This was supposed to block profanity, objectionable words, umbers and sharing of personal information, website URLs, etc. A "dictionary" (whitelist) of words was used, and words not on the dictionary's list were filtered and would show up as gibberish, i.e. Disney didn't heed our warnings and went ahead with it anyway. Several people, including me, made it clear to Disney that putting open chat into the game would be a very bad idea. This had already been put into "Pirates of the Caribbean" (PotC).
In late 2008, and facing increasing losses (Toontown lost money every year of its existence except possibly one), Disney announced the implementation of "Speed Chat Plus," which allowed players to chat normally without the need to use a code to gain access. For example, if "T" and 4" were the first two letters in the code, the player might say "Toontastic!", "OK", then jump 4 times, "OK", and on to the next character of the code. In practice, players quickly learned to bypass that by using the first letters of words in the Speed Chat Menu and jumping up and down to signify numbers, separating each by the phrase "OK". Two of my kids and three of my grandkids also played TTO and/or play TTR.įor the first five years of the game's existence, the only form of in-game communication was through a dropdown menu of phrases, known as "Speed Chat." Players could type normally to others in a group of what was known as "True Friends", which required one player to give a game-generated code to another player, the idea being that the two needed to know each other in real life. I also played Toontown Online (TTO) from 2004 until Disney closed it in September of 2013, and I've been playing the most popular (in terms of player count) fan remake, Toontown Rewritten (TTR), since late last year.
During that time, I've become attuned to how Disney operates, and I know many people there in various departments and at various levels. I've been freelancing (Creative) Content work for Disney since 1984, long before the internet became popular. The OP isn't familiar with all of the details of the situation. TL DR in advance: Disney doesn't care as long as it isn't costing them any money.