Microsoft insists autistic Xboxer is a cheat
Mother furious
Jennifer Zdenek, the mother of an 11-year-old autistic boy, is outraged at Microsoft's Xbox Live for labelling her son a cheat and taking back all his online achievements, which she claims were earned fairly.
Zdenek said her son, Julias Jackson, only seems to have cheated because he's so good at playing Xbox games. She insisted his achievements were earned through many hours of hard work, Seattle-based US TV channel Q13 Fox reports.
Xbox Live is supposedly Julias' main source of interaction outside of school, and being labelled on Xbox Live a "cheater" has devastated him, his mum claimed.
Zdenek said that she would cancel her son's Xbox Live subscription at the beginning of next month should Microsoft continue to ignore her requests that Julias' achievements be reinstated.
That doesn't seem likely to happen. Xbox Live staff have emailed Zdenek three times to say why Julias' Gamerscore was reset and that he can still earn achievements in future. Assuming, of course, Xbox Live's system doesn't once again conclude he's cheating.
In an update to this story, Microsoft released evidence on why it had concluded that the boy had cheated. The company also offered Julias a free month of Xbox Live to start fresh with a new Gamertag. ®
COMMENTS
Achievement Unlocked: Parental Naïvety
Microsoft's gamerscore cheat detection is pretty advanced - otherwise they'd be banning hardcore gamers all the time. As I understand, it's based on detecting achievements that couldn't possibly have been gained simultaneously - for instance, if on Monday I have 0 gamerscore on Super Gunfighter Noobs, and on Tuesday I log on and unlock the "Played your first online game" and "Play 50,000 online games" achievements at the same time, something's probably afoot. Repeat this pattern across multiple games and you've likely got yourself a cheater. (Complicated slightly if you play offline a lot - but he's a Gold subscriber and a game addict, so not applicable.)
What's most likely:
- Kid gets banned from Xbox Live for cheating
- Kid sulks to mommy that Microsoft took his ickle points away
- Mommy knows no better and bleats out cries of discrimination
What SHOULD (and won't) happen next:
- Microsoft issues a statement containing multiple illustrations showing with 100% certainty that the child has clearly cheated
Oh, and the video news report clearly shows this 11-year-old boy playing Dead Rising and Halo, both of which are rated M for Mature in the US. If you're going to insist on whiny finger-pointing, Jennifer Zdenek, why not start closer to home?
Sir
"if it was me, I'd spin kick you in the throat!"
Would you say it was society, or perhaps your homelife that has made you sound so violent?
I hope to hell it isn't all the fucking shoot'em ups your playing because that would just suck to realise all the nanny-staters were right all along!
DEFINATLY - Not so spot on.
Before you slag of CmdrX3 any more perhaps you'd care to return to the story and READ THE FUCKING LINK!
The kid cheated - his mum acknowledges that he should not have done so.
She is asking MS to re-instate a cheating account cos the kids is 'special'! (there's your discrimination)
The kid is a TWIT like all the other cheating banned twits. He is not some friggen pinball wizard genius leet player. Stop making things up in your head or piss off back to the daily fail.
Update on the story
Turns out the kid handed his account over to someone else to get Recon armour in Halo. That's where the cheating happened.
Mom backpedals furiously, non-story comes to an end, Microsoft are somehow still the bad guy.
I've never seen the MS banhammer used incorrectly. There are always cries of injustice and threats to never buy an MS product again, but the truth is MS (and Bungie) don't do this kind of thing on a whim, they have enough data to make the right call.
If you are a blantant cheat and want to carry on doing it, feel free to go do it on PSN, XBL doesn't want you.
Sigh, why's it different?
"gamers take themselves too seriously" and "stupid achievements"
Really why does that bother you? Why is it different than say a game of football or tennis or any other sport / pass-time?
Would you be happy if you were playing a tennis / football match for a trophy and someone else got it just for turning up with no effort put in?
I would like to know what your hobbies are. I can then pull them apart and call them stupid if I wanted. I won't because that's just down right childish.
Achievements exist in every walk of life. That's why they added them to games (and it helps them as people play more.)
