The Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and one of the new features it advertises is GameChat, its new voice chat system. Now you can chat with your friends online while you play Mario Kart World together. It sounds like fun, but if you have kids, you might want to think twice before letting them use it. It appears that GameChat is transcribing bad words for everyone to see.
Nintendo’s official site has a set of “community guidelines,” where they say they “the best experiences happen when we all work together to keep our Nintendo games, online services, and events safe, friendly, welcoming, and fun for all.” One of their guidelines is, “Don’t be offensive, misrepresent, harass, bully, threaten, discriminate against, take advantage of or abuse anyone, and don’t act in any other manner that could disrupt the enjoyment of others, result in harm to anyone or encourage any harmful behavior.”
It takes more than a nicely worded guideline to stop people from being nasty. Moreover, in games like Mario Kart, swearing might happen naturally when you get pummeled with a Koopa shell. According to Game Rant, if you have the speech-to-text enabled with GameChat, it will transcribe everything, including any naughty words that might slip out. This will likely have plenty of teenagers and college kids swearing up a storm just to see their words plastered on the screen by the family-friendly Nintendo.
Given that Nintendo is committed to a family-friendly image even if they don’t always live up to it, there’s a good chance that a future patch might be on the way that will censor swear words. Perhaps the Nintendo Switch 2 will even eliminate the speech-to-text feature altogether.
If you want to see Nintendo transcribe your f-bombs, you might want to do so soon before Nintendo patches it out. Of course, that’s assuming you can get your hands on a Nintendo Switch 2 in the first place. Given that the demand for the Switch 2 is currently much higher than the supply, there’s a good chance that the transcribed swearing might be patched out before a lot of people even get to try it.
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