Gamer suspended over name of W.Va. town: Fort Gay Posted by XanTium | September 8 17:26 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From seattlepi.com: [QUOTE] Microsoft Corp. and the chief rules enforcer for Xbox Live are apologizing to a small West Virginia town and a 26-year-old gamer accused of violating the online gaming service's code of conduct by publicly declaring he's from Fort Gay - a name the company considered offensive. The town's name is real. But when Moore tried to tell Seattle-based Microsoft and the enforcement team at Xbox Live, they wouldn't take his word for it. Or Google it. Or check the U.S. Postal Service website for a ZIP code. Instead, they suspended his gaming privileges for a few days until Moore could convince them the location in his profile, "fort gay WV," wasn't a joke or a slur: It's an actual community of about 800 in Wayne County, along West Virginia's western border with Kentucky. Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live said that was a miscommunication. "Someone took the phrase 'fort gay WV' and believed that the individual who had that was trying to offend, or trying to use it in a pejorative manner," Toulouse said. "Unfortunately, one of my people agreed with that. ... When it was brought to my attention, we did revoke the suspension." [/QUOTE] Full Story: seattlepi.com

Let the jokes commence. I wonder if he lives in a Gay Fort. MS is so paranoid.

I wonder if he'll eat at A Dong Restaurant if he ever goes to Iowa.

http://www.insiderpages.com/b/3713694696/a...rant-des-moines

wow ms needs to chill out with trying to be so politically correct also i think its funny that banning one guy constitutes an apology to an entire town

not to worry I bet that is a happy community over there

so they allow gamertags like babies make me cum and block this awesome world we live in ..

How apt for this story to appear, right after this one: http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=720684

"Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live said that was a miscommunication."

Wait up - didn't you just quote the following at PAX 2010:

"The more convoluted, overwrought and lengthy the protest of innocence, the probability of it being bullshit approaches one."

So, he protests and no-one thinks to actually look the place up? No, of course not Mr Toulouse - it's obviously bullshit, eh? I mean, you and your team couldn't POSSIBLY be wrong on something.

Here's MY rule: "The more of an ass you make of yourself, the larger the hole you dig"

Mr Toulouse, you might as well have just used a digger and had done with it.

Wow thats gay.

"It's really where I live!" must be to convoluted, overwrought and lengthy to be the truth.

he should have gotten more of a compensation for their mess up.

Didn't even bother to check it out with a Bing search before banning.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=fort+gay&...;sk=&sc=2-8

What. a bunch. of morons. Also, of course they apologized to the whole town. It's an easy way to smooth things over with all the other current or potential LIVE gamers who might live there.

Exactly what I wanted to say.

M$ needs to learn about customer SERVICE, not customer bullying.

The person or people that actually pressed the button to ban, should be released for NO BRAINS.
If I made the same type of dumb decision at my work, I would have been fired, no question.

::edit::
Am I reading this right? Was it his gamertag that had fort gay in it? Or his profile ONLY? If it was just his profile, that is even worse (imo). Morons.

We should figure out a way to change the name of a town to "Linux Fan."

They should have given each person in town 2 copies of Halo.

Yep so when the one gets scratch rings, they have their other one so they do not have to call for replacement and get laughed at or told they are full of sh*t when they say the town they need to ship to.

M$ is ridiculous they let Gamer Tags get by that are actually offensive and they choose to harass
this individual for something that is true. I hope they send a few Microsoft points his way to make up
for the inconvenience and few days that he lost.

lame

personally i think people are WAYYYY to worried about 'offending' people nowadays.

political correctness = thumbs down

Why is everyone jumping on Microsoft for this, why is it even needed as a top XS news story on my RSS when it was a genuine and simple mistake.

The amount of kids hurling racial and homophobic abuse via the PS3 and 360 and using offensive gamertags/clan tags is crazy, so Microsoft are taking a firm stance on it and trying to get rid of them.

This town is clearly one that can be misconstrued as someone trying to be cleaver in their homophobic insults.

This guy that got suspended for 2/3 days likely got an extra month added to his Live account so he wont be complaining too much.

Really if anything the people on XS should be jumping on the kids thinking they are smart using this type of insults which caused MS to need to take this kind of stance to it.

Well yes being PC is a huge problem. I hate when people are PC, it makes me sick. Anyways I feel the main reason there is so much PC in this country is because everyone is sue happy. Calling someone or referencing to someone as a racial slur or a slur about their sexual orientation, especially in the work place, can land you in court. That's why companies are so worried about stuff like this. Another thing I hate is double standards.



Sure there is a problem with racial slurs and gay bashers on XBOX live. These aren't huge problems though, part of the game is talking smack and sometimes people go overboard, but remember you do have a mute button. Also if you are worried about kids hearing it, the most common thing on XBOX live is 8-13 year olds calling people these slurs and names. With the amount of messed up people in this country and sexual predators, you shouldn't let your kids near a service they can communicate with the outside world till they are in the higher teens.

The sad thing is though, words are words. Didn't your mommy and daddy ever tell you "Stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me" I mean seriously though there are more things to worry about like the billions of ways we could die everyday then worry about someone calling you a fag or the n-word.

BTW did you see this article

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=720684



I posted a link to this story because you claim its a simple mistake and complaining about it being a XS story. So basically this d-bag in the article above, says that everyone they ban is guilty, have no word in the matter, even in the rare occasion that a person is honestly innocent and its a mistake on MS's part, they want to hear nothing of it. So what MS is always right? Their methods are always 100% correct?

You know how hard it is to call in or contact someone about being banned from live? They don't want to hear it from you. If you call in, they will basically just blow you off and say there is nothing they can do and you can argue with them until you are blue in the face and they will just say they can't do anything until you get so mad you just hang up. The don't care about you as a customer. They figure they just press the ban button for whatever amount of time on any person and really there is nothing you can do to defend yourself, just take it, maybe even get a new live account because of the time of the suspension is so great.

Great customer service right?

Fort Gay rocks, it was one of the only places around that area that sold beer on sunday heheh

Quit using that argument, its fucking old. The only reason xbox 360 "rings disks" is because the user thinks gravity doesnt apply to fast moving objects such as a disk.

People are going to be exposed to things they don't like, it's part of life. Fuck Off. <- this is where I get censored in 3. 2. 1.

It would be cool if everyone changed their location to Fort Gay now just so they can have the word gay in there without getting banned by the censorship police... Last time I checked there was a complaint function that you can use to report someone if they actually have something offensive, which in this situation I seriously doubt someone filed a complaint on this guy for his location saying Fort Gay. Most likely it got auto flagged by MS software for the word "Gay" and then these dumbasses banned him for that alone. Oh no this guys profile has the word gay in it, code of conduct violation, auto-ban!!! I guess this explains the Xbox Live rate hike, they need more money to pay employees that monitor what peoples profiles say all day. Instead of actually improving the service and getting rid of glitchers/cheaters. Ridiculous.

typical ms bs.
really can't stand any huge company that likes to bully the people that made them that big.
its nice to see a story where they have to say "sorry" for a change.

Stephen Toulouse you are a huge cock muncher.
I'd like to punch you in the head

I second that notion