Red Dead Redemption 2’s Profanity Check is Ridiculous and Unnecessary

When someone thinks of a Rockstar Game, they don’t think of a publisher that holds back from distasteful imagery or material. In the past, players of the Grand Theft Auto series had the option to pick up hookers for a night out on the town and then shoot their head off or they could just play the game they wanted. The important take away from this is that the player has a choice no matter how idiotic the choice might be.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be the type of player who chooses to do terrible things just because the option is there. With that said, I can’t sit here and say that I haven’t punched my share of random strangers on the streets of Los Santos or hogtied a citizen in Red Dead Redemption, but hey I’m just playing the games.

So this is where my gripe comes in while playing Rockstar’s newest game, Red Dead Redemption 2, it seems the publisher decided to hold back in a strange way. This shows up when the player is asked to name their horse. Now, in this situation, any normal person would name their horse a decent name like Betsy or Ed, but I decided to go a different direction. When prompted to name my horse, I decided to name my horse something that I probably can’t write in this post, but still, it’s my game and I should have that choice.

Incidentally, I wasn’t allowed and instead of going about my merry way with my horse, I was shown a message that read “Profanity Check: The text you entered contains profanity. Please try again.” It’s not like Red Dead Redemption 2 holds itself back from cussing or mature imagery if anything the game has more of this then their past titles. So why am I being told what to name my damn horse?

I know this is small and might sound a bit annoying, but I’m in the mindset where there is no name that I could name my horse that is worse than some of the things that players are capable of doing in their games. A profanity check in a game like this is just unnecessary and stands out when the game lets me drop a man to his death of the side of a cliff.

I would like to ask Rockstar Games to just remove this all together, but at the same time, I see players reporting glitches and errors that probably should be addressed first. Still, at some point this feature should be removed, it’s a single player game, for now, so the only person that will see the horse’s name is the player. Anyway, I’ll continue my western adventure with my horse that I was forced to name Horse because I’m not creative at all.