Fallout: London Sports Mod Community Devolves Into War Over ‘Soccer’ Vs. ‘Football’

Last week, Fallout fans basically got an entire new game to explore in the form of the massive Fallout: London mod. Now, more mods are already being made for the game-sized fan project. One mod seeks to bring back some American sensibilities to the franchise, which gets transported across the pond in Fallout: London, by changing the item name for a football that can be found in-game to a soccer ball. It’s a small and innocuous change, so naturally the comments on its Nexus Mods’ page has devolved into war.

The mod from user GrumpyOldNord is titled—what else— It’s A Soccer Ball. Uploaded on July 26, just a day after Fallout: London’s release, the description sums up what the mod is all about: “Are you an American exploring London for the first time and find some of the lingo a bit confusing? Have no fear! The soccer ball is now properly named so as to avoid confusion with a real football.” A recent 1.1 update now also changes the Football Kit outfit to the Soccer Uniform. As one commenter on in the discussion area of the Nexus Mods page puts it, “immersion restored.”

But the Brits have found the mod and are expressing their disdain for this sacrilegious change. “Well, it’s this mod who breaks the immersion,” fires back one angry commenter, “but Americans always think their wording is right, while the whole world knows better.” That’s a pretty measured response when compared to what else you can find about the mod. “Reporting this mod for terrorism,” writes another peeved customer, “Absolutely dastardly behaviour, you deserve a hundred fortnights in the stocks.” You can tell by the useless “u” in “behavior” that this is an angry Brit.

But what is most surprising is how the conversation has devolved into a full-fledged history-lesson on what the sport of soccer (or football, I guess) even is. I don’t know that much about the sport, but just by reading through the comments I feel like I’m getting a crash course. For example, as one commenter points out in a lengthy post, did you know that soccer is actually what the UK called the sport when it was brought over to the U.S.? Apparently it comes from “assoccer”, a slang word for association football originally coined at Oxford University. The post goes on to explain how rugby and American football all tie into the story as well, but I’m not gonna recount all of that. There are currently nine pages of comments on the mod, many of which get into the nitty-gritty details of the sport.

Of course, It’s A Soccer Ball is ultimately a big joke. The mod itself is tagged both as “horror” and “humor, joke, or just for fun.” It’s meant to be a silly thing that nobody should take seriously, though someone should probably tell the comments section that.

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