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Microsoft Allows Gamertags To Reflect Sexual Orientation, Personal Beliefs
by Leigh Alexander [PC, Console/PC]
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March 5, 2010
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Microsoft is making changes to its Xbox Live Code of Conduct to expand the kinds of Gamertags it allows -- which means users can now have tags that indicate their sexual orientation, religion or race.
The change will come in particular as welcome news to a community of gay gamers who have found Microsoft's prohibition on the word "gay" anywhere in their Gamertag to be discriminatory.
Bans of such users have been widely publicized in recent years, and hotly disputed. Microsoft has always contended its intent was to protect users from harassment, and to prevent users from creating Gamertags that insulted, rather than celebrated orientation, religion or nationality.
"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs," says Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten in a public statement.
"However, we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox Live community," he adds.
This new update to the Code of Conduct "will allow our members to more freely express their race, nationality, religion and sexual orientation in Gamertags and profiles," he says.
According to Whitten, Microsoft will employ "increased stringency and enforcement to prevent the misuse of these terms."
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As a Microsoft FTE coming up on my second anniversary, I can say that one thing that was crystal-clear to me from the first moment of my New Employee Orientation session was that MS is deeply committed at this point to diversity in all senses, with a particular emphasis on sexual orientation and transgender (which is a relatively big community in Seattle). While my long-timer Microsoftie colleagues have told me stories that indicate this wasn't necessarily always made manifest in the company's actions, it is certainly so now. Robert's right that this will be a difficult line to walk, but I'm proud of MS for taking the leap.
Your secrets are still safe, whatever they are. :-)
What are you talking about? It's the players choice to give out personal information in their gamer tag. MS isn't invading any ones privacy here.
Did you read the article or did you just read the headline and then start typing?
I take my hat off to MS for giving people options. Now lets just hope that people will use it responsibly. We all know that there are an obnoxious few that will try to be as abusive as possible. The sooner we get over that hurdle the better.
but if MS wouldnt have made such a big deal about it, there would probably be less idiots with insulting gamertags in the first place.
@ Alan:
It's great that you do not pay any attention to categorizations such as sexual orientation. However, I'm sure you know that some people do pay attention to such things. That's why you have specific guilds/clans, etc in various MMOs, for example, or groups of people in real life. It would be nice if we could get past the idea of creating categories and then trying to slot people into them while generalizing the members with categorical traits/definitions. We seem to be a very long way from such a goal, though.
Yes Dave you are right society in general is very far from such a state of being. And that is a sad thing indeed.
As far as I read, the profile system wasn't 'overhauled'; the code of conduct was changed. Relaxing rules for everyone is a bit simpler task then giving sincerity tests to millions and millions of users.
Previously, people could be banned for saying as much in their profiles, which they could put up for reasons such as:
- being overly-sappy couples who want to brag (you know, like straight people do)
- trying to discourage guys from hitting on them if they're girls
- Wanting to point out that despite being an invisible minority we're present in games (the whole thing about games not being designed with characters who might reflect the minority being that most people can't see the minority, or dispel the myth that games are a straight space only)
- Wanting to find a community to friend and play with who aren't likely to sling homophobic slurs around because, guess what, they're gay too.
- just about any other social reason.
Ditto religion, ditto race.
...Anything that has a social element, people can mention these things for many personal reasons. Being banned over it is absurd. Previously, people were. Now they won't be. Great news imho.
m-xbox-live/
Some information from an incident one year ago almost exactly.