"It's a beta, we can't alter the small sections of code needed to do this lawl. Home rox btw!!11!"

Why oh why do Sony keep screwing themselves over?

I can see why Sony is being cautious, given the proclivity of online communities to gravitate towards hostile and abusive vernacular, but this is a bit far to ensure a 'safe gaming environment'.

Hello! Christ, Sony is so gay.

What you have to keep in mind is that the more censorship they code, the less they have to waste their precious money actually monitoring the forums. The way I see it, and the way I'm positive Sony sees it, is if they ban enough words, they can cure internet hatred.

Hmm, so real world profanity is out, will this mean a proliferation or substitute swear words such as Battlestar Galactica's "Frak" (that's the only example I could think of sadly).
Personally I'm hoping "Taffer" from the Thief series will get some use. Can anyone think of video game created obscenities that we as hardcore gamers should be bringing into use in Home.

@adam locked

I'd understand that argument in any online game that has a point (WoW, other MMO's) and has nothing to do with real life, but Home is just a social tool-- people should be allowed to discuss aspects of their personal life with each other. It's not offensive _at all_ to say "I'm a 25 year old straight male", so why should it be offensive to say "I'm a 25 year old gay male"? Just because it makes people uneasy or confused doesn't mean it should be completely blocked out.

Never used any of those words, so I never noticed it. I did have one case though, where I think the Sony Censoring Device must have went into overdrive. It was in the clubhouse. Me and another dude from this site were just chatting and all of a sudden it just started censoring like every other word I was saying for no reason. LOL. But it didnt tell me, the dude I was talking to said "I think its taking out some of the word you are saying." I reported it in the beta forums.

Oh, and my take on the word gay. It has been my experience that the word gay, at least in the gaming community, is used 99% of the time in an improper form as an insult. Just ask anyone who has played on xbox live - same thing. 1% may suffer, but in comparison to the 99% who will not be using it as an insult, you would think the dude would understand that they're just trying to do good. Do I agree with censorship, no, but in this case I can at least understand that Sony isn't in a war against the word gay. They just understand that many gamers are homophobic assholes.

LOL. Why would that GOd Hates Fags asshole have people remove his favorite insult? What is he gonna call the dude who just did the humpty dance on his leg in the bowling alley, a horse apple?

I stick by the idea that it may upset some gay folks, but in the end, removing the word from a community that uses it 99% of the time as an insult is doing a service. It probably gets old hearing it used as an insult all the time, if you're gay.

Homophobes tend not to use or like the word Gay. They will stick with Fag or Queer.

You're all Gay

also,

@Jim: I was thinking in a conversation ("That was so gay."), Gay would pop up more than Fag or Queer. You're right though, on Live I hear the latter two WAY more often.

This is what happens when people give into this "Politically Correct" bullshit. What is and isn't appropriate to say changes so often that it's impossible to keep up with. Remember when midgets wanted to be called midgets? Now all of a sudden the word midget is offensive. They want to be called dwarfs now. I would think that the word dwarf would be the offensive term, but apparently it's not.

And I'm not even sure, are we supposed to call black people black or African American?

My point is, this isn't Sony's fault at all. It's the fault of all the PC douche bags who are constantly telling us what we can and can't call people, and can't even make up there minds on what they say. Sony was probably just banning the word gay to be ready for a few years from now when gay people decide that they want to be called "sexually challenged" or something stupid like that.

Referring to ~donkeykong~ post i must say that is an interesting perception it might be even crazy enough to work. you know sony do what you have too; Home is nothing but a virtual Xbox live with the integration of The Sims

I hope every time you try and say 'Gay'....it plays that voice from Daytona USA that says "Nothing nasty now!" when you try to say 'GAY' or 'SEX' in the top scores.

Was that Daytona or Rush?

Fuck this. Stop the fucking censorship, Sony. It's fucking stupid. Or at least make it fucking optional, for Christsakes. Fucking assholes.

Jim Sterling at 12/28/2008 10:41

And I mean real homophobes here, not the general idiots who just think saying "you're gay" is really, really funny. So, not people like Quest.

your right i don't think it's funny at all Jim ... but you make me laugh :)

Buh, tried to post a comment, and it didn't appear - does Dtoid have a language filter?!

Surprise, Home sucks ass. Next.

Hell I can't even get it to work I've only used it once before decided to check it out again and bang boom error with downloading content. Decide to delete home and redownload, yay network error.

Now it just plain doesn't work.

Liberal propaganda.

I think it's a shame that Sony are in danger of alienating the very people they think they're trying to protect by banning certain words. Over at GayGamer, people setting up clubhouses on Home have been having to use things like 'g*ygamer' in their clubehouse names to get around the problem since the start of the beta so Sony must be aware of the situation and the stupidity of a policy that can be circumvented with an asterix. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that the word 'gay' is prefered by gay people over any other word to describe their sexuality and it's taken such a long time for society to get to the point where we have a word that is fairly innocuous and simple and understood by all. The fact that it's used by a minority of idiots as an insult is irrelevant - the word 'black' could be used as a racist insult but could you imagine Sony banning the word? Me neither.

Oh, and for all the people above who are asking why 'gay' needs to be mentioned at all in home, it's twofold; 1) Home is supposed to be a social netwoking/gaming hybrid and gay gamers want to be able to game together just because (and also to avoid the idiots) and 2) visibility - the said idiots aren't going to go away and things are never going to get better by simply pretending that gay people do not exist, it would be better to expose them to gay people, it might open their tiny minds.

Finally, to say that Home is an underwhelming experience is an understatement; there's not much to do or see at the present time. If Sony really are concerned about bad language/hate speech etc then maybe they could pop up a couple of billboards in the central square from any of the myriad of anti-racism/homophobia/bullying organisations just to remind people not to be dicks and to give people something to look at that isn't an advert.

Ok, now I'm unimpressed. Seems to me Dtoid filters out my comment because it has deduced I must be a offensive spambot using words like gay multiple times, great.

TheDreadHawk at 12/28/2008 13:47

Quest is still here? Wow.

why shouln't i be here ? loll

Pretty weaksauce, on Sony's part at least. Sure, they're covering their asses, but no "Hello"?