Muslim professor mistakenly blocked from Epic’s Paragon due to US blacklist

Epic Games got into some trouble recently with their latest MOBA-inspired multiplayer first-person shooter, Paragon, and a certain Muslim professor.

What happened is that Muhammad Khan, an assistant professor at Florida’s Broward College, tried to sign up for the beta of Paragon.

Instead of getting an account for the game, Khan received a strange error message that you can see below.

@EpicGames My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist. #Islamophobia pic.twitter.com/wKVAWZxFZx

— Zakir Khan (@Muzzakh) January 10, 2016

Khan was told that his name had appeared on a US government blacklist, called the Specially Designated Nationals list, which is a of people subject to economic sanctions.

He was then barred from signing up for Paragon. Following this, he was advised to email Epic Game’s customer service.

The message Khan received read as followed:

Your account creation has been blocked as a result of a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list maintained by the United States of America’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The Specially Designated Nationals list is a blacklist created by the US government to enforce economic sanctions against certain countries. Countries included in the list are the likes of Iran, Syria and Crimea.

The blacklist is meant to help companies avoid business with high-profile citizens of these “blocked” nations. Instead, it turned Khan’s experience really sour.

Khan decided to tweet his issue to Epic Games directly, as you can see above. He received a reply from Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games.

Sweeney apologised and explained that the ban was due to numerous errors. Khan’s name should not have matched against the list and even a simple name match typically wouldn’t lead to a block.

The filter that blocked Khan was never intended to be applied to the consumer-level ability of Paragon’s beta sign-up.

Sweeney explained in a tweet that the filter was there to restrict access to Epic’s game creation tools, which are used for large commercial projects.

Khan’s banning was the result of Epic re-using this filter code without thinking about the considerable amount of names being processed.

In the end, Khan thanked Sweeney for his apology, but had this to add:

First, the fact that the problem existed in the first place frustrates me. Someone designed Epic’s system without thinking of its impacts. Second, someone overseeing said system being put into place didn’t provide oversight of said system. Thus, they were careless and sloppy. Third, if they had just taken a moment to think about what they had done they could realise how hurtful it could be for someone.

It’s not a good feeling for someone to feel like their freedoms are being limited because of their religion, race, or even their name. Incidents of discrimination lead to trauma even if you do not understand them as an outsider. That pain is real and hard to cope with.

What do you make of this whole situation? Things like this shouldn’t really be happening.

Share your thoughts with us in the comments and forum section below.