Back 4 Blood, the cooperative multiplayer FPS zombie game from the creators of Left 4 Dead, is currently running an early access test for pre-orderers and through Twitch drops. For the most part, the Back 4 Blood early access beta has been very successful, but one surprising and alarming controversy has stood out. Recordings of a Back 4 Blood zombie saying a racial slur have gone viral, leading some to question if the slur's inclusion was intentional and prompting an official response from publisher Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. says, according to a statement issued to Kotaku, that slur "was not recorded or ever intended to be part of our gameplay." In other words, it's not something that Turtle Rock put in the game with intention. Warner Bros. clarifies that what sounds like a slur is actually the result of "two different [zombie] growls that are playing simultaneously." In so many words, Turtle rock put in two separate sounds that individually are obviously not slurs, but when put together front to back the result is self-evident.
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As for where Warner Bros. and Turtle Rock go from here, the company has no intent to fix or alter the issue as part of the Back 4 Blood early access period. Early access ends at noon PT Monday, anyway, so a fix would arrive late. Instead, Warner Bros. has said it will try to have the problem fixed before Back 4 Blood's previously announced open beta begins, or full launch beyond that. It seems audacious that Warner Bros. won't fully commit to fixing the problem for the open beta, but that could just be a technical limitation as that version of the game may already be packaged and ready to go.
Some are questioning the validity of Warner Bros.'s explanation for the sound effect. They note that the recordings of the Back 4 Blood slur are identical, making the idea that two sound effects randomly pairing up to create an identical sound seem impossible. What's likely happening is Turtle Rock implemented a system where two random zombie sound effects play one after the other, making a small library of sound effects sound like a much larger selection. The specific combination that creates the slur would then be rare, which fits the situation at hand.
It's odd to think that the culprit at hand was an automated system and randomization, but that appears to be the case. As video games become increasingly complicated, as game developers like Turtle Rock create systems that go so far as piecing together Back 4 Blood zombie exclamations from shorter zombie exclamations, anything's possible. A Turtle Rock intern may have to comb through every possible combination in the future to ensure they're all appropriate.
Obviously, no one at Warner Bros., Turtle Rock, or in the Back 4 Blood player base wants to have to deal with this. Online multiplayer communities already deal with enough casual bigotry without it being found within the games themselves. This specific instance, however, appears to be an unfortunate and completely unintentional accident.
Back 4 Blood releases October 12 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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Source: Kotaku