Microsoft has been publishing reports on how it monitors the safety of its Xbox gamers online every six months for the past year and a half. This week, the company released the fourth such report, claiming it has seen improvements in Xbox gamer safety through the use of new tools and reporting features.
In a post on Xbox Wire, Microsoft says that its voice reporting feature that it launched in July 2023 has seen positive results. This feature lets Xbox players record and send what they believe to be other players using language in games that violate Microsoft"s Community Standards for Xbox. The blog post stated:
Since its launch, 138k voice records have been captured utilizing our ‘capture now, report later’ system. When those reports resulted in an Enforcement Strike, 98% of players showed improvement in their behavior and did not receive subsequent enforcements.
In August 2023, the company launched a new Enforcement Strike system for Xbox players. This system puts strikes on a player if they violate the Xbox code of conduct. Multiple strikes could lead to temporary suspensions of online access or even the permanent suspension of an Xbox account.
This week, Microsoft stated the Enforcement Strike system has also been effective for Xbox player safety:
Since its launch, 88% of those who received an Enforcement Strike did not engage in activity that violated our Community Standards to receive another enforcement. We also reduced suspension lengths overall for minor offenses. Of enforcements that would have previously resulted in a 3-day or more suspension, 44% were given a reduced length. The combination of these results shows that the majority of players choose to improve their behavior after only one suspension, even when it is short.
Microsoft has also made progress in trying to keep fake Xbox accounts from being used online. The company says that its methods have resulted in "millions of inauthentic accounts from being used as soon as they are created."
Microsoft says this has resulted in a huge reduction of the enforcement on false accounts. In the company"s last Xbox transparency report in November 2023, it stated enforcement of those accounts came in at 16.3 million. However, for this week"s report, enforcement went down to 7.3 million.