I came upon an article this morning about an 11-year-old autistic kid that received the whole "gamerscore-reset-cheater-label" treatment by Micorsoft. The story sparked my interest if only for the questions it provoked: did he understand what "cheating" was? That others consider it "wrong"? That there were risks involved? For many kids with autism the answer would be "no" to all of the above, plain and simple - so is that still cheating? As philosophical as that might sound, Microsoft's Terms of Service that we all "sign" upon joining Xbox Live unequivocally says: yes, still cheating. Furthermore, the possibility that savant-like skill supplanted cheating in this instance has since been disproved - but at least it made for an interesting headline while it lasted!
Which was one of the reasons I typed up a little article myself, as I love doing for TrueAchievements from time to time. Unfortunately, for reasons completely within my control (my own stupidity), the article will not be printed there. So where can orphaned articles go to die? Why, AchievementBeard.com of course!
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
According to bad writers that work for Seattle's Q13 Fox News, autistic 11-year-old Julias Jackson was "socked in the stomach by Xbox Online" when he booted up his Xbox last week and found the label "Cheater" in place of 1500 deleted achievements that he had racked up over the course of about 200 days. Understandably upset, Julias's mother phoned Xbox Live and was immediately connected with people who had no idea what she was talking about, but was finally able to elicit this response later on via email:
The only actions that we take are to correct the player's current Gamerscore, and to label the player as a "cheater." This label can be observed on Xbox.com and through the player's view of their Gamercard on a console or computer that is connected to Xbox LIVE. The player can still legitimately gain future achievements. The player's experience does not change in any other way.
Julias's mother maintains, however, that her son's achievements were legitimate, due only to "his hard work and hours logged online", and that he can "master games in three to four days." In any event, she added that Xbox Live is "pretty much his only outlet and his only friend, because of autism", and that he was correspondingly devastated by the event.
Microsoft hasn't backed down though, and subsequently issued this response to Kotaku's inquiries:
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 - http://www.xbox.com/Live/Cheating.
Likewise, Stephen Toulouse, director of policy and enforcement for Xbox Live, confirmed via Twitter that "this wasn't a 'he played too good' situation at all," and that the details regarding young Julias's "cheated achievements" have since been given to his mother.
