[UPDATE] Microsoft Devastates Autistic Child By Labeling Him a Cheater

[laserwulf]

There's a blog called "Why Was I Banned" ( http://whywasibanned.com/ ) that highlights some of the more amusing Xbox forum entries from banned/suspended players, and the responses from MS reps. Also, the official Xbox podcast has a fellow from the Enforcement team that occasionally explains what his team does. MS doesn't ban or suspend users unless there's verifiable proof that wrongdoing has occurred, like unlocking online-only achievements while offline. Although the reps will sometimes tell users on what grounds they were banned, it seems to be company policy to not disclose details of bans/suspensions.

Autistic or not, there's no doubt in my mind that the kid or someone with access to his account violated the ToS.

 

[MurderousToaster]

I just love how some parents these days think: "Hey, so, my son's been the victim of an error in the system. What should I do? I know, I'll contact Fox News!" instead of politely emailing customer support.

 

[Joepow]

I don't see any implication of Jackson's innocence here. Microsoft is just being polite by not outright saying "he cheated".

Microsof are also not saying "he cheated" because they're unwilling to give away any details of how. 3 company reps and 3 e-mails to the company (I checked) don't even tell them how or where he cheated. Perhaps a chance of their mistake? Which they won't undo.

Also, he's autistic so he is incapable of understanding emotions and he measures his worth by his gamescore?... That's not what autism really is.

Autistics have a great deal of difficulty dealing with change and emotions. When they're in their own special "zone", they can cope with quite astounding mental feats because they don't have to deal with the usual mental garbage that we take for granted. (There's also Savantism, but that doesn't seem to be the case here).

The three basics of autism are difficulties with social interaction, social communication, and social imagination. (http://tinyurl.com/6dxepe8)

That means that a simple score will be as great as importance to an austic as your first kiss or your mum's cookie recipie. It's what makes them feel whole. Slap a label for being a lesser person (Cheater) on top of that, and you may as well slap an "N word" on all your non-white players - it's that offensive.

Note: I'm not saying he didn't cheat - I'm not saying this wouldn't be as bad applied to anyone else and I'm not saying that it's healthy for him to be using this as his only interaction.

But yeah, Microsoft, get off your collective ass and at least let this guy remove the cheater tag, that's just fucking childish.

We really don't know enough to judge whether he really cheated or not. If the punishment was automatic they might not have records of how exactly he cheated or maybe they need some time to retrieve them. On the other hand, perhaps they DID make a mistake but they are not willing to admit that their system is problematic.

As to weather this punishment is generally too harsh, I never commented on that.

Lastly, I see your point that he is affected more by the punishment than the average gamer, but I disagree with the notion that those who are hurt more by the punishment should get special treatment. By the same logic, a lonely criminal should get more jail time than one with many friends.

PS: Do we know the kid is autistic, or do we just have his mother's word for it?

PS2: If I don't reply to any other posts, it's because I'm going to bed I will reply tomorrow if needed.
edited for terrible spelling

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't just erase someone's gamerscore unless they legitimately cheated in some way. The only reason this is in the news is because he's autistic.

 

[Dragonpit]

Yea I don't think the whole truth is out there, Microsoft just doesn't go flipping through random people's accounts and labels them as cheaters, he was either reported as cheating or raised some red flags by having his score jump high in a short period of time.
Also really disgusted that people run to the media with something like this and parade it as a sob story just because the kid is autistic, and if they do find out that he for sure cheated his mom will still probably raise hell about it.

It's not really a sob story, although I can certainly see how it could be described as one. But no. You can be surprised about how smart autistic people can be. He probably made some poor B@$t@rd look bad, got called a poopy face, and was reported. That or he made his gamer score rise faster than any man on his honeymoon. I'm hoping the kid's little problem gets hashed out soon.

 

[ninetails593]

The kid's probably lying. Now he's trying to raise media attention to get his precious numbers back.

 

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

So... what, exactly? Microsoft labels an account as illegitimate, as they've undoubtedly done to many others, and it's news-worthy because it happens to belong to an autistic kid? This just in: the government forces people with cancer to pay income tax.

 

[JEBWrench]

If he was a regular 11 year old, this wouldn't be a news article. But OHNOEZ autism.

I for one hope he did cheat.

 

[OG-Original Gamer]

Oh man. I hope to hell Microsoft doesn't give in on this. Being Autistic does provide any sort of moral immunity, and if he's intelligent enough to play with an X-Box he certainly can understand the rules.

But you get the picture here. The little cheater's coddling parents are what happened - their kid got caught an they decided to play the "Poor Little Wetarded Kid" card. Autism does not mean confused, or simple. I would love to see some explanation as to how you could appear to be hacking when you aren't.

It is very easy to verify cheating, and if an error is made they can find that too. Good for you Microsoft for treating this person the same way you would treat anyone else, which is what we're all supposed to do when dealing with person thus challenged.

 

[RichardThompson]

This reminds me of something that happened to an autistic friend of mine not 6 months ago. This person and I played a game known as maplestory, on the global server. One day, he had his account banned for what was claimed to be macro'ing. However, he is autistic, and I've seen him play, he does everything exactly the same each time he goes around a map. He only trains on linear maps for the reason, so he can continue the same system over and over again. It's quite disturbing in my opinion, almost methodical. However he recieved this ban, and because we live in europe it was impossible for him to create a new account on the global server (which is really North America). We sent emails of complaint, but to no avail. Eventually I bought him a new global account so he could start again, but we're always in fear of the same thing happening again.

 

[Therumancer]

To be entirely honest this seems dodgy to me given how much focus is being put on the kid being autistic. Also I'll point out that I'm very skeptical of so called "high functioning autistics" and conditions like "Assbergers Syndrome" which seem to be overdiagnosed in the case of every attitude problem out there. In general if the kid is functioning enough to play video games, he's functioning enough to cheap at them, and given how autistics tend to be very self-focused and use their condition to justify general douchebaggery, I wouldn't be surprised if the kid was cheating.

Let me be honest here, the "I have Assbergers" has become an internet Meme simply because it's used as a bail out by so many people running around on the internet, especially in video game and fandom forums. Encyclopedia Dramatica, Something Awful, and other similar sites have all done schticks on it for this reason. Simply put, this fits the occurance to a "T". The only issue here of course is that he's 11 and apparently instead of mouthing off on the Internet (which he might be doing also actually) his mommy is freaking out, probably both because of her son's condition, and also because a very expensive piece of hardware just got nuked. What's more this probably keeps the kid busy, so she doesn't have to deal with the problems.

That said, don't get the impression I'm entirely unsympathetic no matter how it might sound. I'm not autistic, but I do suffer from a lot of problems myself. Unfortunatly in a case like this you can't start making exceptions, if the kid was caught cheating (and really, I doubt Microsoft made a mistake, and pretty much every cheater denies it), he needs to pay for it for the sake of the community, so the safeguards will be a deterrant. The last thing communities like X-Box Live need is every outraged person who claims to be an Aspie making an issue out of it because of this.

I think we have a cheating kid, irregardless of any problems he might had, a strict penelty, and an outraged parent who is out a couple hundred dollars, and probably seems to think due to coddling that the rules shouldn't apply to her or her kid in cases like this because of his condition.

 

[Alone Disciple]

Am I the only one here who thinks this story 'blurb' is missing the 'meat' (i.e. details) here?

How many achievent points are we talking about in 200 days? Are there strange hours being logged into account? What is Microsofts theory? Were the achievments every 10 minutes, racking up something like 500 in one day? Is it even possible to rack up the points in question in this time frame?

I can't seem to budge from this very open middle ground.

This whole article just seems terribly vague as reported here.

 

[Hybridwolf]

Remove the Autism. It then becomes a kid getting upset over losing his gamerscore. This happens all the time with Microsoft never explaining why, but they happen to get someone with Autism and a story comes out of it. Sorry kid, but they don't discredit you because you happen to be autistic, they discredit you for cheating.

 

[dtthelegend]

This is an exerpt from the Xbox Live User Agreement

"The Service is offered to you conditioned on your acceptance of all terms in this contract. By selecting "ACCEPT" below, you are representing that you are 18 years old (and have reached the ?age of majority? if that is not 18 years of age where you live), the information you provided to Microsoft during Service signup is truthful and accurate, and you are attaching your electronic signature to and agreeing to all terms in this contract."

First off, Hes an 11 year old posing as an 18 year old online. Not only that, the games he plays (in the video) are all 18+.If hes going to play in big boy town, he should be able to A: Be responsible with his account and B: Be able to handle punishment if he isnt.

Second, This child may not be telling the entire truth. Microsoft does not just dole out these labels to everyone.To microsoft, this boy is User 100000010 whos achievment score went from a very small number to a very large number very quickly - not an autistic child from Seattle. Sucks that they had to use that ploy for news tho.

 

[Lyri]

Why do we care about someone being branded a cheater?

Is it because he's an autistic child? That's the only reason I see for it to be reported over the probable hundreds of other cases of people who have the same action done to them.

 

[C95J]

I feel sorry for him, more so because I know how it feels to have gamerscore taken away from you. dunno how much he had, I only had 30,000 and it was of course a much bigger loss for him.

 

[HotFezz8]

PR fuckup microsoft, a 30 yerold who lives with his mother: fair target.

a 11 year old autistic? not so much...

OT: its not relevant why it happened or whether he deserves it. this will hurt microsoft more than it will hurt him.

 

[Booze Zombie]

A little context would be nice... but we're stuck here with nought but news room gossip, really.

 

[KalosCast]

Is him being autistic any relevance to the story beyond it makes it easier to say mean things about Microsoft (because that bandwagon totally needs help)?

 

[Woodsey]

Kind of a dick move by MS.

Even if he was cheating, I don't think they need to berate an autistic, 11-year-old kid for something that is obviously important to him - and important in a way that most of us wouldn't "get".

Also, I though autism most commonly resulted in people do things very specifically, so it does then seem a little odd that he'd cheat instead of doing it the normal way.