‘Mecha BREAK’ Dev Studio Apologizes After ‘Trump’ Censored From In-Game Chat, Claims Banned Word List Was Suggested By “A Third-Party Company”
Korean developer Amazing Seasun Games has offered a public apology after it was discovered that its upcoming title Mecha Break had instituted a game-wide chat ban on the term ‘Trump’, but had not done the same for the names of either Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.
A massively-multiplayer mecha combat game, https://store.steampowered.com/app/2452280/Mecha_BREAK/ invites players to customize their own unique mechs, from their armor, to their weaponry, to their paint jobs, before flying into battle against their fellow pilots.
While the game has yet to receive an official release date, it is currently holding a closed alpha playtest, thus allowing the aforementioned chat ban to be discovered by players.
One such player was none other than former World of Warcraft dev and current anti-DEI video game activist Mark ‘Grummz’ Kern, who on August 10th took to his personal Twitter account to reveal, “Mecha BREAK CENSORS TRUMP. Leaves Kamala and Biden alone.”
Sharing a screenshot wherein his own attempt to send the message “Trump vs Kamala Harris vs Biden” to the game’s global chat had the former President’s name censored with asterisks, Kern asserted, “I’ve gotten a report that Mecha BREAK is censoring Trump from chat, but not Kamala Harris or Biden. I tested it myself to verify. I’ve reached out to their community manager to ask about this obvious political interference in gaming.”
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Shortly after Kern’s post, the Mecha BREAK dev team took to the game’s official Twitter account to both admit to the unfair chat moderation and apologize for its implementation.
“Attention Pilots, during the past few days of our playtest, we have received feedback that our list of censored words in the game’s chat was in need of some refinement,” wrote the team. “If you have been offended by any player language in chat, please accept our apologies. English is not our team’s first language, as we are an Asian game studio and have never attempted to launch a global game before.”
Moving to explain just how the banning of Trump’s name actually came to be, the devs recalled, “We sourced a list of words from a third party company which included words for multiple languages that would not likely come up during gameplay, as game chat is primarily intended to be used for team coordination. We are currently in the process of revising the censored word list and making changes in real time. If there are any hurtful words or phrases that have been missed, or censored words that you believe should be uncensored, please send them to our customer support.”
As of writing, it is currently unknown which specific “third party company” was consulted in regards to Mecha BREAK‘s chat filters.
However, given the very specific targeting of just Trump’s name, it’s more than likely that it was one based somewhere in the United States.
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