Larian Studios, the developers behind the popular RPG Baldur’s Gate 3, have confirmed they are communicating with Microsoft regarding recent bans issued to players on the Xbox platform. These bans stemmed from players uploading gameplay videos containing explicit content. This is a default setting on Xbox and was apparently not the intention of the users.
While specifics of the ongoing discussions haven’t been publicly disclosed, Larian Studios acknowledged the issue on Twitter. The reason that it’s hard to side with Microsoft is because the Xbox automatically uploads your gameplay recordings online without asking you. So, if you record through Xbox and capture anything that is NSFW or sexual, you’ll receive a ban.
We reported this happening yesterday to a Reddit user, and even after they were told it was unintentional and was more the fault of their default settings than the user, the ban remained. I disagree that any service should be able to upload your recordings to their online platform without needing to ask. It feels like an invasion of privacy.
The director of Publishing was the one who released the tweet to let players know that he thought it was “annoying and uncool.” Baldur’s Gate 3 has a setting to remove mature content through playthroughs. Still, this kind of consequence prohibits players who choose not to turn that setting off from being able to record footage of pieces of gameplay for themselves due to the possible online bans.
We will have to wait and see how Microsoft responds, but the case we reported on was of a Reddit user who got three strikes in the course of minutes. They were recording gameplay and were at camp where most of the NSFW stuff happens, which was uploaded without their knowledge, and they were given a year’s ban for it.
I like Microsoft, but that’s a really good reason to switch to PlayStation.
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