The highly anticipated Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is currently running a public beta until October 8th, offering players a sneak peek at its online multiplayer modes before its official launch on November 14th. While some participants have reported experiencing matchmaking difficulties, such issues are anticipated and are the purpose of beta testing. More surprisingly, earlier reports indicated that the game’s text chat system was censoring the name of another upcoming shooter, Arc Raiders, developed by Embark Studios.
According to reports (via Eurogamer), typing “Arc Raiders” into the Black Ops 7 beta’s chat would result in the message being replaced by asterisks. Interestingly, the words “Arc” and “Raiders” individually were not flagged, suggesting the censorship specifically targeted the combined phrase. This occurred even as Battlefield 6, often considered Call of Duty’s main rival, seemingly remained uncensored, despite some playful jabs aimed at the military shooter genre in a recent promotional campaign.
However, Kotaku has independently verified that this censorship has now been removed via a patch. The author downloaded and installed the 52GB beta just to confirm this.
Arc Raiders seems an unlikely target for Activision to perceive as a competitive threat to Call of Duty. Though it’s a science fiction extraction shooter involving shooting mechanics, its genre differs significantly. The situation raises questions about what other game titles might have been blocked in Black Ops 7’s backend. It’s worth noting that Embark Studios is also behind another shooter, The Finals, showing they’re established game developers. Adding to the intrigue, EA, the publisher of Battlefield, also reportedly censored Arc Raiders in its own platforms. The reasons behind these actions remain unclear, but could potentially be due to errors. We’ve reached out to both Activision and Embark Studios for comment and will update this story as more information becomes available.