Ubisoft had to issue a statement after it was found that the Nintendo DS title Scrabble 2007 contained an offense solution word in the anagram part of game play.
An article in the Belfast Telegraph reports that a father and daughter playing Scrabble 2007 were stumped on a five-letter anagram. Stuck, they hit the “give-up” option to find that the solution was the word “lesbo,” a derogatory slang term for lesbian. The father, Zachary McAdam, said that he “nearly fell out of his chair,” and then proceeded to “look it up” to make sure he wasn’t over-reacting.
It turns out that this title uses 277,000 approved words from the Chambers Official Scrabble Dictionary.
A statement from Ubisoft apologized and added:
“The dictionary includes words used in the English language, but that may be considered unusual or offensive. It is for this reason that the game includes a ‘junior’ option which will prevent the player and computer using these ‘unusual’ or ‘offensive’ words in playing. However, ‘lesbo’ is not considered as offensive by the official dictionary and therefore is playable in both options.”
Remind me not to invite these two to my annual Drunken Dirty Word Scrabble Tournaments.
[Via Next-Gen]
Published: Sep 27, 2007 01:11 pm