People react negatively to this stuff because its cynical and tedious and costs the developers nothing and turns games into lifestyle products to appeal to people with no authentic sense of self or purpose, which ultimately leads to shittier games and more incendiary stunts. Twelve different combat barks and a promotional comic is not something people who aren't generally ludicrous can identify with, gay or otherwise. I know, I know: according to the media, representation in media is a core pillar of socially conscious politics. Who would have guessed? Here I was thinking there was no more obvious sign that a movement was officially dead and buried than getting official sponsorship courtesy of an industry giant, but no this is definitely a very important step that surely precipitates more concrete social change and after all there's no historical record of this kind of thing sublimating sustained activism to conspicuous consumption and empty cultural signifiers. Weird that a representation can be so shallow, non?
I think what everybody should keep in mind is that what makes this noteworthy at all is the C-word. No, canon. If you want a gay Soldier 76 it's just a Google search away, hombres. Whether the point is personal validation or something definitely completely different like masturbation, well, the internet is a big fantasy machine and I don't feel the least bit weird about guaranteeing a bottomless well of fan-crafted media featuring Soldier 76 in every possible configuration of identities you find appealing without even bothering to check. This doesn't cut it though, because the sort of person that cares about Overwatch lore to begin with is already so deeply, irretrievably lost down the rabbit hole of brand engagement that they can't even get hard without a Blizzard logo floating around somewhere in the picture. Fandom is un-official, an inferior product. It doesn't "count" unless the objectively fake, non-person is a certifiably real, gay, character with a trademark and everything. Bonus points for deciding that the next character out of the closet would be the most conventionally masculine jaw-marine in the roster for maximum subversion, because the other half of the point here is colonizing existing symbols of male power and staking your claim over meaning itself (and ensuring the strongest possible reaction, which is how clicks are made). The more audaciously done the better it works because the whole idea is to get people to accept that the truth is whatever your media betters tell you it is.
Reflecting demographic reality has nothing at all to do with this. Controlling reality is more lucrative, and surprise, it's a much easier trick to pull on people who wonder if the fictional character in question is really gay or not. This kind of mental illness isn't unique to fandom sub-cultures but it's particularly grating in cases like this, because the insinuation into existing communities is the whole and only point. No one would care about an all-female Ghostbusters if men didn't hate it. The taking is the point. It's an assertion of already-existing power (to simply buy ideas themselves) and general enfranchisement (piles of money and infinite social currency as long as Hollywood has anything to say about it, i.e., probably not for much longer), deliberately exclusionary, maximally provocative, masquerading as an appeal to the needs for inclusion and acceptance of the marginalized. Pure trolling, in other words. Oh, but why are people so upset? Hmm.