatch fan site called Overpog, where he told us that Blizzard had to know there would be porn of their game.

That being said, Playwatch did not contain any nudity, much like the actual Playboy magazine (for about a year up until yesterday, actually). Overwatch fan art, nude or otherwise, is hardly ever a target of a copy right claim (otherwise, you can say goodbye to deviantart.com), unless they actually use in-game assets, like some of the content on Pornhub. So this raises the question as to why Playwatch was targeted among the crowd.

Where Playwatch may have crossed the line was by setting up a Patreon to accept monthly donations. This sort of monetization using Blizzard's copyrighted imagery was, of course, going to be a priority target, so to speak. For the record, the Patreon has also been shut down and, according to Google cache, was only at $63 total per month at the time of shutting down.

Let that be a lesson to all those out there, if you're going to make Overwatch porn, don't try to sell it. Unless you're Brazzers, or PornHub or any of the professional artists out there who sell commissioned Overwatch porn daily, but hey whatever.