Overwatch players are being banned for mentioning Winnie the Pooh

There’re reports regarding the wave of bans that are being imposed over the Chinese players who mention Winnie the Pooh, the lovely bear, in the Overwatch’s game chat. Victims of a simple question, in regards to who the best friend of Tigger is, type in the name of Winnie the Pooh – and get permanently banned.

You can find a translation of one of the claims on ResetEra, while the affected Chinese players are sieging the official Chinese Overwatch forums. They claim that Blizzard does not respond to the appeals in a positive way. Apparently, there’s an agreement between the developers and the government to justify these silly bans, because none of the appeals seems to be resolved in the favour of players. The resentment within the Chinese Overwatch community is growing strong, and the situation is indeed troubling, although from our perspective it might seem hilarious.

The whole controversy might be due to the fact that the Chinese government has been trying to ban the character of Winnie the Pooh for a long time because the name of the innocent bear is being used to mockingly describe China’s general secretary Xi Jinping. There’re a lot of memes regarding the topic, but if you are from China and if you dare to type Winnie’s name in chat you'll get instantly banned for insulting the leader of the country.