The actress who supplies the German voice work for Overwatch’s Pharah has had her work replaced in the game’s latest patch, version 1.10, seemingly without her knowledge.
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The change was confirmed byBlizzard on the German Overwatch forums. According toGoogle Translate, they say “sometimes we cannot continue working with certain [voice actors] due to availability issues or similar unforeseen difficulties… we have such a case with the German version of Pharah.”
Prompted by the announcement, many fans of the original actress, Ghadah Al-Akel, posted messages of support on herwebsite’s guestbook. In her reply, she says those messages were the first she’d heard that her work had been replaced. She says she was willing and available to record new lines, and that she feels “a certain disrespect”.
Ringo308 has a nice summary on Reddit, which has so far drawn over 280 replies. He says Al-Akel “has been in the industry for over 20 years and I am sure every German has heard her voice somewhere.” He concludes very sensibly: “I think it would just be fair to get a proper explanation from Blizzard why the replacement happened.”
Indeed; it’s all a bit strange. We’ve reached out to Blizzard for comment, and will update this story if and when we’re able to give that explanation.