Nintendo Switch Update Changes List of Bad Words

By Tanner Dedmon

The Nintendo Switch console got another firmware update this week, and like past patch notes we've gotten for updates like this one, the official details don't tell us much of anything. The update in question delivered "general system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience" which typically means that there wasn't anything too interesting in the update. However, in this case, it seems that some behind-the-scenes changes were made that affected the Nintendo Switch's hidden list of naughty words that players can't say. Those words have since been updated, but again, specifics as to what was changed are mostly unknown.

You can see the official patch notes for the update here via Nintendo's support site. The latest update, Version 16.0.1, was released on March 22nd with only the one bullet point to speak of. For the hidden changes, however, we have to look to dataminers who shared more info after the update was released.

OatmealDome of Dolphin emulator fame is one such person who shared insights into what this Nintendo Switch update did when it was released on Wednesday. on Twitter, the user said that the bad word list was updated. Some unnamed words were added while others were removed, and the list overall was "rearranged to reduce erroneous blocking." Another undocumented change was made outside of this list of bad words, but the user speculated that change was mostly related to bug fixes.

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Nintendo has a history of updating its chat filters and lists of restricted words like this in the past, so this isn't too unusual of a thing to see when it comes to Nintendo Switch updates. The same thing happened several times last year with NSFW words and other potentially problematic phrases updated periodically to strike out words that Nintendo deemed inappropriate.

This update is only the second one to be released this year with the most recent one before it going live in February. That one contained really only one line of interest with the other one again being "general system stability improvements to enhance the user's experience."

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