Why do game companies need to complicate things so much?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
DiRT Showdown. The game asked me to sign up for Racenet in order to get a free $20,000 in-game, and since I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, I went ahead and tried. Problem is, I get an error telling me that Deathspawner is not available as a nickname. Thinking that "Death" might be the problem, I searched above for other users, and sure enough, other Deaths exist, so it's not that. Also, searching in the same box, Deathspawner and even Deathspawn do not exist. So it seems to me that the issue is on Codemasters' end.

I e-mailed them, and heard back that either the name is taken (it isn't) or that it breaks rules (it doesn't). That's sure helpful, huh? Instead of actually looking deeper into each possibility, customer service simply copy/pasted whatever they are supposed to, so I'm still without a login using the username I want.

I should note I've been known as Deathspawner in DiRT 2, DiRT 3 and F1 2011, and this is the first game where I seemingly can't be. *sigh*

If you go to the registration page, literally any combination of Deathspawner is not allowed. No Deathspawn, Deathspawne, D3athspawn and so forth. Yet Deathreaper, Deaththrower, Deathspooner and other such names -are- accepted. After more digging, it just seems that the word "spawn" isn't allowed, which is obviously a mistake. Whether or not the company will give a damn is what I'm curious about. Spawn is obviously a non-offensive word.

Codemasters make some sweet games, but its registration / login systems is total bullshit.
 
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