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

[ZippyDSMlee]

My question is, and I'm sure it's been asked already but with 13 pages of responses I'm sorry if I don't feel like reading every single response, but why exactly is this important to Microsoft?

Unless I missed the press release where Achievement Points were actually deemed worthy in some way, I'm not really sure why this is a big deal for Microsoft. It'd be like if I could generate all the monopoly money in the world, but the Republic Of Monopoly (yes I know what monopoly means, I'm trying to make a point) no longer existed.

Or if someone cheated and acquired all the Unicorn food and Fairy Dust in the world. Yeah he has a lot but who cares?

I'm not an achievement whore, but I've never bowed down to someone with a superior gamerscore. I just think "oh he has more free time than I do" and move on.


OT: Microsoft does need to be careful here. I did see someone mention autism as a "hot button issue right now" and that's absolutely true. I'm not saying completely restore his stuff no questions asked, but maybe lighten up on the whole "this kid is a cheater" stuff. I promise you there will be people who say that even if he did cheat that because he's autistic he's being treated unfairly.

And has anyone ever been around an autistic child or family with an autistic child for any length of time? When they find something that appeases their child it's like discovering oil in your back yard. It can be very difficult to handle when something an autistic child loves or cherishes is taken away from them.

MS has a very draconian mindset for achievements and quassi multilayer balance, one of the reasons you don't see alot of rapid fire controllers these days or even a code breaker or game shark is due to an absolute iron grip on trying to make things balanced even if something is done offline in single player mode.

I miss the code breaker/game shark stuff badly as it added fun to bland poorly balanced modern games..... a shame its been partly labeled the same as modchips...

 

[SketchyFK]

His mother clearly stated he has no friends.

Perhaps because all he ever does is play Xbox? And yes, that's all he ever does. The controller shows that with all the disgusting skin muck on it.

Erm... i know people who also do nothing but play the Xbox yet they still have friends. This is a kid with autusm, if u don't have it then i can tell you right now, making friends is really, REALLY hard for us. Most autistic kids get severly bullied at school and find refuge in computer games. Now that his computer games are also "bullying" him in the way of calling him a cheater, this would be a MAJOR thing to him.

 

[DanielDeFig]

These kind of stories seem to appear very often from XboX Live.
I wonder if the Xbox Live stories are more commonly reported, or if there is some inherent problem in Microsoft's online system that simply doesn't exist with Nintendo or Sony.

 

[Syphous]

Well hey, if he cheated he cheated. Autism or not.

 

[Ashoten]

OMG YES! Microsoft should have known with their super cosmic space brains that this one kid out of their millions of customers had autism, and that he wasn't cheating. Shame on you Microsoft for trying to regulate your online community in any way(Ha Haah! sarcasm)

 

[euro2019]

Why are so many people acting as if Microsoft sees a massive "AUTISTIC" label stamped on his account? I understand this is a major thing with him, I've volunteered with autistic children before. But it's not like we can also expect MS to know the kid is autistic. This is what happens when people instead of thinking with their heads, jump to zealous conclusions.

They had to do a more thorough investigation on this or else every person on X-Box Live labeled as a cheater would make some sort of excuse like that.

Mind you even MS's excuse of "someone using his account" is bull. But people really need to start seeing both sides of the story instead of just quickly jumping to conclusions saying
"OMG Microsoft HATES KIDS WITH AUTISM", bullshit, give me a fucking break. Live accounts don't have faces or labels on them. They did what they did with every other person, and now that it happens to a kid with Autism there's got to be some kind of massive uproar about it? Restore his account and let the kid be, its the only thing that makes him happy. It's not like they looked at his account and went "OH HE'S AUTISTIC LABEL HIM A CHEATER JUST FOR FUN". No. They did what they did to everyone else. This wasn't a bias thing here. It happened to a tonne of other people.

Either way I hope he got his account back to normal, and his gamer points back.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

OMG YES! Microsoft should have known with their super cosmic space brains that this one kid out of their millions of customers had autism, and that he wasn't cheating. Shame on you Microsoft for trying to regulate your online community in any way(Ha Haah! sarcasm)

Actually, yes, shame on them for trying to regulate their "online" community in this way. Achievements, as cool as they are, are essentially pointless. That hasn't stopped Microsoft from using them as an excuse to crack down on singleplayer cheating, something that was a right of passage for most of us growing up. I have fond memories both of the Game Shark and the Game Genie, which allowed you to do all sorts of cool things back in the day. Cheating to get achievements hurts noone, and regardless of who did it, Microsoft is the one in the wrong here. If he was cheating in an online match, that would have been a bannable offense, but I don't see the point in punishing people for screwing around offline.

As for the current situation: I hope, for Microsoft's sake, that this kid really did cheat. Because they're being assholes either way, but at least it would be somewhat justified under their current rules if he really did cheat. I honestly wonder how whoever made this decision is even capable of sleeping at night.

 

[Bomberman4000]

My main issues aren't that the kid is autistic really, but that Microsoft wouldn't explain to the mother what "evidence" they had against the boy. Maybe it was something she could handle at home. If someone else was accessing his account, wouldn't they need to know so they could, oh I don't know, set up some security on the account? Maybe even change the account?

I'd also like to know just how extensive this permanency of the label "cheater" really is. Is it tied to just the gamertag? Or is it the IP address through which live is accessed or the contact information (email account, credit card) used to create the account? Or is it somehow tied to the console itself?

I think that Microsoft being silent about this story is a bad idea, they need to address exactly what's going on or the company could about to be in the midst of a PR nightmare.

 

[Count Igor]

My main issues aren't that the kid is autistic really, but that Microsoft wouldn't explain to the mother what "evidence" they had against the boy.

They did.
That is all.


..
But yeah, screw him if he cheated.

 

[PurpleSkull]

Oh what the hell...

So what's if he is autistic? He did cheat apparently, so he deserves to have his points and achievements taken away and basta. There is no "grey" zone, you either cheat or you don't. If he was able to cheat, he is able to face the consequences. Which are pretty small and unimportant by the way. But no, once again it appears autistic people are the most important AND OH SO POOREST people in the world.

"What, my kid violated the MS TOS and got appropriately punished? Quick call Fox News!"


And anyway, aren't all online cheaters retards?

 

[Timmey]

I fail to see the problem here, Microsoft claim to have evidence which proves one of their customers cheated, so they have punished him for it... so ?

 

[Bretty]

This kid was discovered, investigated and found guilty of cheating.

Tough shit.

 

[Cliff_m85]

His mother clearly stated he has no friends.

Perhaps because all he ever does is play Xbox? And yes, that's all he ever does. The controller shows that with all the disgusting skin muck on it.

Erm... i know people who also do nothing but play the Xbox yet they still have friends. This is a kid with autusm, if u don't have it then i can tell you right now, making friends is really, REALLY hard for us. Most autistic kids get severly bullied at school and find refuge in computer games. Now that his computer games are also "bullying" him in the way of calling him a cheater, this would be a MAJOR thing to him.

Then perhaps he shouldn't cheat?

Then he wouldn't need a ride on the Waaahhhhmbulance.

 

[Tim Latshaw]

Sometimes you have to take a step back and ask: Why is this a story worthy of coverage from a news station? A game site, sure; but a broadcast affiliate in a major city? Really?

If you have to ask the question, then you don't understand the concept of a slow news day for a 24 hour news cycle. If you want more information, you can find it at Fark.com

Fox News has a 24-hour news cycle. Fox 13 has only morning and nighttime news limited to its coverage area (they don't even have news at noon). Fox News may pick this stuff up sometimes from its affiliates, but a search of the Fox News website yields nothing related to this story.

It must've been an incredibly slow news day.

 

[akibawall95]

I'm sure that Microsoft did not know that the kid was autistic when they labeled him as a cheater. However, if he really (which they are now saying has) did boost his Gamerscore illegitimately then what they did was fully justified.

 

[Jacking]

I think his autism is pretty irrelevant to the story here, I mean yeah it sucks that he lost everything - cheater or not.

The fact is, if he was cheating, Microsoft did what it has always done (which I'm sure is written in a ToS or contract somewhere) to punish him - and I'm pretty sure Microsoft would struggle to maintain a profit if they went around doing it without checking and double checking.

On the other hand, if it's all a big misunderstanding then I'm sure he'll get his stuff back and the situation will be resolved. I don't see how him being autistic factors in - after all I doubt he's the first person to be branded a cheater on Live (guilty or otherwise) and if it's a mistake I doubt he'll be the first person to have the decision reversed.

It seems like the autism is only being used by the news source to blow the story out of proportion.

 

[Jamash]

The mother's Twitter account makes for an interesting read:

https://twitter.com/ColdAssSunshine

She claims that her son's account was accessed from "out of state" by another user, which begs the question: why is she letting her 11 year old autistic son play M rated games over X-Box Live and get his account phished?

Surely she must have been privy to the conversation when this other user asked for the account details... or does she just let her 11 year old autistic son communicate with everyone unsupervised?

It seems every time she tries to pass the blame onto someone else, it actually reflects badly on her.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Cheating to get achievements hurts noone, and regardless of who did it, Microsoft is the one in the wrong here.

That's not correct. Or, at the very least, it's hypocritical unless you think that falsifying one's standing on a game's global leaderboards also hurts no one.

Whether you do or not, many people do attach value to their Gamerscore... and allowing others to cheat 'em upward does hurt that sense of value by calling into question whether a score was earned by one's efforts or was "earned" with thirty seconds' use of the Internet and a USB flash drive.

(That being said, I never did agree with the "Cheater" branding of one's gamertag... I see why it's there, for deterrant value, but I worry about any tendencies it would have to provoke online vigilantism. That's a debatable issue, though, with a lot of pros and cons. I do certainly agree with the total stripping of all prior GS, though, as a punitive measure.)

-- Steve

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

His mother would have been the one that had to bare the brunt of the fallout. Sleepless nights, a child unable to eat, stimming excessively and unable to employ any of his basic self-care skills.

Whilst many people here are giving Microsoft and the shoddy LIVE infrastructure the benefit of doubt; they're not being as even-handed towards the mother or the boy. We can not see what Microsoft knows, but we can't see what she and her son went through regardless of the validity of the punishment.

Helps if people didn't cite Encyclopedia Dramatica as an authority on Autism.

I can imagine the circumstances on both sides of the argument, with Microsoft obviously touting that they have evidence that finds the child in question guilty but cannot be disclosed for privacy reasons. However, right out of the gate I was considering the mother and child's side and the personal situation that none of us know about either, as Arec Balrin has pointed out. I cannot say that I can trust Microsoft without question for countless reasons which are beyond the point, but unless the mother decides to release the claims by Microsoft, I feel that it would be inane to try and hand out subjective judgments on either party. Autism does not change whether or not the child cheated, but if there was some fluke of an error and the Gamertag/Score actually meant something to him, then obviously holding a false accusation would be dubious on Microsoft's part. Taking the claims by Microsoft alone that they are sure could just as easily be concieved as giving them the benefit of the doubt as well. The key factor is that Microsoft is not releasing any clear-cut evidence either, so a reasonable outside viewer should take into account that this falls upon the mother to reveal much more that could either aid or outright kill her plea.

Microsoft's general stance regarding Gamerscore seems a tad melodramatic considering the points in question have no sway, influence, or monetary value and are meritorious only to those who honestly think the number besides another player's name actually means Jack-Spit. Throwing the tar and feathers with the "Cheater" label seems equally childish as cheating in the first place for the aforementioned "useless" points. I also consider that since Microsoft has the cherries to charge ten dollars just to change one's drunken misspelling, the act seems even sillier[footnote]In order to match the silliness of charging so much for a stupid screen name without at least one "freebie," even if it was just for Gold Members...[/footnote].



CAPTCHA: Government Sucide
I think you're missing another "i" there, and two words (one a typo of course) does NOT COUNT AS READING BOOKS.
...
Blue Flamingo. There, you just read a segment from Chaucer[footnote]Segment not really from Chaucer.[/footnote]. Now aren't you proud?

 

[Jamash]

The mother's Twitter account makes for an interesting read

Did you see the part where she's going all drama queen on the attention the story has gotten and says "now I hide my son"?

I thought he was already hidden in his Xbox cave.

I think it would have been better for her son if she hadn't called in the media circus and made his autism the focus of an international story.