Xbox Live labels boy cheater

[IDrinkaRum]

Autistic 11-year-old labelled a cheater

Yes, the boy is autistic.

Autistic children are reall good at certain things. Like Dustin Hoffman's character who was a really good card counter, other children are good at math, can put together intricate models in a matter of hours that would take days for a neurotypical person, etc.

"Gamerscore resets are done when cheating is detected to keep LIVE fun, fair and safe for everyone. We only do them when we are 100% confident that cheating has occurred, and they are not something that can be appealed. Details can be found here."

How can Xbox Live "know" that he was cheating? My daughter will play and play and play a video game (either on the Wii, PS3, or DS) until she can do everything she needs to win the game. Some autistics are like that: keep playing until they have won the game. Maybe he figured out how to bypass somethings that the game programmers didn't anticipate someone would figure out? If that's the case, make the boy a game tester, DO. NOT. label him as a cheater and have people avoid him like the plague because he's "too good" at playing the game.

Ordover offers some advice for the Xbox LIVE team: "If you want to create a game that's a challenge for an autistic child, you'll have to hire an autistic programmer."

^My thoughts exactly

[lordlundar]

And it's stuff like this which is why when I play an offline game, I disable the net connection. My copy of the game, my rules. I don't need some corporate shill telling me how to play the games I bought.

(no, MMO's do NOT count, because I'm not paying for the copy of the game, merely the account to access the game. Just to put that little counter argument to bed before it rises up. )

[Cheshire]

You can blame the sheer amount of actual cheaters for the shoot first, ask questions later method of removing cheaters from online play.

With the large amount of people who are actually cheating on Xbox live, the network administrators don't have time to review each case individually.

The news article sees the child as an individual with an actual reason for why he played so well, while the programmers only see that someone somehow got a large amount of gamer points in a small amount of time, among other online activities. They were doing their job making sure there are no cheaters on Xbox live, and simply made a mistake due to a very rare exception.

[AdminAssistant]

I agree with Cheshire.

Also, it seems like these articles are really playing up his autism ("Microsoft is after a poor, autistic kid!!!!") when I think it's kind of a non-issue. Lots of kids without autism are very, very good at quickly beating video games.

[Andara Bledin]

The fact that the XBox Live team doesn't accept appeals for the cheater tag is just ludicrous.

It's as if their team is incapable of making mistakes, which we know can't possibly be true.

I'm putting my money on them reversing that decision in the wake of the might of the Internet flaming them over it. It might take a while, as they can be stupidly stubborn, but I'm still willing to bet they won't stick to it.

^-.-^

[DrFaroohk]

Wow I wish I could blame other people when I screwed up at work. "Oh sir, I accused this customer of stealing because so many customers are stealing I have developed a shoot first ask later mentality. And because there's so many I never have time to actually do any work investigating, so really I just pick out random people and accuse them of stealing."

That'd go over real well with HR.

[joe hx]

Okay, maybe I'll get attacked for this comment, but just because he's autistic doesn't mean he's incapable of cheating. Isn't there a possibility he did in fact cheat?

[MaggieTheCat]

I think it's entirely possible he cheated, but I also think it's entirely possible he got all those achievements and points legally, too. Just because someone racked up a bunch of points or whatever in a short amount of time doesn't automatically make them a cheater. It's hard to tell how Microsoft came to the conclusion to ban him; if it was ONLY because he had so many points in such a short time, then that's pretty lame and they should be investigating each case individually instead of saying "Hey, here's a kid who got XXX points in X amount of time, that's highly unlikely so he must have cheated, let's ban him!" If they did, in fact, do an investigation and somehow have proof he cheated, then fine.

[Gravekeeper]

Ok, stop a sec before the bandwagon gets out of the drive way. >.>

In all blunt honesty, if he was not autistic the media would not care and because he's autistic, they went right for outage and didn't bother to do shit and all for follow up.

He ( or his mother ) did cheat ( Kotaku actually did follow this up, the article just doesn't bother to post Kotaku's *entire* follow up ) or more specifically one of them let a friend of his use his account ( from his house, from his X-Box ) to cheat to get him some Halo recon armour he wanted. So before we tar & feather Microsoft for being the big evil empire, they are right. Does it suck for the kid? Yes, but it's his and/or mom's responsibility. Blame him and/or her.

Mom just didn't get her way after sob storying Microsoft and is whining to the media.

[tabbyblack13]

If there was a cheat then Microsoft is right (did I actually say that?). Unfortunately the account that was used was the autistic boy's and not the friend's account. The account is how they track everything. Microsoft doesn't know who is actually playing the name.

I am willing to bet that the Mother a) did not know about the cheat that the friend did or b) that it would negatively affect her son. There are a lot of parents that do not know or pay attention to the rules of XBox Live. I know for a fact that the kids are not paying attention to the rules.

[Gravekeeper]

I am willing to bet that the Mother a) did not know about the cheat that the friend did or b) that it would negatively affect her son. There are a lot of parents that do not know or pay attention to the rules of XBox Live. I know for a fact that the kids are not paying attention to the rules.

Well, MS's director of policy and enforcement for Live! stated they confirmed without a doubt it was cheating and gave mom all the details on the cheating. Then mom tweeted ( yes, seriously >< ) that they had let a third party use the account to get him his Halo armour. Which is probably why she and the story have slinked off away from the media now.

So they did it, they got caught, end of story. Doesn't matter who actually did it, practically the first section of any agreement with an online account states you're responsible for its security and how its used. And you should not share the credentials with anyone.

Added bonus: Despite the fact he's 11, he had achievements for M rated games. So mom's doing a real stellar job.

[Greenday]

Rated M for an 11 year old? The travesty?

Oh wait, I played M games back then and I just graduated college, have no criminal record, and got a job in less than six months after graduating college that pays six figures.

Come on, don't even try to play that game. I know the mom was a moron but still.

[lordlundar]

Added bonus: Despite the fact he's 11, he had achievements for M rated games. So mom's doing a real stellar job.

No. Don't continue that train of thought GK. I have been in that argument for way too long and I won't even humour bad information from either side. Unless you can prove that his mom had no idea and that it is a problem for the kid, then please don't make that assumption.

[Gravekeeper]

Rated M for an 11 year old? The travesty?

Oh wait, I played M games back then and I just graduated college, have no criminal record, and got a job in less than six months after graduating college that pays six figures.

Oh, good, right to the extreme from the get go. Yes, and clearly you're the benchmark for every single child on the planet. If only we referenced you, there would be no need for the entire field of child psychology? Sorry, but dropping your 11 year old autistic son down in front of 50 Cents: Blood On The Sand is really going to help him. A game that actually has a button dedicated to swearing at enemies. Of which you can unlock more as you play ( and what does our lad like to do when he plays? That's right, he's going for achievements. )

It's bad enough mom's using X-Box Live! of all things as a "social outlet" for him.

No. Don't continue that train of thought GK. I have been in that argument for way too long and I won't even humour bad information from either side. Unless you can prove that his mom had no idea and that it is a problem for the kid, then please don't make that assumption.

As a game dev, it peeves me off. No one pays attention to the damn rating. But then some M-rated game is the first thing that somehow gets blamed for every bad thing anyone under the age of 18 does. So yes, I will make that assumption. The very fact she paraded him out to the media after MS wouldn't give her what she wanted tells me she's not exactly making the best decisions here. ;p

[kibbles]

I think that cashiers that act disgusted and try to berate parents for buying a M-rate whatever for their child are actually the SCs - Sucky Coworkers.

I agree that it's the mom's own fault regarding the cheating and then trying to get a media story out of it, but I don't think that her buying an M-rated game for her son in any way reflects on her parenting skills. JMO.