A recent Palworld update censored parts of the popular Pokemon-esq Pal-taming game. While the Palworld fervor has died down a bit thanks to competition in the form of games like Helldivers 2 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, there are still many playing the game across Steam and Xbox consoles. That said, players may notice some changes to the game that were never mentioned in any of the patch notes. They are small, inconsequential changes, but they are also technically censorship, albeit reasonable censorship.

While the changes were never mentioned by developer Pocket Pair, players quickly noticed them. Taking to Reddit, one player noted they can no longer name their world "P***s" like any distinguished Palworld player might. They provided some other examples, but you get the point. Pocket Pair has begun to crack down on various profanity and slurs. You can still name things after whatever you want, but they will be replaced with asterisks, even in single-player mode.

As one player astutely pointed out, this was likely not a problem on Steam, but on Xbox consoles it surely was. Like other console platforms, Xbox has very strict guidelines on what can and can't be said. They could have just made these changes to the Xbox versions, but it is easier to have parity across all versions going forward.

As you would expect though, not all players are as understanding of the decision, with some advocating these type of changes should be behind toggles and up to individuals.

"One thing that annoys me most about modern games is the forced censorship everywhere," reads a popular comment. "Make that s**t a toggle, enabled by default, possibly even locked by parental control on systems with that enabled, but don't f*****g treat me like a child and tell me what words I can and cannot use."

At the moment of publishing, developer Pocket Pair has not commented on the changes or the little bit of backlash they have created. We don't suspect this to change for a variety of reasons, but if it does, we will be sure to update the story accordingly.

Posted: Mar 08, 2024 2:49 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/palworld-update-censored-game/