Turtle Rock Studios has addressed concerns over an effect heard by some players in Back 4 Blood’s early open beta last week that resembled a racial slur.
The sound was mentioned by a variety of streamers, including HomBKE, whose clip contains a flash when the zombies‘ growls sound tons just like the n-word, as he commented, “These zombies a special breed”.
It was far away from an isolated moment as another player mentioned an equivalent sound, adding, “Bro they gotta do something with this line.”
These zombies a different breed pic.twitter.com/1GMXlsSYse
— Da Homma (@HomBKE) August 6, 2021
The developer finally addressed the difficulty last night, issuing the subsequent statement on the official Back 4 Blood Twitter account:
“There may be a known beta issue where several ridden growl sound effects are randomly combined by the system in such how to make what seems like an offensive slur. While unintentional, we take this very seriously and are profoundly pitying any hurt or harm this might have caused. This issue are going to be fixed before launch.”
It’s no surprise that this can are unintentional and an oversight, given how Back 4 Blood already features a somewhat overzealous profanity filter in its text chat.
Although the team had tweeted on August 11 that Back 4 Blood has now gone gold – where the sport has supposedly reached its final state able to be shipped – it likely means there’ll still be other bugs to iron out with a pre-launch or day-one patch when it releases on October 12.
— Back 4 Blood (@back4blood) August 12, 2021
Back 4 Blood’s early beta had been a hit on Steam alone, which racked up 98,000 concurrent players. the sport also supports cross-play with players on PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
Back 4 Blood is currently in open beta this weekend until Sunday, August 16 at 8 pm BST.
