Turtle Rock Studios has addressed concerns over a sound effect heard by some players in Back 4 Blood‘s early open beta last week that resembled a racial slur.
The sound was brought up by a number of streamers, including HomBKE, whose clip contains a moment when the zombies’ growls sound a lot like the n-word, as he commented, “These zombies a different breed”.
It was far from an isolated moment as another player brought up the same 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 issue last night, issuing the following statement on the official Back 4 Blood Twitter account:
“There is a known beta issue where several ridden growl sound effects are randomly combined by the system in such a way to create what sounds like an offensive slur. While unintentional, we take this very seriously and are profoundly sorry for any hurt or harm this may have caused. This issue will be fixed prior to launch.”
It’s no surprise that this would have been unintentional and an oversight, given how Back 4 Blood already has a rather 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 game has supposedly reached its final state ready to be shipped – it likely means there will 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 success on Steam alone where it racked up 98,000 concurrent players. The game 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 8pm BST.
Elsewhere, a since-amended description in QuakeCon 2021’s schedule hinted at a “revitalised” Quake appearing during the digital event next weekend.
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