Until very recently, EVE Online‘s ship browser was known as the Interbus Ship Identification System — or ISIS, for short. Wuh-oh.
The browser was, of course, stamped with those four scarlet letters before terrorist organisation ISIS/ISIL rose to their place of modern infamy.
For a while, the name was even abbreviated as ISIS in the game’s UI. Case in point:
However, EVE players recently logged in to find that developer CCP rechristened the game’s browser to the simpler, significantly less unfortunate “Ship Tree.”
According to a CCP employee who posted on Reddit, they actually didn’t change the name for the reason you might think. They explained:
“Just to clarify, the renaming has nothing to do with ‘ISIS’ being a name used by any real life terrorist group. I questioned Development about this when I saw the proposed name change internally, because if that was the reason then I was set to oppose it. The reasoning for the change is the fact that the name is too obscure for new players, and might confuse them.”
As a handful of EVE players have pointed out, that’s not terrible reasoning. “Ship tree” does make a lot more immediate sense than “Interbus Ship Identification System,” which is also the name of the fourth song on my upcoming prog metal concept album. I can’t help but imagine that CCP didn’t mind shedding that tiny association with a real-life terrorist group, though. It’s maybe not the worst side effect ever from their point of view, you know?
Thanks for the tip, Tomasz Jan Góralczyk.
Comments
18 responses to “EVE Online’s Ship Browser Is No Longer Called ISIS”
I have the archer shirt that has Isis logo on the front. I believe they discontinued those shirts.
Heh when I did pc repairs, we used to work for Woolworths doing their POS repairs etc. Found it hilarious thinking back that their whole system was called ISIS…
A friend of mine worked for Harvey Norman using the POS system. I really couldn’t believe it when she told me. In stitches for a couple of minutes.
Yep “Point Of Sale” system, generic term for registers etc. However believe me, POS ends up being what we would refer to it as 😉
It still is 😛
Came here to post that it was, turns out it was already tangentially brought up. In Store Information System.
it really sucks that i can know longer Worship Isis as one of the Egyptian Gods any more, now ive got to settle for worshiping Ra
Come join all the cool kids in worshiping Anubis!
Emos only in the case of Anubis.
But apophis is where it’s at!
The name change has now stopped terrorism. Why even change it now? It’s only been 2-3 years since they rose to prominence.
Are we so dumbed down that we cannot see that the same acronym can be used for more than one purpose in more than one context? ISIS however does seem to hog the names, ISIS, IS, ISIL, Daesh… I wish they would make their mind up.
To be fair though, I can understand people wanting to change the names of “stuff” that have inadvertently become associated with terrorism, especially when they become the target themselves of violence, vandalism, death threats and so on. There was off the top of my head, some business down in Melbourne that had some rather unsavoury things befall it.
I do however agree with your point about seeing past the acronym but a great deal of folk can’t.
No different than the swastika, really. Used to be a symbol for luck, but when the Nazis started using it, no-one wanted anything to do with it anymore. That’s just how it is.
they stated it has nothing to do with ISIS, its just people making connections between two easily distinguishable things for the sake of “news”.
Back in the day, I remember a similar unfortunate tale of poor naming. Something like 2 weeks before 9/11 a clothing store in Italy (or somewhere like that) registered osama.com.
That would kinda hurt business.
did they rename it to DAESH?
Damn terrorists, ruining a perfectly good acronym. First Archer and now this. When will it end? One day every good acronym will have some sort of terrorist connotation. The day the Australian Broadcasting Corporation buckles to pressure from the Amish Bombing Committee will be the day it’s all over for A.A (acronym aficionados) everywhere.
Some hippy book store in USA somewhere got rocks thrown at it because their Name started with “Isis” (yes, the Egyptian goddess). That book store has been around for 25+ years apparently.
It’s idiots that ruin it for everyone else.