When Baldur’s Gate 3 players began receiving Xbox account bans for recording or screenshotting in-game romance scenes, everyone assumed it was an accidental oversight from automatic censoring. According to Xbox, that is not the case: These clips are being individually reviewed and deemed ban-worthy.
On Jan. 8, the official Xbox Support account tweeted to finally provide some clarity nearly a week after the bans first started being reported. In the tweet, Xbox made it clear that clips from Baldur’s Gate 3 are being individually reviewed by moderators before players are banned for taking them. The most bizarre part is that any clip you take on your Xbox is by default uploaded to the Xbox network, and this automatic setting is what is getting players banned. In the tweet, Xbox Support recommends turning off the default feature if you want to avoid an account ban, and then provides a link to their support page for instructions. Needless to say, the community is not happy with the stance Xbox has taken.
A tweet from @RealCofffeeChoco concisely summarized the issue by asking why this automatic sharing is something users must opt out of, rather than opting into. Another user pointed out how easily this problem could be solved by placing an 18+ filter on clips of 18+ games. “The content is sold by you on your platform,” they continue.
The tweet from Xbox does finish by saying that suspensions will likely be reversed if it is a “first offense,” and that those users will also receive another set of instructions on how to turn off auto-upload. Even so, the policy is flawed to begin with. At the very least, Xbox should implement a warning about the auto-upload feature whenever a clip from an 18+ game is recorded informing players about the policy. I also don’t see any reason why these clips can’t be reviewed for mature content before being made available to other users for viewing, especially when that clip is coming from a game that is known to contain nudity.
This entire issue should serve as a wake up call to Xbox that they shouldn’t automatically implement a clip sharing system on mature games, as this entire debacle so clearly lays out why that is such an awful idea.
The burden of action should absolutely not be on players to go into their settings and fiddle around to make sure they can safely play and record games sold by Xbox—rather, Xbox needs to adjust the system they designed to not allow these things to happen by accident. There are games that require an age verification before they can be viewed on the Xbox Store. Why do these same games not require an age verification before they can be viewed on the Xbox network? Telling players to adjust Xbox’s automatic settings comes across as lazy and disingenuous, especially considering the fact that the response is coming a week later.
