The critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has been available on Xbox consoles for quite some time now, and this has led to some ridiculously hilarious situations thanks to Microsoft’s infamous profanity filter which cannot be fully disabled.
In case you didn’t know, all Xbox consoles have an automatic filter to censor any bad words that might pop up to scare their players during their gaming sessions. This is active at all times and on all games regardless of whether parental restrictions are disabled. Enter Final Fantasy XIV, a decade-old game with hundreds of pages of accumulated text.
In an X (formerly Twitter) post made by user Jason, where they highlighted the issues, people mentioned the terrible filter’s effect on the game’s messages. It goes to the point where one of the earliest dances available is awkwardly censored.
With the game’s recent release for Microsoft’s console, it would be inevitable to have a few words accidentally censored here or there, but things scaled up to a whole new level with certain words, showing that the filter could definitely use some more testing.
The post itself mentioned another problem brought to light through a Reddit post by TGB_B20kEn, where the user claimed they were banned by mentioning “Free Company”, the game’s equivalent to guilds.
In reality, they were using the Xbox-exclusive group searching tool, and the ban was issued by Microsoft themselves. Apparently, they thought the user was requesting something for free, which is an even bigger case of bad communication between Microsoft and Square-Enix.
But Harvest Dance having its “STD” portion censored is by far the funniest unintentional thing I’ve seen in a while. It has scaled to a level where the FFXIV Subreddit even included it in its annual April Fools’ pranks. Just mention any possibly censored word and you get this:
Unfortunately, Thanalan isn’t censored in-game, but many other words are. Many terms such as “raids” can’t even be used properly without the filter kicking in. Abbreviations such as “f up” are also censored even if they don’t have any foul meaning in context.
This is yet another of the FFXIV Xbox controversies, as some have already complained about having to pay for an Xbox Game Pass subscription on top of FFXIV’s own sub. Many Xbox users already have Game Pass and use it for other games, but it’s still a bit inconvenient at the very least.
As of now, it’s unclear if Microsoft will revoke any previous and future unfair punishments to affected users. The filter is currently still active and there’s currently no sign it’ll ever be changed. I’m still astonished by how they let that slip in, you just can’t make this up. Actual April Fool’s pranks have to step up or they’ll bite the dust left by Microsoft themselves.
