Xbox Live’s goal is to be the world’s best social gaming network for all types of players. We have a diverse and passionate community and all gamers deserve to be welcomed and respected. Xbox Live provides a host of features that enable members to share experiences and have fun together. Like many social networks, however, some people misuse the network in inappropriate or harmful ways. At Xbox, we do not tolerate this behavior and our rules around this are outlined in our
Terms of Use. We’ve all seen our fair share of ‘bad apples’ at play: spammers, player-killers, people who constantly use foul language, people who send harmful messages, etc. These bad apples are a part of life but empowering our community with tools like the Xbox Live reputation system helps to make Xbox Live a more fun place for everyone to enjoy.
The Xbox Live reputation system
Reputation empowers community members to provide feedback with the goal of improving everyone’s experience and giving players the tools to identify those who may be exhibiting poor behavior.
Reputation works by keeping track of feedback that gamers receive as they interact with other players and games.
As you play online and interact with others, you may accumulate feedback in various ways:
- Your opponents might report you for being abusive in tone, for example, if you are swearing at them a lot.
- Your teammates might report you for intentionally team-killing.
- A game might report you for habitually quitting matches.
- A gamer might report you for posting an offensive comment on an Activity Feed.
- You might be muted a disproportionate number of times.
This feedback helps our algorithm identify which gamers appear to be behaving the most abusively. We know that most gamers don’t intend to hurt others; they simply may not realize that what they’re doing is offensive to others. So before we take any action against those gamers, we send warning messages to them to encourage them to shape up. If they ignore the messages and continue to accrue negative feedback, their reputation is impacted and we ensure that their ability to impact others is reduced.
How it works
The Xbox Live reputation system incorporates all the feedback that you’ve received during your last few weeks of multiplayer sessions to determine your reputation. Different types of feedback are weighted differently and our Policy & Enforcement Team often verifies feedback accuracy. We also use automated safeguards to ensure sure that feedback is accurate. As an example, we confirm that you’ve actually played with someone if you’re complaining about their multiplayer behavior.
If you get a large number of reports from other gamers, your reputation might drop to “Needs Work.” You’ll get a warning message from Xbox that you’re having a negative impact on other people and other gamers will see a “Needs Work” warning bar on your profile. It typically takes over a dozen unique reports or several dozen mutes for your reputation to drop down to “Needs Work.”
If you continue to get reported for your conduct after you’ve entered “Needs Work,” we’ll send you another message as a final warning. If you ignore this second message and get reported a few more times, you’ll enter the “Avoid Me” reputation classification. At this point, the network will limit your multiplayer experience and, depending on the game, you’ll either only be able to match with other “Avoid Me” players or have your microphone muted by default. You can always still play and chat with you friends but if you join a party with your friends, the whole party will be classified as having a bad reputation.
