Since its reveal back in May, Battlefield V has been subject to criticism on various fronts including the high-octane gameplay uncharacteristic of the actual World War II and the portrayal of women on the front lines, among others.
Now, the upcoming title has come under fire for censoring seemingly harmless words in its beta release, which was made available a couple of days ago.
Forbes reports that the open beta for Battlefield V has a rather strict filter in the in-game chat, which bans seemingly harmless words like "DLC", "lag", "laggy", "Titanfall", and "defend". Interestingly, you can still use variations of these words like "free DLC" without being censored. It also restricts players from using words that can be used in an offensive manner but are absolutely fine when used in context like "Nazi", "Jews", "white man", and "nuts", among others.
It"s unclear as to why such a ludicrous filter was applied in the first place but EA Community Manager Jeff Braddock has responded to the criticism surrounding it as follows:
We’re really excited to have you join us for the Battlefield V Open Beta, and we hope you’re enjoying the Beta and the new features.
One of the new features we’re working on is a profanity filter in-game to reduce toxicity.That being said, we have heard some complaints that the filter is blocking words that aren’t profanity or shouldn"t be blocked, like “DLC”, etc. and isn"t blocking some words that should be (obviously, I will not be providing examples of these.)
Please note: This is a work-in-progress and we will be taking this feedback to tweak the sensitivity of the filter and improve its usage without censoring relevant conversation.
Healthy discussion is what drives improvement in our games, and we’d never want to impede that.
Thanks for bringing your concerns to us regarding the current iteration of the profanity filter and we’ll keep working on it.
Since the game is slated to release on November 20, one would hope that EA improves its profanity filter, which - in its current state - prevents any meaningful conversation from taking place. Apart from this, the open beta for Battlefield V is also facing criticism for its sub-par performance in some locations, and some placeholder art assets, but that will hopefully change when the title is released in a couple of months.