Microsoft's X-Box division can't seem to help but do evil to the clients who use its games console.
Not only has it been caught out charging users on out-of-date credit cards lately, it called an autistic kid a cheat and wiped all his prizes off his account.
The 11 year old Julias Jackson is pretty isolated at the best of times, but playing on his X-Box at least gave him something to do which was not screaming. In fact, according to his mum, Jennifer Zdenek, he was so good at gaming that Redmond assumed he must be cheating. Apparently he can master games in three to four days.
Last week he logged on to discover he was labelled a cheater and had zero "achievements".
Jennifer got on the blower to Microsoft. It refused to say it did anything wrong. All it did was correct the player's current Gamerscore, and to label the player as a "cheater.” no big deal. Julias could legitimately gain future achievements - unless Redmond decided to call him a cheater again.
In short we have decided: "your son a cheat, he will have to live with our decision, just be thankful we don't do anything else." We guess it thinks it is safe as Jennifer is not likely to show up in court with an expensive defamation suit.
Jennifer said that the Xbox LIVE has served as some of her son's only interaction outside of school and has devastated him.
She told Fox that it disgusts her what Redmond had done to her child.
Fox made efforts to reach Microsoft but received no response. We guess the Xbox division was out stealing sweets from kids, tying puppies to railway tracks, kicking away old people's crutches and pulling the wings off badgers.
Zdenek says she may cancel her son's subscription at the beginning of next month if Microsoft continues to ignore her requests to take "cheater" off of his account.
Must suck to be a Microsoft drone. Must double suck to be a Microsoft "manager".
I make him read and do things like going outside.
Using a child's disability to get what she wants seems wrong to me and the Media is only fueling it.
Sure it doesn't make him automatically innocent but it is not fair to take away his achievements without proof of cheating.
Also, autistic children will attach to something and not do anything else without a fight. My cousin is autistic and he is completely attached to video games, we can't get him to do anything else without getting hurt so its possible the mother found that the best way to keep him under control.
She's trying to get what belongs to her son back. You try dealing with an autistic child when they are stripped of something.
The game in question has an achievement that is very hard to get, and many people labor away to get it. When they do they are awarded special equipment to use in the game. Others have used cheated game files uploaded to their Xbox's to unlock this equipment. When they do, it is blatantly obvious because of the data recorded at the time the achievement is unlocked.
This isn't a case of mistaking a good player for a cheater. It's a case of catching a cheater in the act.
Kudos Microsoft. This is why I pay to play on Xbox Live.
look at the latest news on this and you will realize that he did cheat and microsoft where withing there rights to do whatever they did
I dislike it when commenters flame Nick Farrell. He is a British journo, and by British standards, he doesn't make a fraction of the grammatical errors for which Americans accuse him.
There is that autistic bent though. At age 11, I'm not at all certain that a "normal(?)" kid would not be scarred IN EXCESSIO by the label of "Cheater".
Perhaps when I grow older, wiser.
Praeterea, qui non errare in grammatica, ubi sunt quem?