A pretty offensive racial slur has popped up in a recent update of hit indie title Minecraft. Only users with a certain build who update their language settings to Afrikaans—the language spoken in South Africa and Namibia—will see the flub.
Minecraft's head developer, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten, blamed it on crowd-sourced translation, which they've been taking advantage of to translate the game into over 50 languages.
"In these snapshots [weekly builds that help identify bugs] there are about 50 language files translated by the community, and it happens that they are ruined by pranksters," He told Kotaku. "Players are quick to find and fix these, so they are removed in the next snapshot."
Jeb tweeted that the user responsible should have been banned already, so hopefully this won't be repeated. The next snapshot update is due Thursday. Should they fix it in a "panic update," which he says are usually reserved for "when there are severe bugs?" Let us know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.
Chris January 28th, 2012 at 07:24 PM
OMG, I haven't heard that word since....the last rap song I listened to. You want use of that word to stop then it has to start somewhere. Not condoning this though. If its unacceptable for some people it's unacceptable for everyone, no double standards.