Map Publishing, and Severe Criticism

It's strangely difficult to find a topic on the Battlenet forums about the absurd limitations imposed on map publishing. There is a heated discussion about the subject on CampaignCreations. Here follows a post I made there.

(Context: When publishing a map, the map's strings are filtered for "inappropriate" words, like "came", "suicide" and "God".)

I began work on a story before the release of patch 13. Map development has been coming along smoothly, but suddenly I am derailed by these content filters. How am I to tell a thoughtful, thoroughly dark, and engaging story if it is neutered?

I intend for my protagonist to contemplate various things, like the existence of God. The protagonist, coming from the position of a lone survivor on a world amidst rampaging Zerg, might wonder what this says about a God, that, if it exists, it should allow such terrible things. An in-game-universe treatment of mature themes and topics; this is what I had intended. Blizzard's prejudgement? No. Can I include one of several possible endings where the protagonist commits suicide, a reasonable final, fatal act of defiance against a hostile universe and an uncaring (or non-existent) God? Blizzard: No.

As the owner and operator of the platform, I acknowledge it is their right to regulate content. They don't owe me or anyone else anything. However, I merely seek here to give voice to my disappointment. I am undecided as to whether I should cancel my preorder, or hope as earnestly as my probably-doomed protagonist.

Wow that is just crap man...
This is going to kill a lot of good story based elements of any game, like you've said.

Wonder how blizz is going to let us use such words..

-Av3n

Damn, that is strange and sad, and bad! Will it filter things like

string s = "G" +"O" + "D";

or

string s [3] = {"G","O","D"} ?

Also, you could just call it "Dog" and misspell it to "suiside"? That would show them the futility of using word filters. :)

Alternatively, string concatenation is the way to go.

Have you tried using a synonym? Like deity, sepuku, self-murder etc. Also why is came a forbidden word? I mean I know the slang use as in coitus but seriously...

Yep, Blizzard has dropped the ball on this.

I'm wondering if they filter only the English words or also the synonyms in the other languages.

In French :

came -> drogue
God -> Dieu
suicide -> suicide // at least this one is also filtered so ...

Also, i suppose it's not case sensitive ?

This is actually pretty stupid. I hope it's just a temporary limitation and Blizzard will remove it soon (I extremely doubt that though...).

I'm expecting the MB limit to be "upgradable", whereby map publishers will be permitted to purchase additional space.

the real question is, who the fuck is behind this? it's probably some publishing ass hat. i fucking hate publishers....

I wont go the "I hate that blizzard was bought" but since that happened blizzard seem to focus more on the $. However I fail to connect how this censorship would increase the income. Oh, I dunno!

Please no. Unless I can get some money to cover it through my maps. :(

d34th, sew e cide, b000mb, kame, gohd...

it'll be hard to read on battle.net 2.0 >.<

We shouldn't need to work around filters and censors. Content that must dance around the subjects takes its teeth and makes it seem produced by cowards, unwilling to make an expression which may offend or controvert.

Do the censors still apply if you have censors disabled in game? I feel like if they censored it they way they do in-game chat would work much better.

They scan the map as it is being published to the server for offensive words. Ergo, if you have any words that they don't like, you can't even publish your map.