The latest Nintendo Switch system update caught people’s attention by updating the list of banned words that are now no longer possible to send on the system. Nintendo has always marketed itself as a more family-friendly gaming company, especially in contrast to PlayStation and Xbox, with both its first-party games and its hardware.
The latest major update for the Nintendo Switch just launched this Wednesday for gamers. The firmware update 17.0.0 isn’t any kind of major overhaul, and most system owners will likely download the patch and not notice much of anything upon immediately restarting the console, but one big change does come in the form of the number of words players can’t say on Switch being expanded.
New Banned Words On Switch
Twitter user @OatmealDome dug deep into the 17.0.0 patch to get into the nitty-gritty of every change made within the update. Most of it, as noted by the Twitter (X) account is fairly minor. Small things like the addition of more error codes and time zone data being updated that is likely fairly moot for the majority of Switch users.
As far as English is concerned, it appears the main terms that have been banned are “thot” and “reeee”, although the terms are banned for all system languages, not just English users.
Thot is a pejorative term for women that become popularized as a term used across social media some years back. Artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Yung Gravy have popular songs that utilize the now-banned word.
“Reeee” is an onomatopoeia typically utilized to mock people who are complaining or criticizing something. It’s not a surprise that Nintendo would want words like these banned from its system to maintain its image as an all-ages console, although analysis from any of the young people these word bans appear to be targeting would likely bear the result that Nintendo is only banning terms that are already on their way out the proverbial door of youth slang.
