You Have Been Banned

Caution: this blog contains material that may offend. That’s really saying something coming from me.

Earlier this week, I woke up to find I’d been banned from Xbox Live.

This is the second time I’ve been suspended from the service ‘due to inappropriate content in the profile for my gamertag’. The first time was for something completely ridiculous: I thought it would be hilarious to put ‘Fanny Bum’ as my motto. There it stayed for months alongside my long, wanky bio (which included the line ‘never gets the girl, but always saves the world or some shit’) and a link to my blog.

Then I suddenly get an email saying I’d been suspended due to inappropriate language in my profile. Yes, the phrase ‘fanny bum’ got someone online offended enough to file a complaint against me. In what was termed ‘Fanny Bumgate’ by my pal, former Ready Up writer Dave, I was banned from playing Modern Warfare 2 online on its launch weekend. Thank God I was in a conference in Dundee at the time: I think the suspense of having to wait to be able to play the multiplayer would have killed me.

That’s not the worst of it, either: when the ban was lifted and I tried to edit my bio via the Xbox website to get rid of the dreaded ‘Code of Conduct’, I was met by error after error after error when trying to submit my shortened redraft. I tried it with different browsers on numerous friends’ PCs, but to no avail.

I contacted the support team on Twitter, who told me to do exactly what I had been doing before asking me to give them my password so they could see what the problem was.

I ended up having to go to a friend’s house and use their USB keyboard on their Xbox to edit my profile. A massive pain the arse (having to edit my profile, that is, not seeing my friend. Always a pleasure to catch up with him).

This week’s ban is a little fairer, but still remains puzzling: was I banned for having the phrase ‘I write shit about games’ as my bio or ‘your mum likes men’ (which is true) as my motto? It would be nice to know.

Fair enough for suspending me for bad language, but banning me for an entire week? A day or two would be sufficient for me to learn my lesson, but no: I have to endure the entire seven days  without the ability to play with my best Halo pals for such a petty reason. That’s more than a little unfair, especially when you consider all the horribly offensive stuff you come across online, such as disgusting Gamertags, swastikas over Israeli flags as emblems in Black Ops and messages from random strangers such as these…

My infraction doesn’t seem nearly so bad in comparison.

I accept the fact I’ve been skirting the rules and pushing the envelope with the content of my profile, but I can’t help feeling that the monitoring system on Xbox Live is profoundly unjust. Here I am, a loyal, paying customer of six years who has never once hacked, cheated or griefed in a game (well, intentionally anyway) sitting here unable to play online as countless morons and idiots hack their consoles, kill their teammates and spout the most offensive language you’re ever likely to hear. The Xbox Live rules enforcement system needs a serious review.

I never intentionally set out to offend: I was just trying to give anybody looking at my profile a little chuckle and, as Martin said, ‘I can’t believe you got banned for telling the truth’. I was probably reported by a sore loser who couldn’t get over the beating that I’d given him in Matchmaking.

So I’ll need to find another form of entertainment this week, probably putting my brand –spanking new PC through its paces. When the ban lifts, I’ll be taking Dan’s advice, flushing out all the ‘shits’ and making only a bare-bones profile – assuming I can actually edit it via the website, that is. In the meantime, I’ll be sitting here silently fuming and trying to get a hold of the support team on Twitter.

A week without Halo…

Hold me.