Can anyone explain this? Wth is going on?

Just came out a game with some friends. We compared scoreboards because there was an obvious hacker we wanted to report but we couldn’t find the same name on the scoreboard, so my friend posted a screenshot of their scoreboard to discord to point out who they were talking about. I then posted my screenshot of the scoreboard to show them that person wasn’t there. It was then we realised ALL of the names across both screenshots were COMPLETELY different, except for my friends and I. All the scores were the same, but all the names and identities across both teams were completely different in both screenshots.

What is the meaning of this? Can anyone explain this? What the hell is going on? Are all of these players bots with randomly generated names? At least half of either team didn’t feel like bots. Is it just some sort of weird backend trickery that Darkflow employs for some strange reason? Did someone use hacks to spoof names on the lobby to hide theirs? (Easy Anti Cheat sucks btw, literally one of the easiest anti-cheats to bypass). I’ve literally never seen anything like this in my time playing multiplayer games. Every other game I’ve played with bots, all bots have consistent names. Whatever the cause, it’s kinda sus and really strange.


You have harmonization mode on

The reason is simple - you have the harmonized nicknames feature on, which changes names of all players that aren’t in your group

Mystery solved then I guess.

The next question then is, wth is harmonization mode? Whats it for?

It’s a feature that hides symbols that can be seen as offensive, it’s useful for countries that have a bit more restrictions on what can be shown

That makes sense. But totally changing everyones names? Is it just a quick and dirty solution to avoiding offensive symbols and names by randomly changing everyones names to something completely different?

And here I was thinking I’ve discovered something big and crazy lol. Oh well.