In an effort to promote cybersecurity, Microsoft has released its first-ever digital transparency report related to Xbox. The Microsoft Xbox Gaming Platform Digital Transparency Report is a snapshot of the activities undertaken by the Xbox team over a six-month period to “foster a safe, positive, inclusive and engaging space for all gamers,” according to Dave McCarthy, vice president of Xbox Player Services.
In the first-ever transparency report, the Xbox team laid out its vision for the community, including a detailed list of Xbox community standards such as shared values, behavior, content, attitudes, cross-platform gaming, spam, legality, fraud and prohibition of other harmful behaviors.
Perhaps the most notable data in the detailed report is that related to the Xbox team’s “proactive enforcement” of its standards, with the team taking action against accounts that violated community guidelines as many as 4.78 million times.
Of the 4.78 million blocking actions, a large percentage of accounts were temporarily suspended during the six-month reporting window, which includes January 1 through June 30, 2022.
Suspensions are based primarily on the content of the violation, with repeated policy violations resulting in longer suspensions, accounts being permanently banned from the service, or potentially banned from using devices.
According to the report, the Xbox team has become more aggressive in “proactive enforcement” – a nine-fold increase over previous reports of account suspensions for “inauthentic accounts” and cheating; these behaviors are oddly grouped together.
The net result of more regulation of its policies on the Xbox platform has been a decrease in the number of players reporting each other. Fear of 7- to 14-day bans may be one reason for fewer player reports or the fact that more players are more aware of the platform’s guidelines than they were a few years ago.
Of the 33.37 million player-reported files this year, most were flagged for in-game behavior related to cheating or purposeful team sabotage.
As the number of Xbox Ambassadors continues to grow to over 150,000, the Xbox team is also committed to empowering players to monitor themselves in more granular situations.
You can see the full report here.
