In an event the songsmiths will someday call ‘the shot heard around the world,’ an Overwatch hostess club has been unceremoniously scrubbed from Twitter (via Automaton). But not to worry, it lives once more.
Named OW_CabaretClub, the club wasn’t some kind of Overwatch-themed physical location but rather a Twitter-based service that let Overwatchers hire women to play alongside them for a fee. Punters could, if they were so inclined, get in on some flirtatious multiplayer or fall asleep with their partner in voice chat.
The idea comes from Japanese hostess clubs—which any Yakuza player will be familiar with—where people (mostly if not entirely men, let’s be honest) can turn up and find a drink and a lady who will pay rapt attention to whatever they say.
It wasn’t long before the club’s Twitter account was blasted off the face of the Earth. Speculation is that Blizzard didn’t take kindly to its existence and the breach of its terms and conditions, but I’ve reached out to the studio to ask if it had a hand in the club’s banishment from Twitter and I’ll update if I hear back.
But not to worry, it was almost immediately replaced by an Apex Legends-themed hostess club instead. Under a suitably Apex-y name, the new account has enjoyed a thus-far untroubled life offering similar services to players of EA’s hero shooter, which seemingly has less stringent rules about the whole thing. Or, more likely, which doesn’t pay quite as much attention to people leveraging its brand on social media. It’s not entirely clear if the new account is tied to the banned Overwatch club, but the timing sure does make it seem like they’re related somehow.
Per a machine-translated Japanese-language ad, players can fork over a certain amount of “nyan”—which could either be a cutesy way of saying yen, the Nyan cryptocurrency, or something else entirely— for a “basic play” session of 30 minutes (1500 nyan), which can be extended in 30-minute increments for a slightly lower fee (1000 nyan). The “falling asleep” service, which lasts 2 hours, adds on an extra 4000 nyan while a “hidden option” costs 6000, and doesn’t that just set your mind racing? Some of the service’s hostesses, notes the ad, won’t perform all of its options.
Regardless, I’ve reached out to the club to ask it to clarify these and other questions, and I’ll update if I hear back. My wider confusion about the world in which we live, on the other hand, is likely to never be cleared up at all.
