In 2010, LEGO unleashed LEGO Universe, a massive, multiplayer game where builders of all ages could create whatever they wanted on their own digital plots. Well, almost anything: LEGO didn’t want any of the players to endow its online world with penises. After all, it was meant to be a kid-friendly place in which phalluses had no role—even its mini-fig citizens were dickless.
To keep the game penis-free, the company hired a sizable moderation team to scan screenshots of every structure that went up, according to a former developer for the game. Management “wanted a creative building MMO [massively multiplayer online-game] with a promise of zero penises seen,” tweeted Megan Fox, a developer who worked on the project, on Friday. “YOU could build whatever you wanted, but strangers could never see your builds until we’d had the team do a penis sweep on it.”
But as any internet company will tell you, the dicks will not be kept down. They kept sprouting, faster than the team could take them down, according to Fox. Even an employee working on the game built one.
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