Subscribe to Breaking NewsRuby-Sachs: XBox Live Update
The first news of Teresa’s removal from the XBox Live playing site was posted Wednesday afternoon. By yesterday afternoon, MTV news had an interview with a Microsoft official who backtracked from the game’s actions.
According to the rep, the XBox ban on using the words gay and lesbian was inspired by the pejorative use of that word in 92% of profiles brought to the attention of administrators. So, it’s an anti-discrimination policy.
The future of Xbox forums will include some method of identifying sexual orientation in gaming profiles (good luck with that one), but the development of relationship/orientation options will take time. The rep did not agree to re-instate Teresa, arguing that insufficient details were provided in her original post.
* as an aside: Teresa, send us your details and we will forward them to Microsoft. Alternatively, send them to Microsoft and let us know how they respond*
So, Microsoft did not exactly apologize for the treatment of players on its site. It did, however, agree to open up a space for gay players in the future. Whether this will do anything to curb the obvious harassment experienced on these sites, we have yet to see. What was accomplished, was a recommendation for all gamers experiencing homophobic harassment to post complaints about users on xbox.com.
I know I will be monitoring that site as will many others. Maybe the next XBox user kicked offline will be the cause of the intolerance rather than its victim.
couldn’t have said it better myself.
wow, i wonder if they ever did read her profile… maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess…
Sounds like things are moving forward then. Good.
So, I’m not clear. Do we gay people need a special space? Shouldn’t the entire thing be user-friendly in the best sense of that term? I want to know what Microsoft is going to do about its users who yell slurs at gay players, and say things like are said in that Youtube video (and the insults have since moved on to Youtube as well). I had no idea that Xbox was basically a playground for bigots of all ages. We shouldn’t have to complain about it for something to be done. What happens to players who harass other players? What’s the punishment?
I play on XBox360Live a lot and have only been the subject of at least one verbal attack, which I reported to XBoxLive the second it happened to me. Whatever became of the complaint I don’t know.
One thing I might want to add to this and that is this: It shouldn’t really matter what a person’s sexual orientation is in regards to the gaming community. You are not there to hook up, you are not there to make a political statement, you are there to PLAY the G*d damn $60 dollar game that you bought online. It is sad that this person had her account canceled due to her sexual orientation. However, I don’t think many gamers care if you’re gay or not. I’m a gay man that plays online and that one encounter was the ONLY one I had to deal with. Other than that, I have no problems playing heterosexual or homosexual gamers.
Yes I’ve almost had that problem too. On my xbox I tried to post my saying as Gay Pride and it wouldn’t let me saying that a word or phrase wasn’t allowed. It was really annoying, but I updated my saying on xbox.com and it let me. Occasionally I get hate messages, or people kick me from games for it, but usually its pretty alright.