The Strange Reason “Back 4 Blood” players hear zombies use a racial slur

Back 4 Blood, or Left 4 Dead 3 if you want to just call it that, had its first early test where players can get their hands on the game. Funny! It also has one of the weirdest and most unfortunate problems I’ve heard of with a video game in a long time.

Zombies uh, well zombies are racist.

No really, there are zombies running around … sometimes shouting the n-word.

When I first heard this happening, I thought it must be one of those psychological “you’ll hear that word in that sound if we tell you the word ahead” things, but no, it’s really the n-word. You can hear it distinctly in two clips captured here, if you want to see the unfortunate mistake in action.

And that’s it, a mistake. No, the error is not “they accidentally put a recording of an insult as a zombie vocal line”, but rather here is the official explanation of how it happened:

“Our team has been made aware of the offensive language that can be heard in the game. It was not recorded or never intended to be part of our gameplay. The audio is the result of two different Ridden growls that play simultaneously and, when heard together, sound like that word. We are working diligently to resolve this issue, which should be completed either in time for beta or when the game launches. ”

So really, really no audio luck out there. I can imagine how you could want to combine a bunch or recorded zombie screams to create new variations of screams, but these paired up resulted in this… unfortunate incident.

Back 4 Blood is meant to be a big new launch for Turtle Rock, a return to form after the failure of Evolve, and a lot of drama with the shutdown of THQ that left everyone in limbo. Now, they’re back to partnering with WB for Back 4 Blood, and everything points to it being a return to form for them, going back to what everyone knows them best for, multiplayer zombie killing.

Back 4 Blood’s release date is October 12, and you can bet it won’t launch with that audio. But if you’ve heard this in the game, A) you’re not crazy, you really heard it, and B) that’s why.

Follow me on Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content summary newsletter, God rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels on Herokiller Series, and The Terrestrials trilogy, which is also on audio book.