Amazon's new massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing game New World released yesterday. Although it has a "mixed" rating on Steam currently, hundreds of thousands of players purchased the title and played it on day one. While the game's strengths and weaknesses is a separate topic altogether, players have made an interesting discovery. You can't name your New World character "Jeff Bezos" or most of its variants.
As can be seen in the screenshot above, Amazon restricts you from using the name likeness of its former CEO and founder Jeff Bezos in New World. As reported by PC Gamer, the title also restricts variations like ""JeffB" "Bez0s" and "Be Zos". Terms like "Amazon" are banned too. It is interesting to note that this is not because the name is in use by other players, because that has a different error message. In this case, the error message simply states that "the name cannot be used". The same wording is displayed when you try to enter in swear words, which is kind of ironic.
That said, avid gamers have figured out workarounds to use Jeff Bezos' highly-coveted name in New World. PC Gamer says that "Beff Jezos" works just fine and Rock Paper Shotgun has managed to get "Geoff Bay Sos" working too.
Amazon hasn't yet officially confirmed why references to its name and founder are restricted, but this is likely due to the somewhat controversial status of both entities. Amazon regularly comes under fire for labor conditions while Bezos recently found himself in hot water for a tone-deaf statement in which he thanked his employees for funding his expensive trip to space.
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