Several Forza Horizon 6 players are reporting mass bans on custom car paint jobs in the Creative Hub. While these bans are meant to target content that violates the game’s code of conduct, some designs caught in the crossfire include fan-favorite “itasha” (cars decorated with characters from anime, manga, and video games).
Two months ago, our Japanese sister site reported that several popular itasha creators were taking down their creations and refusing to upload new designs, indicating they were banned from sharing their work. Apart from itasha, designs featuring logos of car parts manufacturers were also found to have been taken down, leading to concerns that some creations are being automatically removed based on the number of player reports they receive.
Though this has not been confirmed, some speculate that a “reporting campaign” is responsible for the mass banning of player-created content across several Forza titles.
Most recently, players across Japan have been reporting a new alleged “banning campaign,” likely the extension of the previous ones that had been happening over the summer. In addition to finished works, this new campaign appears to also be targeting players who take photos of itasha paint jobs and share them in-game. There are even reports of players being banned for possessing work-in-progress content that hasn’t been uploaded. This includes binaries that include body lines and rough sketches, and thus likely got flagged as “nude.” While there is no official correlation between the reports and player bans, the temporary bans of popular itasha artists appear to have discouraged others from sharing their content.
While user-created itasha designs have been criticized in past Forza titles, some are arguing that they are extremely important in Forza Horizon 6 since the game is set in Japan (the birthplace of itasha culture). “They show absolutely no respect for the culture they used as the game’s main selling point.
itasha have always been a part of the Horizon series. It was peaceful, and itasha were a normal thing. Yet in this installment, set in Japan, the homeland of itasha culture, they’ve become something that is punished. They exploit [Japanese] culture only when it helps sales, then trample on its essence,” a user wrote.
Additionally, many players find it difficult to understand how some of the user-made itasha violated the user generated content regulations stipulated by the game’s code of conduct, specifically, the paragraph cites “notorious iconography, profanity, child endangerment, defamation & impersonation, spam/advertising, personal information, QR codes, drug symbolism and imagery, sexually inappropriate/suggestive, harm against people/animals, and much more”. Fans are hoping for more specific criteria guidelines so they can create content safely without getting banned.
Forza Horizon 6 is available for Windows (Steam/Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S. A PlayStation 5 version is set to release later this year.
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