POSTED BY

John Brownlee

AT 4:45 AM
Tuesday December 9, 2008

PC

disney • pc • profanity • pure

Disney's Pure shields kids from profanity by including Urbandictionary on the disc

pure-screenshot-08.jpg

Disney games almost always contain profanity filters, and these filters are apparently ripped directly from Urbandictionary.com in several languages, including English, Dutch, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Italian.

Urbandictionary is as exhaustive and authoritative a source as any to make sure that toddlers playing Minnie Mouse Pattycake multiplayer don't get propositioned with donkey punching, but the way Disney included the profanity filter in their off-road racing game Pure is laughably inept: an exhaustive list of profanity and shocking sexual metaphor is included as a plain text file in the game's install directory, just waiting to be discovered by the same kids Disney presumably wants to shield from dirty sanchezing and the like.

In short, when a kid buys Pure, he's also getting a couple of exciting extras included on the game disc, including a comprehensive dictionary of obscenity-laden slang and an extensive catalog of sexual perversions. It's not really a big deal — a Hot Coffee scandal over something like this would be absurd — but you've got to marvel at Pure's programmers: why isn't this list hosted client side?

Pure Profanity List [Swear Words via Pure (PC) [Quarter to Three]

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14 Comments

Ghede

#1 – 5:38 AM December 9, 2008

They put "Nymph" as a swear word?

Well. Next time I try and discuss Greek/Roman mythology with 11 year olds I shall be frustrated.

savetherobot

#2 – 5:49 AM December 9, 2008

Of course, the killer app here would be if, instead of filtering out all these words, the game actually parsed and used them. I'd love to play a GTA-style game with NPCs that leverage up-to-the-second filth.

Anonymous Anonymous

#3 – 6:54 AM December 9, 2008

And 'donkey punch' isn't on the list, so it can be used in Pure :)

Strangely enough, splooge isn't there either!

mark

#4 – 7:14 AM December 9, 2008

SaveTheRobot: Why not split the difference and have the game translate them into non-profanity. I think it'd be funnier for players to see their avatars yelling "Forget You You mother Forgetting Bird Sucker!"

echolocate chocolate

#5 – 11:06 AM December 9, 2008

#2 reminds me of a bug from the beta of Puzzle Pirates. They have an amusing swear filter that converts words from profanity into harmless pirate words--e.g. "fuck" becomes "scupper", "shit" becomes bilge. Shortly after adding this filter they had a bug where the lists got swapped over...

Daemon

#6 – 5:16 PM December 9, 2008

Ok, first thing - does the filter apply on outgoing text, incoming text or both? Because depending on exactly how it's used, you could simply blank out the file or make other changes to amuse yourself and others.

Secondly - no, Disney needs to be on the receiving end of a hot coffee style PR disaster.

Anonymous Anonymous

#7 – 5:36 PM December 9, 2008

So since when is bi-sexual a swear? I always new Disney was all about promoting heteronormative "family values", but this is insane.

O_P

#8 – 6:53 PM December 9, 2008

Surely if the list is on the disc then it is hosted client side.
Perhaps hosting the list on the server would make more sense?

Anonymous Anonymous

#9 – 10:10 PM December 9, 2008

I'm with #7... "womenonwomen" is profanity, but "menonwomen" isn't? "Heterosexuality" is fine, but "homosexuality" is unspeakable?

Anonymous Anonymous

#10 – 10:56 PM December 9, 2008

Ha! "pen15" made the list, but "pen1s" didn't.

pwnz0red

Anonymous Anonymous

#11 – 11:51 PM December 9, 2008

This is a long yet sadly inadequate list. Case in point, the "dirty sanchez"ing noted in the article doesn't even appear! How could they miss that? Curious as to whether this is the Disney list (I hope not) or the list from the 3rd-party dev house. At least they added the ubiquitous mis-spelling of masturbate (yes, the one without the "u") to their list, otherwise I would have lost all faith that they were even trying.

Fail, my techy friends. Fail all around.

zikzak

#12 – 12:00 PM December 10, 2008

But it is on the client, right? I think you meant "why isn't this list hosted server side?"

DanC

#13 – 1:53 PM December 10, 2008

#11 yeah, I think the one intelligent thing they did was include the misspellings of many of these words. They apparently know their audience. By the way, I spent way too much time spell checking this comment (don't want to be a hypocrite).

Anonymous Anonymous

#14 – 2:10 PM December 11, 2008

#8 and 12:

I think the line about it being hosted clientside was meant to poke fun at the designers of Pure.

I think what John meant to say was something like this;

...but you've got to marvel at Pure's programmers; "why isn't this list hosted client-side?"

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