Guys,
I have read many posts on COE, where players complain about having their surnames becoming unavailable although the surnames do meet the criteria and are not banned words.
Recently, I too have begun to reserve my surname, and although it was available at first, it quickly became banned.
It is extremely ironic because after I was first sent the email of denial, I quickly went to the surname generator page to check if the email was really true or not, and guess what? On the surname generator page, it was shown that the surname Joker was still available on all servers.
My initial thought on this was "Oh, maybe COE has made some kind of error or something," so I quickly reserved the name again. In about 5 minutes, another email of denial was sent to me, and the surname quickly became an "Invalid surname" on the surname generator page.
My conclusion on this matter is what COE studios do after they receive your surname is, yes, they do check if it meets the criteria, etc., but then afterward if they like the surname or something, they take the surname for themselves as for future events or story-telling.
It is an unfair method to do, but because of their rule:
"May not include any of the names or words in Soulbound Studios' surname exclusion list (profanity, copyrighted names, Caspian, etc.),"
Soulbound Studios can get away with anything. This is the real reason why players' surnames are becoming banned.
Now I am not trying to hate on COE or anything, but I already know people in the comments are going to defend them for this action, and go ahead. If anyone can provide me a reasonable explanation, I am willing to hear it.
By the way, to defend my theory, I will provide some counter-arguments:
1) Joker is a copyrighted name in the first place which is why COE took it away. - No, because I have used this name in plenty of multiplayer games, and the developer has never done anything about it. In League of Legends, my name is SSKG Joker too.
2) Joker was probably on the surname exclusion list in the first place. - I do not really know if the surname exclusion list really exists or not because I cannot find it, but if Soulbound Studios really had prior knowledge that this surname will be excluded from players, why did they not ban it beforehand rather than banning it after I had reserved it?
(P.S. I do really have the 2 emails of denial for the same surname Joker, and I tried to use the snipping tool to copy and paste the pictures here, but it did not work. If anyone really wants to see it, I can show it to them in their discord channel.)