Madden 22 seemingly faced an early bug where normal names were being flagged as profanity, but it now looks like that's 100% by design.
If you were hoping to emulate your favorite current collegiate athlete, you're out of luck as Madden 22 is intentionally flagging NCAA player names as containing profanity.
Madden 22 flagging NCAA player names as profanity
Shortly after Madden 22 was launched, gamers started to identify an issue where their Face of the Franchise player's name would be automatically changed to "Generic Player" or "John Madden."
The bug was reported via the EA Answers HQ forum, and quickly got some early responses where EA was trying to gather information on the names that were being recognized and stated it could be linked to the profanity filter.
Over a month later, they've now responded to the issue, and in the process have revealed a very intriguing detail: they're actively preventing the use of current NCAA player names.
While EA stated that the profanity filter has been in place since the beginning of Face of the Franchise joining the Madden series, it seems like their latest guideline is a new one.
"Some names may not be eligible in our filtering system due to agreements with various schools and our commitment to preventing the use of current college player’s name/image/likeness," EA stated.
As of now, only a handful of universities are included in Madden 22 for use in the early stages of Face of the Franchise, and they're now actively preventing the use of NCAA player names.
What could this mean for EA Sports College Football 24?
One big question mark that hangs over this situation is the development of EA Sports College Football 24, which is tentatively expected to land in the summer of 2023.
While that's two whole years away, the negotiations between EA Sports and various colleges and universities have been underway for some time.
Agreements had to be reached to include schools in Madden 22, and more will be needed to round out a proper field of teams to pick from in EA Sports College Football 24.
However, there's still a lot of uncertainty regarding player inclusion and NCAA player names, fueled by the new NIL rules.
NIL (name/image/likeness) has previously been written in a way to prevent all active NCAA athletes from profiting off their name, images, or likeness in any way.
That's all changed thanks to an official ruling by the NCAA back in June, but whether this change is able to bring those players into EA Sports College Football 24 (and properly compensate them for that inclusion) remains to be seen.
As of now, it looks like EA is doing everything in their power to not even accidentally provide the appearance of a college player's name, image, or likeness showing up in their games.
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