Internet filters are certainly a useful tool for narrowing down a set of values in order to find what one is looking for or keep undesirable values away. However, one filter built upon a database of persons’ names almost kept one man from the upcoming Paragon beta and led Epic Games to deliver a personal apology.
The trouble started when one Mr. Muhammad Zakir Khan attempted to sign up to be eligible for the Paragon beta, only to be blocked out of the system due to his name. Khan’s name apparently appears in a US Treasury list of Specially Designated Nationals. The list keeps track of people who have a potential history of criminal or terrorist activity and prohibits US companies such as Epic Games from dealing with these persons. The problem is though the name is on the SDN list, the Khan who was blocked is not the same person.
”I was shocked,” Khan told Gamasutra. ”Initially, I thought I had been hacked. I literally stopped everything and told myself verbally out loud, ‘What the heck?’ I felt dehumanized and discriminated against. Frankly, it hurt.”
Eventually the problem reached Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who reached out to Khan via Twitter and personally apologized for the issues he experienced with the system.”Bad filtering code” was cited as the cause of Khan’s grief. Epic used a system code that was “overly broad,” allowing Khan’s name to show up simply because there are names that are similar to it. Sweeney expressed that the company did not foresee this problem and it is currently working to switch over to a system that will check names against billing addresses rather than simply deny a player at account sign-up.
It seems Khan isn’t entirely pleased with the answer, but at the very least, Sweeney and Epic seem to be stepping up to solve the problem.
