Why Tychus's Cigar was Removed from Heroes of the Storm

As you may well know, one of the main characters of the Starcraft Universe, Tychus, happens to also be in Heroes of the Storm. As you may ALSO be aware, one of Tychus’s most iconic articles was his cigar, which he chomped with impunity as he fought wave after wave of Zerg. It’s one of his most recognizable features, and something Starcraft fans adore.

So when Heroes of the Storm removed his cigar, well, people raised a fuss. They assumed Blizzard was censoring the character, or, worse, was altering it to make the game more ‘kid friendly’. There was an outcry to return the cigar, but today on Reddit, Blizzard employee PIGonzales explained why that will never happen:

“Heroes of the Storm is a multi-region game with a teen rating. There are a magnitude of guidelines we have to be aware of…. In the case of Tychus' cigar there were regions where he wouldn't be allowed to smoke. We have two options: Make 2 versions, one smoking, one non-smoking, [or] Remove the Cigar.”

Making 2 versions means more data management, multiple duplicates of the asset (if we update an animation, it has to propagate to all versions) such as the the death ragdoll model, The facial animations, his morph into the Odin, and apply that process to every skin as well. This mountain of work affects multiple departments and has to be addressed every time we'd adjust Tychus.

Remove the cigar. Put the development time into more content instead of bloating the management of one character. This is a decision based on productivity. The appeal of Tychus should not hinge on a cigar anyways, and we have no issue with that aspect of his character.

He then went on to say that Tychus wasn’t the only character getting this treatment: sometimes bones have to be covered and champions recolored to make things appropriate for different countries. Smoking, in this case, could cause the rating to jump up, which would not only split the audience, but would also bar some of the most important players from the game for something that, frankly, isn’t nearly as necessary to his character as some people think it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand where people come from. We love our characters, and betrayal to those characters can really suck—the cigar is considered extremely iconic, and taking it away is like taking Mario’s hat away, or Sonic’s… speed? At the same time… I mean… it’s still just a cigar. He should have quit smoking years ago ANYWAY.

I guess I’m not the person to judge. But still, it seems all the players’ desires will remain unsatisfied for the foreseeable future.