MiHoYo surprised the fans of Zenless Zone Zero with an update that did not sit quite well with the community.
After ZZZ's newest update, players couldn't see the lower back of their avatars anymore – and the players didn't like that at all.
There are justified outrages among gamers about strange gaming policies like pay-to-win features, unfair pricing and other weird behaviors of game developers and then there is an outcry because players can’t see butts anymore.
The Butt Filter incidence of 2024
Everything started with the release of patch 1.4 of MiHoYo’s Zenless Zone Zero that included many updates including a change named “’Adjusts the Agents' display for certain angles: When viewed from specific angles, the Agent will appear faded.” Basically a “butt filter”.
When players tried to zoom in to get a better, up-close look on their characters lower back the avatar just disappeared. To normal players like you and me, this might sound like something useful and will ensure you can see the action in front of you even if your camera might be placed in a weird corner, without your own character blocking the view. But not for the ZZZ community.
The Cake Transparency Effect has been fixed it will no longer make the character disappear pic.twitter.com/8ugV5TwHOa
— Gacha Zone (@GenshinImpactOC) December 18, 2024
On the ZZZ subreddit, the situation wasn’t any calmer. "Why is hoyo trying to stop me from seeing lycaon and lighter's dump trucks. like this gotta be some kinda crime," one redditor stated. Another wrote: “It feels very scummy to draw in a s*** ton of players with some of the most sexualized characters ever with massive assets, then to conform to whatever order they knew they were gonna have to do only now that the most hyped up character for the game is finally out”.
There even have been rumors about the government of China and their censorship politics being involved.
Removal of the heinous crime
Less than 24 hours after the update and the frustrated outrage, MiHoYo announced via X (formerly Twitter) that the update will be undone. They were “closely monitoring feedback and suggestions from Proxies, striving to provide everyone with the best possible gaming experience," and thus "promptly addressed and fixed several issues that appeared after the update as soon as we received feedback”.
Whatever the real reason for all of this was, I might never get... well... behind it... but it seems like the ZZZ community is happy with the undoing of the update and the reappearing of their characters' butts.
Do you think the outrage was justified? What are your opinions on that kind of censorship?
