Over the past few weeks, it feels like I've had an uptick in the number of Xbox customers contacting me either via email or direct message to help them get around unfair bans. I wondered if it was a coincidence, but I also saw an uptick in the topic across social media as well, which made me realize that Xbox had a time bomb on its hands.
When you sign up for Xbox Services on your Xbox Series Even if you “purchase” a game from any of these platforms, whether it's Xbox or not, you don't actually own anything. You have the license to rent the item in question forever — or at least until Apple, Google, PlayStation, or Microsoft, whoever, decides you're no longer entitled to it.
How do they decide whether or not you deserve access to your purchased content? Well, these companies are increasingly using AI. Increasingly, we're seeing an uptick in unfair banning practices with users left with no real path to appeal at all. this is unacceptable.
Microsoft has fired hundreds of customer support employees over the past few years
As part of Microsoft's recent Activision-Blizzard “restructuring,” the company has culled large chunks of the company's customer service team. Activision-Blizzard was one of the few game publishers that actually invested significantly in supporting human customer service within the company, although this service too was severely understaffed, overworked, and frequently criticized by users. Little did these users know that things were about to get much worse.
It's hard to say for sure if the two events are related, but over the past few weeks I've seen more and more players contacting me through different channels to try to help them unban their accounts. I suppose this may be partly due to our coverage of a YouTuber named GhillieYT who had his account unfairly banned in Minecraft. Creators are increasingly being targeted in “mass reporting” events that Microsoft's automated systems deem legitimate, resulting in permanent account suspension.
Frankly, Microsoft doesn't pay us for its customer service, and we should never have to support the channel for help in these situations. Microsoft has systems in place, that humans can review, to resolve these situations — but they are incomplete and, you guessed it, understaffed. Big YouTubers and content creators have a platform where they can call attention to their unfair bans to get them overturned, but thousands and millions of others don't.
I've also been contacted by Call of Duty players who claim they've been unfairly “shadowbanned.” Shadowbanning in Call of Duty is a practice whereby cheaters, chat violators, and the like are placed in a separate matchmaking pool separate from the general population. Microsoft also has an auto-upload feature for Xbox DVR clips enabled by default, however, it will prevent you from automatically sharing more than 18 clips from exciting games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077, despite the content of those games being on its own servers.
Now, there's a new problem with automated bans that will give Microsoft another big headache.
Players are banned in FFXIV for using innocuous terms within the game
We probably should have seen this coming, but Microsoft has issued a permanent and complete ban on accounts for players in FFXIV, Square-Enix's MMO, for using the phrase “Free Company.” For those who don't know, Free Companies is essentially FFXIV's clan or guild system, where players can band together as merchants to take down the game's big, scary monsters. However, Microsoft doesn't seem to care.
A viral tweet from Envinyon explains how reddit user /u/TGB_B20kEn's account was suspended for two months for using the phrase “Free Company” in an LFG post via Xbox. This is simply unacceptable.
If Microsoft is a truly serious gaming company, it should accept that humans use words, and those words often have specific contexts. If their automated systems are too stupid to understand the basic, innocuous contexts that words and phrases might have, they should throw the entire system in the trash. Why assume the worst, if you're not going to adjust the context appropriately?
I have no idea in which universe Microsoft thinks “free enterprise” refers to something malicious. It's been suggested that the system assumes it could be interpreted as some sort of solicitation by “the company,” but seriously, if Microsoft isn't going to use human moderators in its system, it should give people the benefit of the doubt first.
The entire system needs a comprehensive policy overhaul. For every unjustly banned individual who manages to draw attention to their cause, there are likely hundreds who suffer in silence. Even if these are marginal cases, this is unacceptable. Unless it is changed, it will continue to happen, and will make people feel increasingly fearful about using Xbox Live in a social context.
We are paying for this
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One of the archaic things about console gaming is the fact that we have to pay to play online. We've been told that fees support things like customer service, moderated play, and an environment less prone to cheating — but none of that is true today. What exactly are we paying for now? We don't pay for customer service, that's for sure. We're not paying to avoid cheaters – Microsoft is forcing competitive FPS console players to share pools with PC matchmaking groups that are now more vulnerable to hacking. We are sure we are not paying for smart supervision systems.
Microsoft's obsession with automation has been a blight on the company's consumer operations for the better part of a decade. I was recently locked out of a second Microsoft 365 Business account, and it took over two weeks of constant calls to escalate and fix it, and it was passed on to different departments that didn't want to take the responsibility to help me. This is their service at a business level.
It's increasingly clear that Microsoft believes it can have its cake and eat it from a customer service perspective – with as little investment as possible, and with a sterile, “safe” environment that doesn't cause PR headaches. Well, I'm here to cause a headache, because the existing system is becoming increasingly unfit for purpose.
Toxic players are bad, but so are toxic moderation practices.
Microsoft's reasoning is that toxic environments might drive people away from gaming. Maybe they are right. But what if the toxic environment stems from worry that you'll get banned for playing well in a competitive match, only to be widely reported and banned for no reason, and end up in a Kafkaesque nightmare of broken customer support bots? Toxic players are bad, but so are toxic moderation practices. Both could turn people away from the platform, and Microsoft should take that into account.
Either put trained humans in charge of issuing bans, or ease up on these ridiculously strict moderation practices, Microsoft. You can't build a social gaming platform made up of humans, paying customers, and handing your duty of care over to bots who are too stupid to differentiate between a “free company” for FFXIV and a free company xoxox link in your bio. “
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