For the past few weeks, a bad actor has been actively creating free accounts with offensive pet names and then earning high scores in specific games so that those pet names are shown to all players. We have been removing these names as fast as we can find them. Unfortunately, this person refuses to stop and at this time we have been forced to take more drastic steps.
We have now reduced the number of letters shown in our high score lists and high score displays in the arcade for pet names down to three, matching the Usernames. This is not a long-term solution, as we know that players work hard to get onto these lists and enjoy seeing their pets displayed, but it will effectively stop the problem.
Our pet name system relies on a bad word filter, aka a blacklist. We block hundreds of bad words and words that we don’t want to see in pet names. And for over twenty years, this has worked. The vast majority of players give their pets fun names that expresses their creativity and love for their pet. Unfortunately, people can say very bad things with common words that are not bad words by themselves.
We are looking into longer term solutions that will maintain our players ability to use fun and creative names, while preventing the abuse we are seeing here. We hope to roll these out in the new year.
We do apologize to all players who have had to view these offensive names. We value all our incredible players and see Webkinz World as an inclusive, welcoming space for everyone.
The Webkinz Team
thank you. we don’t need to see offensive words.
Another Thank you!
I’m tired of ONE “bad actor” ruining things for MANY. It seems that one of the consequences is that I can not use the name “retro basement” for my new room, since the word basement is banned. Since this is what this whole Acorn Collection Event is about, it’s just getting ridiculous. I understand that you need to take these steps, but it’s frustrating that one individual gets away with this.
There are a few words that have been filtered as ‘bad names’ I have never been able to use the word basement as a room name. The reason is the filter looks for root words and strikes them out. If you look closely, some of the names resemble words that shouldn’t be in a child’s vocabulary. The middle of basement, for instance, there is a word that shouldn’t be used in a children’s conversation. Museum of Art, if you look at the last 4 letters there is a space that would be seen by the system as circumventing the filter to make the word ‘fart’ (Don’t even know if this will publish, but I am trying to explain it) Many of the words have root words that just aren’t allowed from the beginning and we know that the game is old and the coding is fragile, so going in and trying to fix that filter so that other words are made as exceptions might not even be possible because it could just set the whole process into a tailspin that could potentially take down the whole site. I applaud the developers and techs who are working hard to revise the game and make it more user friendly, but at the same time, it has been 21 years of updates and revisions and the code may not be easy to decompile and revise. There are just some things that may be better left alone at this point.
Try Bassment; it is Bass and ment and it would still sound the same.
Thank you for shortening the space to use for pet names. I have noticed that every time I’ve seen the offensive pet names it has always been a Lil Penguin pet.
I tend to fly through things so fast because of lack of time, that I haven’t noticed anything. It’s a good thing that the Webkinz Team has our backs.
Thank you for addressing the penguin in the room! It’s upsetting that things had to go this far, but at least this should stop that behaviour. Thank you!
I was really relieved to see this issue with the crummy and nasty sayings and outright racism being addressed. Webkinz was the one place I could go and have stress free enjoyment while playing this game. I was so SAD & MAD when those issues started. People much be really disturbed to try to ruin a kids’ game. There is so much hate online and I wish it would stop.
I’ve seen those names, but I didn’t know it was this frequent of a problem. Yikes… Thank you for taking care of that!
Thank you so much for addressing this and keeping Webkinz a safe space <3
Thank you so much to the Webkinz Team for addressing this issue and working so hard! It was definitely upsetting to see that someone was naming pets these kinds of names, but I wish you luck in coming up with solutions. <3
I might have a solution to fix the problem also my birthday is coming up soon my solution is if somehow a pet has a bad name or a player doesn’t like that pet name you could make it so players can change their pet’s name easily and you could force them to change it if it has a bad word or threaten to ban that user.
YES PLEASE!
@missims555 – I think that’s a great idea! Being allowed to change a pet’s name would be wonderful. However, it could get to be a problem when you end up with ever changing names of your Webkinz Friends that are listed on your game, or games. I think we get use to having such great Webkinz Friends, and changing the names that we are use to seeing would be a problem. Changing the name sounds like a perfect solution, but in reality it might cause more issues for all players. Hopefully, Ganz/Team Webkinz will come up with a way to let us keep our pets original names while getting rid of this one “bad actor” person. :-)
There is no way for Webkinz Staff to reach out to a user to change their names, though. That personal information is not accessible unless the user goes to Webkinz Support and asks for them to change it. Even then, there are only dire instances where the names can be changed because the process is quite long and tough to do.