Players creating characters in The Outer Worlds may have noticed that some words are not being allowed as character names. Now, fans of the game have discovered that The Outer Worlds censors over 500 words as names, including words such as “gay,” “transgender,” and “Muslim.”
The list of censored names was recently shared on the PC Gaming subreddit. The list, which can be viewed on this Pastebin page, blocks a number of words that may be considered politically loaded, such as the aforementioned examples. In addition to this, it also bans some other words that simply refer to a person’s nationality in a non-offensive manner.
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The list is striking people as odd due to how inconsistent it is. Some of the highlighted phrases are banned in one or two languages, but for whatever reason are allowed in another. The most notable example is based around the Polish and German words for “lesbian,” which are banned, while the English word itself is not. In addition to this, the list also seems to ban two-letter abbreviations for country names, such as “BR” for “Brazil” and “PT” for “Portugal.”
The inconsistency in how the list bans certain words while allowing others has led some people to theorize that the game’s developers, Obsidian, simply bought the list from a company that maintains these. As for why, folks are guessing that they did so for regulatory purposes, as these companies would likely be better equipped to deal with local regulatory boards.
Of course, a number of folks are upset that the game is banning certain words from being used as names. The Outer Worlds is a single-player game, after all, and no other players will be encountering a player character with an offensive name. However, others are pointing out that the censorship may be due to the possibility of streamers broadcasting the game online using names with banned phrases.
Despite the censorship, players are finding ways around it. Already, a number of players have declared that they’ll be using clever, pun-based names. Despite Obsidian’s best efforts, it looks like players are going to continue to find ways to have fun with their character names.
