Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has apologised to Muhammad Zakir Khan over Twitter after Khan was prevented from making an Epic account due to a hit against a US Treasury list of Specially Designated Nationals. The SDN list is a register of people and companies that US 'persons' (an exhausting legal umbrella term) are prohibited from dealing with, potentially due to involvement in terrorist financing, trafficking or money laundering, but also as part of US sanctions campaigns against specific countries. Or, in this case, people who want to play
the Paragon beta.
"When I went to the website to register for an account, I hit submit and that's when I faced the red text. I was shocked," Khan
told Gamasutra. "Initially, I thought I had been hacked. I literally stopped everything and told myself verbally out loud, 'What the heck?' I felt dehumanized and discriminated against. Frankly, it hurt."
@imraansiddiqi @Muzzakh Sorry, this isn't intended. We're working to fix ASAP. Cause: Overly broad filter related to US trade restrictions.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic)
January 10, 2016
What's surprising about this incident isn't the existence of the list—it's
publicly available and circulated by the Treasury Department to companies trading internationally—but the extent to which it's wired into basic account creation and its reliance on name alone. According to Sweeney, that's an error caused by recycled code from
the Unreal Engine licensing process.
"This is bad filtering code. It checks a Federal export restriction list based solely on name!" Sweeney Tweeted. "We're working to figure this out. Ideally, not at signup, but by matching name and billing address at purchase time."
