I suggested this somewhere else.

I'd love to see a regular contest (maybe quarterly? at least annually) to design new patterns for the "leotard" skins. You know, the basic under-layer. If there was a mini-creator type editor that let us make the "flat map," then preview and tweek the geometry off-line. Of course, it would be subject to however many colors choices we would have, and need to be "splittable" into its components (gloves/boots/body/head/etc)

Then, they could be submitted to the dev team. The winner(s) would get exclusive use for a year(or something) then they get rolled out to the public. This would take some resources, admittedly, so there's no point in doing this too early on. But I think the resources necessary to manage the contests would be minimal compared to the benefits of getting new designs essentially for free on a regular basis.

AAlbusUUmbra wrote:

To clarify, it probably would be a good idea to keep custom pieces saved on the client. It would help clean up the server ROM/RAM/etc if it extracted custom textures and parts from the computer.

The problem with "keeping the customized costume data saved on clients to save storage space on the servers" is that it would be pretty much limited to only changing what you see on your own machine. This is basically how modding already worked in CoH. In order for other people to see them the data for your customized pieces would have to be transmitted in real time to every other person around you. That would be an utter nightmare server bandwith-wise.

The only practical way for people to add things to the game that everyone can see would be for people to sumbit new items to the Devs and have them officially vetted, approved and then patched into the game's baseline. This would distrubute your new items to every other player in the game automatically. Then when they run up to you in-game their client will be able to load up your items without having to transmit the unique data for your items across the servers.

The great side benefit of this is that by sending custom items through the official channel to be patched into the game the GMs will have complete oversight and be able to prevent any naughty/questionable content at the source.

AAlbusUUmbra wrote:

Regarding adult content and the like, I suppose that we could utilize a simple "Report Character" feature to weed out offensive designs, and maybe check boxes when uploading designs to ensure that naughty images aren't displayed according to the player's preferences. Obviously, it would be a hassle for mods to directly check them all, so maybe finding a way to block images/textures and having the game then proceed to censor/auto-replace offensive designs would work.
I've seen some games that are loaded with player models and have a nigh-spotless record despite regulation barely going beyond a report button, so perhaps what we would need is a mature community in order to bring this to light. We'll know just what players we're dealing with after launch...

Yes there will be a way to "Report Character" for any offensive activity regardless if your idea for customized costume items happens or not. That will always be the final catch-all for anything that "devious" players manage to think up regardless of any safeguards the Devs establish.

As you say anything that will mitigate the GMs' workload would be beneficial because as we all know they always have enough to do. This is why it's far more efficent and safe for any player-submitted content to be vetted and approved for inclusion into the game BEFORE any problems arise. Sure that might mean it'll take longer for any new items to get patched and distributed out to all players, but frankly I'd much rather have the control centralized at the start rather than it be a chaotic free-for-all that would arise if players were allowed to directly upload content themselves.

While I admire your faith in your fellow man the sad truth of the matter is that even if 99% of the playerbase would be "mature" enough to handle this responsibly it'll be that 1% who'd run amuck and ruin it for everyone. I'd just prefer to keep the Genie in the Bottle so to speak and leave it up to the Devs/GMs to have full control over what gets uploaded to the game for everyone to see.

Bottomline I'm not against people submitting their customized costume items for inclusion into the main game. I'm just against it happening without proper filters/controls from the beginning. If you still want to see something "questionable" you can always stick to client-only modding so that you can see it without subjecting it to others.

Scott Jackson wrote:

... the successes and failures of their player trading market can supply us with a case study, as did Second Life.

It's interesting that someone brought up Second Life as a reference for this. One of the things I always wished CoH could have was the sheer freedom to have as many player generated costume items as Second Life allows. In fact it's such a big thing there that many people run in-game businesses selling their items that translate into real world money that they actually make a real life living with.

The double-edged sword of that vision of utopia is that an overwhelming amount of the player generated content in Second Life is geared toward, how shall I say, the "fetish" community. Basically a huge amount of the player generated content there is sex/erotica/porn oriented. Now I actually don't have a problem with that - human nature is what it is. But if as you say Second Life can serve as a "case study" for what could happen if CoT actually allowed this degree of freedom I think it's clear the Devs would have to specifically decide if they wanted to open the flood gates on that element entering their game. Considering they still want to try to keep CoT a "family/teen" game I simply don't think they would like to see CoT go down the same path Second Life quickly did.

So (again) the obvious compromise solution for CoT is to have player submissions controlled and vetted by the Devs/GMs before they get patched into the game. Not only would this keep the most extreme/offensive content in check but it'd serve as an efficient method to have the approved content get patched and distributed to the entire playerbase. As far as what content would then be "allowable" by the GMs goes I think some relatively racy things will still show up. For instance I'd think things like fishnet stockings and thigh-hi ballet boots would make it through. But this would likely keep out obviously/overtly questionable things like "sex toys" and/or "nude" items.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Or limit the creation/submission to those with a pay-once, let's call it license for lack of a better term. If you make something vulger, infringing, racist, etc, you lose your license.

Sure as a player I'd have no problem with a "permit to create custom content" system like that.

While it might allow a greater degree of freedom than the "GM vetting before release" idea the obvious downside is that makes the job of GMs having to respond to and police the playerbase for offensive content that much harder. If you think the GMs who'll be responsible for CoT are going to be up to that challenge then I'll be looking forward to that. You'd be placing a good deal of faith in the overall "maturity" of the playerbase. While I suspect most people would "behave" (especially if the up-front one time fee is high enough) it'd come down to just how wild/naughty that last 1% would turn out to be.

Darth Fez wrote:

I believe vetting before allowing player created costumes into the wild is the best approach. Any number of people are going to assume that new costume pieces in the game came from MWM, or were introduced with MWM's blessing, in any case. Even if there is some guarantee on how quickly submissions will be reviewed, these would require as immediate response than a "I just saw a Dr. Ballgag and his Stark Towers (and I don't mean Tony)" report. Perhaps go with the approach of accepting the ten best submissions in a six month period, possibly in multiple categories.
The issue I can see with a license/permit approach is that these tend to imply that submissions will be accepted so long as they follow the rules.

The CoT Devs have already started the ball rolling with the "GM vetted before release" concept with the way the several special Kickstarter perks (i.e. Fashionista) are going to work. It would seem like if that goes well then it wouldn't take much more effort to include a cash shop method to buy new "Fashionista-type" custom items once the game has launched. This scheme could even be expanded so that the players themselves could have a second option to be responsible for actually doing the work to create the digital items themselves before submission for inclusion into the game. This would provide two different avenues for custom items to find their way into the game. Dev created items could still cost more (i.e. $3,000 Fashionista based) or much less (say $50 each) for items that were directly player created. This would ensure only serious players were involved and keep the GMs "in the loop" to prevent ALL objectionable material, not to mention be a great cash source for MWM.

Now the obvious appeal of a "buy a permit to become a registered custom item creator" system would be that it would allow those players interested in creating a bunch of customized items more freedom to toss things out continuously and it might even lead to players being able to start in-game businesses to sell their products to other players. But even if it that happens (without initial GM vetting) they are still going to have to work out the issues of how those digital items are going to be distributed to players. Will all items have to be submitted to the Devs anyway just to get them patched into the game's baseline? Will they be able to store the data of these customized items on individual client machines and deal with unique custom data having to be transmitted real time to other players as needed?

As appealing as it sounds it simply seems like the "buying permits to create custom items" method would be far more problematic from an implementation point of view. And that's not even addressing the need to police offensive content AFTER it's already been released to the wild rather than catching it BEFORE it's released via the GM vetting concept. Obviously I don't know as much about the "behind the scenes" aspects of this as Doctor Tyche does, but given what little we do know it would seem vetting before release would be the easier, better choice for CoT. I'll be interested to learn more about what Devs have in mind to address these concerns.

Gangrel wrote:

A T-shirt for the former WWE wrestler Sin Cara, that eventually got pulled. It was on sale for just a few days before the WWE realised their mistake.
And this is something that an *experienced* company screwed up on. Can you imagine the problems that would happen (especially in an MMO where the delivery is *instant*) where something got released, people buy it, and then you pull it from sale, and refund those players. Even if it is something as innocuous as this, people WILL get upset over it.
Tell a lie. It did happen in The Secret World (just google up The Secret World Mankini for more information), and people got upset over something that they paid money for, getting taken away from them.

This is a good point. What if a bunch of items got made and sold by a player with a valid "customization permit" turns out to be bad/wrong/illegal for whatever reason, even if that reason is not entirely obvious to anyone at the time. Sure the GMs might be able to revoke that player's permit AFTER the fact, but by then the damage would already be done and they'd potentially piss off a bunch of players who might not even be aware that what they bought was bad.

I realize that setting things up to require the GMs to have to pre-approve every single new item that gets custom created for the game would impose an annoying bottleneck that would likely slow down the potential total amount of new items coming into the game. But frankly I think I'd rather have to suffer that than worry about all the potential long term shenanigans that could happen by allowing things to pour into the game without initial oversight. At the very least it might catch things like your bad T-shirt example before it hits the general playerbase.

Darth Fez wrote:

Sometimes there is a real problem, sometimes it is inadvertent, and sometimes people just see what they want to see. Even if a week of public review were added, there's no guarantee that something wouldn't slip through. I think the benefits outweigh the risks, so I would still like to see player creations make it into the game, if it is practicable.

Fair enough - no review process is foolproof. But if a GM looking at something for 5 seconds could catch 98% of the problems before they were approved for release to the "wild" so to speak I'm all for it. Besides how likely would it be for a GM to miss an obvious sex toy, "nude" costume item or swastika?

Gangrel wrote:

One thing that is worth while to take note of as well... and this happened with Trion (Rift/Defiance developers).
Lets just say that allowing the players to do it themselves (especially if they are getting a cut of the profits for example), can lead to infringement by the playerbase to get something beneficial for themselves.
More news here
This is quite possibly why most companies tend to do stuff themselves, and *rarely* out source to the player base.

Exactly. I haven't even mentioned the potential for people to try to sneak out IP infringing items like Superman "S" chest logos or Spider Man textured bodysuits. There were plenty of those done up as CoH client-only mods - there's absolutely no reason to think people won't try to slip those into CoT by any means possible. Sure the CoT GMs could quickly ban/revoke privs for those people involved in this kind of naughtiness, but that kind of thing, even if it's only in the game for a few moments, could open us up for lawsuits from the big comic book companies. Marvel legally "harassed" CoH for this kind of nonsense - again why couldn't it happen with CoT?

I simply don't see a "problem free" scenario from any version of this that doesn't include GM approval/oversight BEFORE player-created content is released to the general playerbase.

Scott Jackson wrote:

Nearly all MMOs have a chat obscenity filter option that is on by default, plus reporting tools; that's been good enough to handle an environment where it's far easier to create and distribute potentially offensive text, and where there's no financial penalty (loss of "permit" fee) for the Terms of Service (ToS) rule breaker in a free-to-play game.
For costume piece creation, the risk is already reduced by the fact that more tech skill and effort is needed to generate a piece. Combine that with a permit system and reporting, and risk drops further. As a final layer of protection, add a few custom costume filter options that give players control over their in-game experience:
> View player-created costume pieces? (Y/N, default Y)
----If MWM wishes to "approve" player-created pieces via contests or some regular review process, those pieces would be viewable by all by default, and could be included in official patches to reduce lag from on-demand patching. Alternately, if MWM doesn't want to include them in official patches, but still wants to highlight great costumes (like "featured AE missions"), a player could toggle this option off to save bandwidth, in which case a basic costume would appear instead. A player would see any custom pieces in their own costume regardless of this setting.
> View player-created costume pieces that have not passed review? (Y/N, default N)
----All newly-created pieces are marked "unreviewed", similar to player-created missions in most games. Toggling warns that you accept the risk of seeing material that is offensive, beyond the game's T rating, or a copyright violation. Unreviewed pieces could be traded in a marketplace, but with that same warning to any buyer. A player would see any custom pieces in their own costume regardless of this setting.
> View player-created costume pieces that have been marked with a ToS violation? (Y/N, default N)
----If a report is received for ToS violation, and MWM representatives review and deem it so, flag it this category. These pieces would only be viewable by players who are already using them or who have toggled this option to see them on others. Severe violations and copyright claims would be immediately replaced by a generic piece until resolved; the permit-holder could be given a chance to appeal or fix the issue, similar to what Youtube does and what CoH did for AE ToS violations; delete if the appeal/fix fails. After [n] strikes, a permit is revoked.
The scheme can be tilted toward flexibility / fairness / control / safety; for example I left the door open for smart ToS regarding trading limitations (e.g. "pieces marked offensive cannot be traded on the market", "unreviewed piece trading is buyer-beware, non-refundable, and limited to 10 TitanCoins per item").
I simply wanted to point out a reasonable framework that doesn't require upfront review of everything (similar to what Youtube, CoH AE, and other content hosts use), while still offering MWM reasonable defense against copyright lawsuits, and protecting players who wish to be protected. Freedom and personal protection can coexist in many ways, from requiring upfront approval, to something like this, to more unofficial methods like modding and third party packs. I don't yet have a strong opinion on the best approach.
I'll bow out of the discussion and let the good Doctor reveal the actual plan when the time is right.

As AAlbusUUmbra said you've definitely offered some interesting ideas to address some of the concerns here.

To be clear while I think the "GM review all player generated content before release" concept is the most comprehensive way to deal with this issue I've already acknowledged it has its drawbacks. While it's obvious that Internet services like YouTube could not operate with an upfront review policy I still believe it would be workable for CoT because unlike YouTube we would probably only be dealing with perhaps a few dozen/a hundred or so submissions a day instead of literally millions. But I'll grant you even with our much smaller scale of submissions there would still likely be some delay (a few days?) imposed by the review process.

In general I agree there needs to be a reasonable balance struck between player creativity and overall content control. While you've suggested some features to do this what you've proposed would definitely take a good deal of effort on the part of the CoT Devs to implement. I would be extremely surprised if the semi-complex features you've suggested here could be in place by the time CoT launches. Despite its faults the "GM review before release" scheme would probably be a simpler, more direct approach. Basically speaking if player created items have been pre-approved by the Devs you don't really need all the Y/N flags/switches you're proposing here. We aren't going to be dealing with the sheer volume of incoming content that sites like YouTube does so it might not be practical to "solve" our problems with their huge volume oriented methods.

I accept that this is a non-trivial issue to account for no matter how it's dealt with. I hope in the long run something like this will allow creative players to produce tons of new content for the game. But I'd honestly rather err on the side of conservatism at least when it comes to preventing/mitigating content that that's obviously offensive or potentially IP infringing. There's no point in allowing player created content to flow freely when, without proper oversight, it could easily ruin the game in multiple ways not the least of which might be litigation from big third party companies. As I mentioned before Marvel sued CoH over its costume creator back when CoH didn't even allow for player generated server-side content - imagine how they could sink their teeth into CoT if it did in any shape or form.

As you say I'm very interested to see how Doctor Tyche and the rest of the CoT Devs will handle this issue. I simply hope that whatever scheme they come up with will be clear, simple and adequate to the task at hand.

Darth Fez wrote:

Lothic wrote:
...we would probably only be dealing with perhaps a few dozen/a hundred or so submissions a day instead of literally millions.
I have to ask, were you envisioning these submissions to be of a sort that MWM could introduce to the game with little to no effort, or concept art that MWM's art department would have to realize? If it is the former, your numbers seem wildly optimistic.

I've already talked about this difference in an earlier post on this thread. There's an obvious big difference between players who create the digital content themselves and submit it for review versus players who pay for the Devs to create a suggested item (akin to the Kickstarter Fashionista perk). There would be a huge price difference for that too - the Devs would likely charge a large extra premium for the Fashionista styled submissions.

For the sake of argument let's say on any given day the GMs receive 50-100 player created submissions and 2-3 player suggested Fashionista styled orders. That seems reasonable again given the likely price differences involved. Remember that even the player created ones will likely cost a non-trivial amount to be included in the game. Now depending on how they'll operate it might take a few days/weeks for those player created ones to get validated, approved and patched into the game. On the other hand it might take several weeks/months for the ones the Devs themselves would be creating for the Fashionista orders.

Whatever the actual number of submissions end up being there'll be far, far fewer than something like YouTube typically gets per day. I think it's a bit of overkill to think that we are going to have to worry about -that- many people submitting ideas regardless, epecially if they are priced at a price point that would keep the GMs/Devs of this game from getting overwhelmed with submissions. Exactly how many people can afford Fashionista's $3,000 price point? (I'm not assuming the post-launch Fashionista will cost $3,000, but I suspect it'll be roughly that exclusive at any rate).

Thank you for that clarification. I imagined there might be problems of that sort, especially with matching pieces to animation.

As a layman I probably assume the whole process for creating a costume that could be put into the game with relatively little work would be more difficult than it is (even if these problems did not exist), although I have no doubt that even then there would be players who would manage it.

Lothic wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:
Lothic wrote:
...we would probably only be dealing with perhaps a few dozen/a hundred or so submissions a day instead of literally millions.

I have to ask, were you envisioning these submissions to be of a sort that MWM could introduce to the game with little to no effort, or concept art that MWM's art department would have to realize? If it is the former, your numbers seem wildly optimistic.

It would have to be the latter due to how the system is designed.
Let us use an example we all know, a gun.
To work, the gun would need to be centered to the core skeletal rig. It would need to have its mesh redone to mirror the in-place engine expectations for polygon placement. It would need to have bones added for socketing. It would then need to be animated against every single potential animation the player may need to put it through. Its texture would need to be materialized to work with the system in the engine.
The list goes on.
This is not a likely scenario due to how the engine is being set up. In order to grant the flexibility to the players, we had to sacrifice the flexibility in how components themselves are designed and built. We felt that this was a good trade-off. By controlling the asset chain, we could open up the options for the players, by having dynamic alternate animations, emission points, etc. This means that letting players make props and models, however, is not likely in the cards due to the demands on the asset chain.

Well this seems to render the whole avenue of "players directly generating costume content for submission into the game" relatively moot. You could have mentioned that a long time ago and saved us all the effort of speculatng how you would be handling all of that. ;)
So is it reasonable to conclude that there will in fact be a "post-launch Fashionista" style plan in place where players can submit orders for customized items to be created by the Devs for inclusion into the game? Again we know that the Kickstarter Fashionista perk cost $3,000 - would a post-launch equivalent to this cost a similar amount of money?
I realize that you probably can't answer specifcally about this yet - but it doesn't hurt to keep poking you until some nugget of info pops out... j/k ;)

We have a plan in place, and I think you will like it. Just keep an All Points Bulletin open and Reload often for when it comes up.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

We have a plan in place, and I think you will like it. Just keep an All Points Bulletin open and Reload often for when it comes up.

Well considering that CoH only allowed for client-side modding if CoT manages to offer ANY kind of system for players to get server-side costume/prop customizations it's going to be a great improvement.

I understand the engineering limitations you mentioned that would tend to preclude allowing for player developed items, but even if there were no technical hurdles I still contend there would have been the problems of policing all of that content which might have made it too difficult to allow just on those grounds alone.

You can be assured people like me will be paying attention to any official news on this topic. I already have several ideas for some items/costumes I'd eventually like to get and I'd likely even be willing to pay premium prices to get them assuming the system will be geared to accept Fashionista-styled orders.

Darth Fez wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Again we know that the Kickstarter Fashionista perk cost $3,000 - would a post-launch equivalent to this cost a similar amount of money?
Like a true forumite, I am not going to allow incoming facts to get in the way of some baseless speculation.
My assumptions are that any costume (pieces) submitted by a player will, if accepted, be made available to everyone through the store, and that the submitter's reward will be the credit and seeing their costume realized. Since there is no exclusivity, no guarantee that the submission will be accepted, no time frame for when the submission will be available, and given that the costume will generate some revenue, the cost for submission need not need to be anywhere near that carried by the KS Fashionista perk. In other words, it casts Doctor Tyche's idea of having a license for submissions in a new light (besides serving to gate content of questionable taste and quality).

Well jumping on the loaded assumption that we'll be getting some kind of system that will allow players to "order/suggest" new items from the Devs I'll start by assuming it'll work in a similar fashion to what little we do know about - the Kickstarter Fashionista Perk.

To begin with I have never been a fan or PERMANENT exclusivity for anything in a MMO. But to be honest I actually don't mind the "1 year or 4 Issues" concept MWM came up with for many of the Kickstarter perks. Maybe they could even gear it so that the cost of getting one of these done might be cheaper if you specifically allow it to be a public option from the start instead of having any period of exclusivity. This is a minor point to me either way.

As far as how much these things should actually cost I agree they might not need to be as expensive as the Kickstarter Fashionista, but I still would expect them to be relatively expensive if for no other reason than to limit the total number of orders the Devs get. They might be able to handle a few dozen of these here and there but if they get thousands of orders they'll never get them all done. I also agree that it could take a random number of weeks/months for individual orders to be completed. No problem with that.

That leaves the "license for submissions" idea. That one admittedly has me a bit confused under this scheme. Would that mean that we'd first have to pay for the "privilege" of being able to order customized items? Wouldn't the cost of placing an order be enough of a "gate for questionable taste and quality" in and of itself? Would that mean if I accidentally submit an order for something the Devs didn't approve of once they could bar me from ever attempting to order again? Obviously I don't have enough info on this point to understand what good this could be for.

Lothic wrote:

That leaves the "license for submissions" idea. That one admittedly has me a bit confused under this scheme. Would that mean that we'd first have to pay for the "privilege" of being able to order customized items? Wouldn't the cost of placing an order be enough of a "gate for questionable taste and quality" in and of itself? Would that mean if I accidentally submit an order for something the Devs didn't approve of once they could bar me from ever attempting to order again? Obviously I don't have enough info on this point to understand what good this could be for.

I was working with the idea that submissions would be just that: submissions for consideration. Like sending a demo tape to a studio or an entry into any kind of contest. The only thing that could reasonably be guaranteed is that the submission will be considered. To an extent the license would work as a 'serious inquiries only' hurdle (as well as a potential deterrent against insalubrious submissions).

For the aspect of placing an order, I agree, KS Fashionista would appear to be a good benchmark for expectations. In either case, since the costume will ultimately be created by MWM artists there is no question that checks will be in place against offensive subject matter ("I feel kinda dirty when I draw this. Wait a minute...").

Lothic wrote:

I see what you're saying - I still just don't see the net advantage the Devs would gain from such a scenario.

The intent with that scenario is to throw the gate wide to maximize submissions from players. There are obvious pros and cons to such an approach, and the potential workload of going through all the submissions may easily outweigh the benefits. If placing orders à la KS Fashionista remains possible it would likely behoove MWM to restrict that approach to contests (perhaps once or twice per year).

IIRC, Pirates of the Burning Sea had a player-submission-and approval system, but the details that I recall were sketchy.

There's always some fear that you could get so flooded with "junk" content that too much dev time is wasted sorting through the crap to find the good stuff. A small submission fee (as I saw above) serves to reduce the spam. Another way is to crowdsource the filtering-- submissions can be reviewed by peers and voted upon. Submissions that get a certain threshold of votes get flagged for dev review. On the downside, these places tend to become junkyards demonstrating the "time to cock" effect if anyone can submit for free. You'd need to crowdsource those with a 'report' feature as well.

You also would have to set acceptable limits. I recall that in the user-created-content nirvana/hell that was Second Life there were some hairstyles that were so poly-count-excessive that they'd lock up lesser PC's. Some people will want excessively high-def textures and some will be lamenting that they can't access zone X because of the lag they encounter.

Next, be sure to consider intellectual property issues. On any game mod site, you can see people that submit outfits copied from game x or game y. The devs would need something rather ironclad legally to protect themselves in the chance that a user submission wasn't entirely original.

I've seen proposals for how MMO-like games could have entire "distributable player-made-mod packs" tossed around by people with actual time in the industry, so these are ideas that are actively discussed (and have been for some time, since the last dev-related confrerence I'd have overheard this at was a half decade ago) but something seems to prevent these ideas from making them to the real world

Darth Fez wrote:

Evidently this Monday has me on a necromancy kick. Since this is the first thread I found that discusses player created costumes: dong detection!
Obviously MWM has fewer concerns in this respect than does a huge, international brand like Lego, but it does highlight the moderation concerns.

I could see where a LEGO based MMO would be the absolute nightmare in terms of what the Devs would have to do to try to moderate/police naughty imagery coming from player submitted content. After all the entire point of LEGO is to provide for a system that allows its users/players to construct anything they want. At least a game like CoT would be far more limited in scope to things like costumes and chest logos. It's not like the point of CoT would be to create EVERYTHING in the game like it would be in a LEGO game.

Suffice it to say I doubt the CoT Devs will ever have to worry about automated "dong detection" filters, especially assuming anything that's ever player submitted would first reviewed by human GMs regardless.

I do not believe that the Minecraft people ever concerned themselves with it. However, they needn't do so for the same reason that it's less of a concern for MWM: neither is dealing with a product (a toy, as it were) that's essentially targeted at children. You can imagine the uproar if some helicopter parent sees something that looks like a penis (or other "offensive" anatomical feature) on their child's computer screen. Nor is Lego in a position to be able to state, "Dude, that has only the vaguest resemblance to a penis. Chill out."

All that said, Lego Worlds is now available on Steam early access. Perhaps they've had a DD breakthrough.