Racial Slur Shows Up on Minecraft Main Menu, Mojang Apologizes - Polidicks

[img]http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2012/01/d6737635efe2c4d3a6747455b87e9e2b.jpg[/img] [quote]The newest version of Minecraft greets players with the sentence "You are a NIGGER," if they switch their language settings to Afrikaans, the language spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It appears to have been the doing of an unruly Minecraft user who was among many people who worked on language translations of the popular game. Minecraft's developers at Mojang have apologized and pinned this on the player-translator. The screenshot above is from Kotaku's Mike Fahey's version of the game. The largely text-free Minecraft is playable in a multitude of languages (56 by our count if you include Pirate and Canadian English), and relies at least in part on [url=http://mojang.com/2011/12/15/minecraft-dev-snapshot-week-50/]user-submitted translations[/url] of the menus and other text. Mojang's Jens "Jeb" Bergensten became aware of the problem today, [url=https://twitter.com/#!/jeb_/status/162958742214811649]tweeting[/url] the following: [img]http://i.imgur.com/OBYFA.png[/img] This is certainly one of the hazards with crowd-sourced development; quality assurance becomes very important, and it's possible for things like this to make their way into a game that millions of people play. Still, it's a bummer that it happened. Kotaku has reached out to Bergensten and Mojang for comment and will update if and when we hear back.[/quote] [url=http://kotaku.com/5880007/racial-epithet-shows-up-on-minecraft-menu-developer-apologizes]SOURCE[/url] EDIT: UPDATE [b]‘Prankster’s’ Racial Slur Found in Minecraft Won’t Be Removed til Next Update[/b] [quote]Minecraft's head developer has elaborated on how a racial slur made it into a "snapshot build" of Minecraft's PC version, noting that it was not pushed to all users. As such, Mojang, the game's maker, won't remove the offensive language until the next such update. "Snapshot builds," as Jens Bergensten explained, " are intended to give eager users a preview of the update to come," and update about once a week. Users must opt in to receive the builds, so what comes in them is not a true, full update sent to all 5 million premium users. The furor arose when it was noticed that switching the game's language option to Afrikaans, a language spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia, returned a button option that said "You are a NIGGER." Mojang immediately apologized and Bergensten blamed crowd-sourced translation for the inclusion of the offensive language. He elaborated on that in a statement to Kotaku. "In these snapshots there are about 50 language files translated by the community, and it happens that they are ruined by pranksters," Bergensten said. "Players are quick to find and fix these, so they are removed in the next snapshot." "Snapshot builds" are useful to Mojang because they help identify bugs and provide feedback on new features in progress. It's also a way to show eager, avid users what is coming next. However, as "snapshot builds" are pushed out weekly, this code won't be fixed to remove the offensive language until the next build rolls out, which Bergensten said will be Thursday. "I usually only do panic updates when there are severe bugs, such as bugs that corrput save files, or make the game unable to connect to servers, and such," Bergensten told Kotaku. [/quote] [url=http://kotaku.com/5880179/pranksters-racial-slur-found-in-minecraft-wont-be-removed-til-next-update]SOURCE[/url]

Terrible QC and far and few patches. Minecraft... you were something I once loved. :c

Looks like Mojang applies the same level of QA to bug-testing and translations.

christ i feel bad for them

Bahaha

Wow. What a douchebag. I mean, that's hilarious. But still a pretty dick move.

Wow, that translator sure had a grudge with Mojang I guess.

[QUOTE=mixshifter;34422802]Wow. What a douchebag. I mean, that's hilarious. But still a pretty dick move.[/QUOTE] Goes to show how much respect Mojang and Minecraft warrant nowadays.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;34422810]Goes to show how much respect Mojang and Minecraft warrant nowadays.[/QUOTE] Not necessarily, I can easily see this happening in just about any other game. It's just the matter of how well you actually moderate what is getting translated. The fact this got through shows they're not doing much of anything to assure these translations are even legit.

[QUOTE=Protocol7;34422810]Goes to show how much respect Mojang and Minecraft warrant nowadays.[/QUOTE] Their users caused an issue and they apologized for it and dealt with it. Yes, I would say they deserve some respect for that.

[quote]Canadian English[/quote] Singlepleher [editline]January 27th, 2012[/editline] Oh god why does flagdog say I'm in the states now I just look like a tool

What a jackass.

Best thing I've seen all day.

Still hoping they go bankrupt.

-snip-

[QUOTE=The one that is;34423161]Still hoping they go bankrupt.[/QUOTE] why would you ever hope for that I mean jesus fucking christ I can understand not fancying the game but to hope for people to lose their jobs just cause you don't like the game I mean what the fuck

[QUOTE=cryticfarm;34422787]christ i feel bad for them[/QUOTE] For what it's not like it's really that bad.

Did they even think to test the translations?

why does everyone hate mojang and minecraft all of a sudden

Wow did they even look at the submitted translations?! 'OH HURP DURP THIS MUST BE CORRECT IMMA ADD IT LOLOL UPDATE LIVE'

[QUOTE=certified;34423187]Hoax. Switched language to Afrikaans in Minecraft. No "Nigger" to be found.[/QUOTE] Maybe because they just fixed it.

[QUOTE=SystemGS;34423214]why does everyone hate mojang and minecraft all of a sudden[/QUOTE] Minecon controversy, and that "The Best Gamers" troll review. Everyone will say it's for other reasons, and don't get me wrong those other reasons are pretty valid, but those two incidents served as a catalyst, suddenly the bandwagon went from playing minecraft to hating on it. Don't get me wrong it deserves flak for stuff like this, but for the most part the general hate is pointless.

And thus concludes today's business management lesson of the day: never hire random people on the Internet to do the work for free. :v:

[QUOTE=The golden;34423270]Did they really stick translations into the game without even TESTING to make sure they work? That's like 0% QC. [editline]28th January 2012[/editline] Notch promises shit. The shit never arrives. People get upset. Why is this so hard to grasp? Are people not allowed to dislike things? Why do people have to be on a "bandwagon" to hate things. Christ that word is becoming so overused and misused.[/QUOTE] As I said, people have a right to be somewhat upset and disappointed, but it has gone just a little too far.

[QUOTE=asteroidrules;34423256]Minecon controversy, and that "The Best Gamers" troll review. Everyone will say it's for other reasons, and don't get me wrong those other reasons are pretty valid, but those two incidents served as a catalyst, suddenly the bandwagon went from playing minecraft to hating on it. Don't get me wrong it deserves flak for stuff like this, but for the most part the general hate is pointless.[/QUOTE] I don't really understand the bit about Minecon controversy. Was that that little bit of a fight between Notch and the Yogscast guys? I didn't pay much attention to that. Either way it's still a fun game.

[QUOTE=asteroidrules;34423256]Minecon controversy, and that "The Best Gamers" troll review. Everyone will say it's for other reasons, and don't get me wrong those other reasons are pretty valid, but those two incidents served as a catalyst, suddenly the bandwagon went from playing minecraft to hating on it. Don't get me wrong it deserves flak for stuff like this, but for the most part the general hate is pointless.[/QUOTE]Actually a lot of the people here hate on minecraft because it's this cool concept but the devs never seem to actually add anything to it anymore except the occationa animal and items.

[QUOTE=asteroidrules;34423256]Minecon controversy, and that "The Best Gamers" troll review. Everyone will say it's for other reasons, and don't get me wrong those other reasons are pretty valid, but those two incidents served as a catalyst, suddenly the bandwagon went from playing minecraft to hating on it. Don't get me wrong it deserves flak for stuff like this, but for the most part the general hate is pointless.[/QUOTE] Eh, I don't think that the bandwagon hate is warranted, but I personally think that The Best Gamers did do a good job of making people realize that Minecraft wasn't the ultimate game. If you get past all the hype, it's actually quite mediocre. And I do believe that it is true that Notch is (or was) a bit immature and lazy. I hope we see a Minecraft revival sometime soon, though. Amazing things still happened with it. Edit: Also, Mister Sandman, apparently (as far as I understood), Notch accused the Yogscast as being assholes, being mean to a bunch of people, etc. but later the Yogscast rebutted Notch's claims (kind of), and they were shown to have just been joking around and such and Notch blew it way out of proportion. I think it's really just opinion, though, whether you think that the Yogscast were really assholes at Minecon or not. Edit2: Here are some links about it: [url]http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/the-yogscast-notch-fiasco/[/url] [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/mkjci/hate_insults_and_threats_are_flooding_in_from/c31oib6[/url]

[QUOTE=mixshifter;34422824]The fact this got through shows they're not doing much of anything to assure these translations are even legit.[/QUOTE] It's not like they can do much aside from ask people if the translation is correct.

[QUOTE=Lizzrd;34423337]Actually a lot of the people here hate on minecraft because it's this cool concept but the devs never seem to actually add anything to it anymore except the occationa animal and items.[/QUOTE] So they hate the game because the game they liked at one point continued to be the game they liked? I don't get it. I mean, yeah, it's a bit annoying how long it takes for shit to come out, but why not just get a bunch of the many really cool mods?

[QUOTE=SystemGS;34423214]why does everyone hate mojang and minecraft all of a sudden[/QUOTE] It wasn't really sudden. It's been like that for months now.