A post on the official League of Legends forum suggests that some gamers may be unable to download patches for the game due to UK porn filters.
The post stems from a Reddit thread which lays the blame at the door of porn filters created by internet service providers after the community noticed that two problematic file names contained the text string "sex" -- a version of the Scunthorpe problem [NSFW language via that link].
Here's the original post's wording:
If your patcher logs show many lines like this:
RADS::Common::HTTPConnection::GetFile: File not found
*And that happens with files with a name similar to this:
VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj XerathMageChainsExtended.luaobj*
(note that twice the word "s-e-x" is in the filenames)
*The cause is that your provider is blocking any URLs that contain any pornographic content. Apparently that includes cases like this. An other cause are Router protection settings, which may also block the word **.
Porn filters and their implementation are problematic, both ideologically and practically, but they may not be to blame for this particular irritation. The forum post doesn't specify any individual ISPs making it a bit of a nebulous claim to dig into but we've been in touch with some of the ISPs currently offering filter services.
Discussing with Wired.co.uk how its Homesafe filter generally works, TalkTalk explained the technology analyses the content of web pages for inappropriate content. The web pages are the things of interest not the files being downloaded from them. Using that logic, under TalkTalk's system League of Legends would be designated as a videogame service rather than porn or similar and so the individual files being downloaded shouldn't be flagged by the filtering system, regardless of the text strings embedded within the file names.
Speaking with a representative from BT, the company pointed out to Wired.co.uk that there was scant information to go on and so testing the scenario would prove tricky but that its filtering system was opt-in. As a result the player would have had to actively sign up to have their content filtered by the ISP in the first place and so the existence of a content block would be known already. BT advised that if any of their customers were experiencing issues accessing content which didn't fall under the filter's remit they should contact the company with further details.
It's possible that the text string is causing problems via another program or algorithm, but currently it seems a bit premature to blame the ISP filters for the LoL patching problems.
We've also been in contact with Riot, League of Legends' developer, to ask whether it's aware of any problems and will update the story with any response received.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
