In the co-op shooter Back 4 Blood, there were several incidents during the beta where zombies sounded as if they were mumbling a racist slur. The TurtleRock team shared on Twitter that they want to fix this before the launch.
What happened at Back 4 Blood?
- Last week, a pre-order beta was held for the new co-op shooter Back 4 Blood on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC (Epic/Steam).
- Players encountered a lot of zombies and dispatched them with varying degrees of skill. The zombies made moaning, gasping, and grunting sounds, as is their nature.
- However, as some players noticed, these sounds sometimes seemed to clearly sound as if the zombies were mumbling a racist slur – especially when a black player was involved, it created a strange effect.
This was the scene that was seen online: The Twitch streamer HomeBKE showed the scene on August 6 on Twitter where a zombie was hitting on him from the side.
Another streamer responded to the tweet with his own scene where he insulted a zombie and the zombie apparently reacted in a racist manner.
System randomly combined several grunt sounds
This is what the team says now: In a tweet, the Back 4 Blood team commented on the issue on August 12 (via twitter):
There is a known issue in the beta where multiple plagued growl sound effects are randomly combined by the system, resulting in something that sounds like a racist slur.
Although this was not intentional, we take this issue very seriously and deeply regret any pain this issue may have caused. The problem will be resolved at launch.
These are the reactions: For most players, the incident apparently wasn’t a big deal anyway. It was generally assumed to be a “random effect.” Hence, Twitter users say, “It’s not that serious. Most people laughed about it rather than getting upset.”
Other users add: The beta had a lot of bugs and issues, such as frame rates or matchmaking problems.
Overall, the mood surrounding Back 4 Blood seems to be quite good before release. The launch of Back 4 Blood is on October 12, 2021.
Back 4 Blood will be my co-op game of the year in 2021, even if it has flaws
