{"id":85297,"date":"2016-01-14T18:00:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T16:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=85297"},"modified":"2016-01-14T18:03:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T16:03:41","slug":"muslim-professor-mistakenly-blocked-from-epics-paragon-due-to-us-blacklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/85297-muslim-professor-mistakenly-blocked-from-epics-paragon-due-to-us-blacklist","title":{"rendered":"Muslim professor mistakenly blocked from Epic&#8217;s Paragon due to US blacklist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Epic Games got into some trouble recently with their latest MOBA-inspired multiplayer first-person shooter, <em>Paragon<\/em>, and a certain Muslim professor.<\/p>\n<p>What happened is\u00a0that Muhammad Khan, an assistant professor at Florida\u2019s Broward College, tried to sign up for the beta of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/accounts.epicgames.com\/register\/index?loginSubheading=Sign+In&amp;regSubheading=Register&amp;state=%2F%3Finterest%3D1&amp;client_id=6c92a5a9c9524fc88f713a5bcf0d99f4&amp;productCss=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn1.unrealengine.com%2F2823416%2Fparagon-31c96e8a32e398b66096042ab01ec7b8.css\" target=\"_blank\">Paragon<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Instead of getting an account for the game, Khan received a strange error message that you can see below.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EpicGames\">@EpicGames<\/a> My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Islamophobia?src=hash\">#Islamophobia<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wKVAWZxFZx\">pic.twitter.com\/wKVAWZxFZx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Zakir Khan (@Muzzakh) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Muzzakh\/status\/686295297971089408\">January 10, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Khan was told that his name had appeared on a US government blacklist, called the <a class=\" u-underline\" href=\"https:\/\/www.treasury.gov\/ofac\/downloads\/sdnlist.txt\" target=\"_blank\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"in-body-link\">Specially Designated Nationals list<\/a>, which is a\u00a0of people subject to economic sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>He was then barred from signing up for\u00a0<em>Paragon<\/em>.\u00a0Following this, he was advised to\u00a0email Epic Game\u2019s customer service.<\/p>\n<p>The message Khan received read as followed:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Specially Designated Nationals list is a blacklist created\u00a0by the US government to enforce\u00a0economic sanctions against certain\u00a0countries. Countries included in the list are the likes of\u00a0Iran, Syria and Crimea.<\/p>\n<p>The blacklist is meant to help companies avoid business with high-profile citizens of these &#8220;blocked&#8221;\u00a0nations. Instead, it turned Khan&#8217;s experience really sour.<\/p>\n<p>Khan\u00a0decided to tweet his issue to Epic Games directly, as you can see above.\u00a0He received a reply from\u00a0Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games.<\/p>\n<p>Sweeney apologised and explained that the ban was due to numerous errors. Khan&#8217;s name should not have\u00a0matched against the list and even a simple name match typically wouldn&#8217;t lead to\u00a0a block.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content__article-body from-content-api js-article__body\" data-test-id=\"article-review-body\">\n<p>The\u00a0filter that blocked Khan was never intended to be applied to the\u00a0consumer-level ability of <em>Paragon&#8217;s\u00a0<\/em>beta sign-up.<\/p>\n<p>Sweeney explained <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TimSweeneyEpic\/status\/686328145952243712\" target=\"_blank\">in a tweet<\/a>\u00a0that the filter was there to\u00a0restrict access to Epic\u2019s game creation tools, which are used\u00a0for large commercial projects.<\/p>\n<p>Khan&#8217;s banning was the result of Epic re-using this\u00a0filter code without\u00a0thinking about the considerable amount of names being processed.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Khan\u00a0thanked\u00a0Sweeney for his\u00a0apology,\u00a0but had this to add:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>First, the fact that the problem existed in the first place frustrates me. Someone designed Epic\u2019s system without thinking of its impacts. Second, someone overseeing said system being put into place didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>What do you make of this whole situation? Things like this shouldn&#8217;t really be happening.<\/p>\n<p>Share your thoughts with us in the comments and forum section below.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h4><strong>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2016\/jan\/13\/muslim-professor-blocked-paragon-game-name-us-blacklist\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\"><strong>More Recent News<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Good riddance to video game pirates\" href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/columns\/85289-good-riddance-to-video-game-pirates.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"bookmark\">Good riddance to video game pirates<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/85281-heres-3-minutes-of-new-gameplay-footage-for-the-division.html\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s 3 minutes of new gameplay footage for The Division<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Permalink to Blood and Wine to be the best The Witcher 3 experience yet\" href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/85279-blood-and-wine-to-be-the-best-the-witcher-3-experience-yet.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">Blood and Wine to be the best The Witcher 3 experience yet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone is a suspected terrorist, according to Epic Game&#8217;s upcoming MOBA-like shooter, Paragon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":85299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2218,649,1415,2202,16949,639,16951,1969,16945,16947],"class_list":["post-85297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-dota-2","tag-epic","tag-epic-games","tag-fps","tag-islamaphobia","tag-moba","tag-muslim-professor","tag-news-2","tag-paragon","tag-us-blacklist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85301,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85297\/revisions\/85301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}