I’ve had my xbox 360 and xbox live account for about 3 years. In this time i’ve spent countless hours playing to earn achievements trying to better my gamer score etc, prestiged numerous times on the various call of duty games, all in an effort to gain bragging rights over my mates! Sad but true!
Sat in my inbox this week was an email from [email protected] entitled “Xbox LIVE – Notification of Enforcement Action”! It read as follows…
This email is to notify you that your Xbox LIVE account privileges have been permanently suspended due to modification of your gamertag or other profile data.
These modifications may include, but are not limited to:
- Altering the appearance of your gamertag or avatar
- Illegitimate gain of achievements or avatar awards
- Application of watermarks or other special identifiers that were not legitimately granted
- Unauthorized manipulation of in-game parameters
Your conduct was brought to the attention of the LIVE Enforcement Team through complaints filed by other Xbox LIVE users or in the course of our operation of the service. The LIVE Enforcement Team has reviewed the complaints and other evidence regarding your conduct and determined it violates the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use and/or Code of Conduct. Because your conduct is in violation, the LIVE Enforcement Team has issued a permanent suspension.
During your suspension, you will not be able to log into Xbox LIVE. Your Xbox LIVE privileges will not be reinstated.
Customer Support is not able to modify or provide any further details about your suspension.
Microsoft expects that all customers abide by the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct provides guidelines for appropriate behavior while using the service.
You can view the Xbox LIVE Code of Conduct from the Xbox LIVE Dashboard under Xbox LIVE Policies in Account Management, or by visiting http://www.xbox.com/legal/codeofconduct.htm.You can view the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use by visiting http://www.xbox.com/legal/livetou.htm.
Note: if you are not a user of Xbox LIVE, this suspension may have been enacted due to your activity in the Zune Social. You can view the Zune Social Code of Conduct by visiting http://www.zune.net/legal/codeofconduct.htm. You can view the Zune Social Terms of Service by visiting http://www.zune.net/legal/termsofservice.htm.
Thank you,
LIVE Enforcement Team
WTF!!! As you can imagine I wasn’t very pleased! I cranked up the xbox and tried to sign in. No luck, it told me my account had been permanently suspended and I cant login until 31/12/9999 which basically means NEVER AGAIN!
Why did I get banned…? “Altering the appearance of your gamertag or avatar“. I remembered that last year I’d found something on the internet about changing the colour of your avatar skin (rather than using the usual pre-sets). All you did was plug your xbox hard drive into your PC, change a couple of values and hey presto, red skin to make me look like the devil!
Although I had changed my skin colour back to a normal one using the xbox interface they found out somehow. They class this as hacking and decided to permanently ban a rather loyal xbox live customer with over 3 years of gameplay!!! Thing that really pissed me off was the fact that i’d just renewed my subscription to Xbov LIVE too! Another £39.99 down the shitter!
I think this is extremely harsh for such a small thing! Why not a warning and a temporary suspension like they do for other things! Cheating, racism, offensive behaviour & bad language can get you a temporary suspension for a few days but a total ban for a colour change!!! HARSH!