I've made no secret of the fact that I loved the original subtitle of the next "Serious Sam" film, "Planet Badass," and am disappointed that it was eventually dropped. It's puzzling, really. Why would such a wonderfully silly title be shaved from a game that clearly deserved it?

After all, it was never meant to represent the series in a good way, and Croteam's communications manager Daniel Lucic told Kotaku, "We will be localizing 'Serious Sam 4' into multiple languages. We are in discussions with the [localization] team. In discussions with the [localization] team, we came to the conclusion that it would be next to impossible to translate "Planet Badass" into the original idea as is. I think the same is true of any pun, but it is a good pun only if it is offered in its original form."

One Steam user claims that Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford had a hand in (very) indirectly pulling down the subtitle. According to the story, an avid fan disliked the subtitle so much that he started spamming Serious Sam's Discord server with a picture of Pitchford wearing sunglasses that said "Badass" and refused to quit until the subtitle was removed. This seems a little less likely than Lucic's description.

True or false, it seems very odd that Serious Sam fans would object to the game being called Planet Badass. According to Google, the English word "Badass" translates to "badass" in Croatian."

"We always make an effort to listen to our fans, but this time we changed it for practical reasons," Lucic said. Reasonable, but still disappointing.

Serious Sam 4 will be available on Steam on September 24.