Profanity filters, homophobic slurs, and Blizzard’s shaky relationship with the LGBT community

Posted by on 01 25th, 2012

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Warning: This post may contain language that is offensive to some. Yesterday on the official World of Warcraft forums, a poster brought up the fact that the word “transsexual” gets censored by Blizzard’s mature language filter. Almost immediately after, another poster brought up the fact that the word “homosexual” is censored as well. The obvious follow-up question has stirred a hornet’s nest of controversy: “Why are these considered bad words?” Predictably, that thread quickly spun out of control. It was ultimately locked by a moderator, but not before Community Manager Bashiok chimed in: “Transsexual” censored by filter We’ve reviewed our filter list and there are a few words there that should not be blocked as profanity; we’ll be removing them in a future patch. source So, case closed, right? Well … hold on. Before we simply close the books on the matter, there are some important questions to be answered. Namely this: Why was transsexual censored in the first place? Continue reading Profanity filters, homophobic slurs, and Blizzard’s shaky relationship with the LGBT community Filed under: Analysis / Opinion , Blizzard Profanity filters, homophobic slurs, and Blizzard’s shaky relationship with the LGBT community originally appeared on WoW Insider on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink