The Final Fantasy XIV Profanity Filter is Hilariously Bad on Xbox

Despite being available on Xbox consoles for a significant amount of time, the highly praised MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has caused some uproar due to Microsoft’s profanity filter, which cannot be completely turned off, resulting in comical scenarios.

Did you know that all Xbox consoles have a built-in filter that automatically censors any offensive language that may appear during a gaming session? This feature is always active and applies to all games, even if parental restrictions are turned off. Take, for example, Final Fantasy XIV, a game that has been around for over a decade and contains hundreds of pages of text.

In a post made by user Jason on X (formerly Twitter), the issues were highlighted and people mentioned the detrimental effect of the filter on the game’s messages. It has even reached the point where one of the earliest available dances is awkwardly censored.

With the recent release of the game for Microsoft’s console, it was expected that there would be a few unintentionally censored words here and there, but the situation escalated when certain words were censored, highlighting the need for further testing of the filter.

The post itself addressed a separate issue that was also brought to attention in a Reddit post by TGB_B20kEn. The user stated that they were banned for mentioning “Free Company”, which is the game’s equivalent of guilds.

The Xbox-exclusive group searching tool was being used by them in reality, and the ban was issued by Microsoft themselves. It seems that Microsoft believed the user was asking for something free, which further highlights the poor communication between Microsoft and Square-Enix.

The accidental censorship of the “STD”portion of Harvest Dance is one of the funniest things I’ve come across recently. It has even gained popularity on the FFXIV Subreddit, where it was featured in their annual April Fools’ jokes. Any mention of a potentially censored word will result in this:

Regrettably, Thanalan is not filtered in-game, unlike many other words. The filter often interferes with the use of terms like “raids.”Additionally, abbreviations like “f up”are censored even if they are not used in a vulgar manner.

This is another instance of the FFXIV Xbox controversy, as some have already expressed frustration over the additional cost of an Xbox Game Pass subscription on top of FFXIV’s own subscription fee. While many Xbox users already have Game Pass for other games, this can be seen as an inconvenience for some.

So far, it is uncertain whether or not Microsoft will lift any past or future unjust penalties for impacted users. The filter is currently operational and there is no indication that it will be altered. I am still amazed by the fact that they allowed it to occur, it is truly unbelievable. Real April Fool’s jokes will need to up their game to compete with Microsoft’s mishap.