Overwatch, Blizzard’s latest online multiplayer game, has certainly taken the world by storm. The game boasts over 10 million players to date, and its focus on quick matches and casual play, plus its colourful roster of characters like Brazilian hero Lucio and the energetic but controversial female character Tracer have helped turn Overwatch into a worldwide phenomenon.
Logically the game is popular in the Far East too, with Overwatch having overtaken the likes of League of Legends as the most popular multiplayer game in Korea, and is also a fan-favourite in Korea’s giant neighbour China.
And Blizzard recently decided to honour a Chinese man named Hongyu Wu who passed away just a day before the game’s worldwide release on May 24 this year. Wu was looking forward to taking out the game for a spin, and allegedly talked about it frequently with his friends. But his life came to a tragic end on May 23 though, when he spotted a thief taking one of his pal’s motorcycles and decided to pursue the robber in order to get it back. This led to a fatal crash that cost Wu his life.
While many would consider Wu’s conduct heroic though, perhaps taking justice into his own hands wasn’t the best course of action, as he could just have alerted the police instead, letting them deal with the thief, instead of pursing the criminal in a real-life GTA-style chase that led to his untimely death.
This is the astronaut suit that can be seen in the image above, featuring the man’s name and a message above it in Chinese which reads “Heroes never die”, which is a nice touch from Blizzard in honour of a fan who sadly never got to play Overwatch, but who ended up being a part of it all the same…