Brickipedia News:LEGO Universe's issue with members

User:CJC95 0:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

by CJC95
June 2, 2015

Remember LEGO Universe? The MMO was online between 2010 and 2012, leaving many fans disappointed in its closure. Now, thanks to former NetDevil developer Megan Fox, we may know one reason why - stopping people creating LEGO penises. LEGO, naturally, wanted the game to be completely free of such things, and internet users, naturally, kept making them. Fox said on Twitter:

"Players would hide the dongs where the filtering couldn't see, or make them only visible from one angle / make multi-part penis sculptures.

"The moderation costs of Lego Universe were a big issue in general. They wanted a creative building MMO with a promise of zero penises seen. They actually had a huge moderation team that got a bunch of screenshots of every model, every property. Entirely whitelist-based building.

"YOU could build whatever you wanted, but strangers could never see your builds until we'd had the team do a penis sweep on it. It was all automated, but the human moderators were IIRC the single biggest cost centre for LEGO Universe's operational costs. Or close to."

This comes out just as LEGO Worlds is released onto Steam early access. The game offers building abilities, but is currently single player. No doubt any attempts at including multiplayer or mod support via Steam Workshop may face similar moderating issues.