On Tuesday, Amazon launchedNew World, its fantasy MMO. The game has already become virally successful, as top Twitch streamers helped drive early demand. With hundreds of thousands, if not millions of players gaining access toNew World’s servers, aspects of the MMO previously undiscovered are being unearthed. One of the more audacious examples stems fromNew World’s character creation system. Specifically, players are entirely disallowed from naming their character “Jeff Bezos.”
Jeff Bezos is, of course, the CEO of Amazon and soAmazon Game Studios. Why his name is has been filtered so as to be disallowed inNew World’s character creator isn’t clear, but the obvious implication is that Amazon or Bezos himself isn’t happy with the idea of his name being attached to any player behavior. Word filtering for usernames isn’t uncommon, with MMOs filtering profanity from names for decades. These filters don’t typically censor real-life names, however, and definitely not company CEOs.
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Technically speaking, it isn’t just the full name “Jeff Bezos” that’s being filtered. According to PC Gamer, it’s any name “Bezos,” including variants like “Bez0s” and “Be Zos.” Amazon even goes so far as banning “JeffB.” All of these names are reported to pull up the prompt “Cannot be used.” This is the same prompt that is shown if players try and include swear words in their character’s username. Suffice to say, this wasn’t an accident. A lot of thought has gone into preservingBezos' name inNew World.
But Bezos' name isn’t the only odd term that’s been censored inNew World. The brand name “Amazon” has also been flagged as an unacceptable term for a character’s name. For example, the name “Unionize Amazon” was attempted, only to be rejected. Suffice to say, Amazon doesn’t want any funny business going on inNew World, at least related to the company name and its CEO.
Luckily, even Amazon can’t filter every name tied to Jeff Bezos or Amazon. If anything, filtering those names has only encouragedNew Worldplayersto be creative. For example, the name Beff Jezos was already created with PC Gamer testing it. Odds are there are already characters that push the boundaries of appropriateness out there already, too.
As silly it may seem, there are serious ethical questions regarding the nature of Amazon’scensorshipfor names inNew World. That’s because, bottom line, it is a form of censorship. If Amazon’s willing to censor its CEO’s name and its brand name, what stops it from censoring other brands it’s partnered with, individuals related to those brands, politicians' names, or otherwise. There are worthy questions regarding this situation inNew World. Questions that are unlikely to be answered by Amazon.
