Meet Steph Tytus and Varun Nangia, two more readers whose names were too inappropriate for XBOX live. Varun was forced to change his gamertag, which was his first and last name, and Steph tried to create a band using her name so the world can know that she rocks. Sadly, Rock Band thinks her name isn’t “classy,” and spat our an error message.
Here’s Varun’s letter:
Today, I discovered I couldn’t connect to Xbox Live. After calling “Shanya” at Xbox Live (could not understand her, despite trying very hard), I was told that the Xbox Live service was down. How odd – everybody else, including my flatmate, on the same console is able to connect.
So I called back and “Ryan” answered. Ryan spent 35 minutes diagnosing my issue, making me connect, disconnect, reconnect and otherwise delete, undelete and trash my account. All the while, I explained to him that it clearly was NOT an issue with the connection, and not an issue on my end. After struggling to read his script, he finally took pity on me and followed my instructions to see whether there was anything wrong with my account. Sure enough, there was.
The system had tagged my Gamertag as offensive. What was my Gamertag? First name + last name.
What?!
That’s right – my first name + last name is an offensive combination to the people who run Xbox Live. I asked Ryan what to do and he suggested changing the name order around.
So I’ve been forced to change my Gamertag – which means all the time that I’ve been using Xbox Live (about 30 months), my name has been offensive and apparently in violation of their terms, but they didn’t bother to check or notify me or… well, do anything, really, except disconnect me today. I note that they updated the terms in 2005, twice in 2006, once in 2007 and somehow, I was in compliance with those terms all this time. Yet despite no change in the terms since June 2007, I am now in violation of those same terms. Explaining all this to the supervisor, “Lawrence”, on the phone resulted in long, unintelligible mumbles (it was as if he arbitrarily picked words and letters out of the dictionary, strung them together, and then ran the whole gibberish through a randomizer), I was told that it was for my own security and protection they had decided that my name was offensive. Oh and the name that I had spent a while building an identity around? Yeah, there’s no compensation for that. Nor did my preferences transfer over. In fact, I’m completely SOL…
Oh, for pete’s sake, Microsoft.
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@HIV 2 Elway: Yes lets blame Bill Gates because im sure he is the one entering their names in the database!
There must be more to these stories. I find it odd that MS is suddenly banning names for no reason. Its entirely possible these people being banned are dicks. They might have odd names but how do we know they didnt send a msg to another user to piss them off?
Im not saying they did but this whole scenario just stinks because no complaints to 3+ in just a couple days yet everyone is quick to blame and nobody seems to question what is going on.
Also why is Rockband and XBL being linked in an article. It leads people to assume this is also somehow Microsoft’s fault.
I think that’s really funny considering that my friends and I have a band called “1 in the Pink, 2 in the Poop” and apparently Rock Band thinks that very classy.
jeez, did anyone consider banning “Microsoft”- I think of small flaccid penises when I hear that word..
@parad0x360: People post jokes on these sites. All may not be funny, but learn to recongnize them when you see them.
Also, Rockband & Guitar Hero are fucking lame. Learn to play a real instrument, the learning curve is not that steep.
it’s because VarunNangia is an anagram for “vagina runna”. oh, that clever Microsoft and their word puzzles…
/snark
@wickedpixel:
My girlfriend had “vagina runna” once.. One dose of Zithromax cleared it up.
@HIV 2 Elway: Because playing Guitar Hero and playing guitar are mutually exclusive activities? Or because maybe some people want to just play a friggin’ video game?
There are lots of people with “Gay” in their last name. Regardless of whose “fault” this is, it needs to stop. Aren’t offensive Gamertags like pornograpy, i.e. I know it when I see it?
Sounds to me like a BOT is to blame.
[www.varunnangia.com]
He’s “LinkedIn” too. You’d think a geek would know better than to make himself so findable.
Try as you might, you’ll never associate “pegr” with my real name.
Odd, a seemingly innocuous name, too…
HAY GUSY. GO REPORT MY HUSBAND’S XBLA NAME. It’s overdone and used by every RPG out there!
Why can’t they just stick with a peer complaint system if simple 1:1 string filters obviously aren’t good enough?
I think someone at Microsoft didn’t understand that search engine query scorers (what this must be based on, given “Varun Nangia”) are designed to pick wildly different matches to account for spelling mistakes, and that makes for a terrible string filter. They work in search engines because they require, as a last step, human interaction. Yes, string comparator algorithms are hot-shit technology. No, they are not a panacea.
I’m still pissed that I can’t use my singer’s name in Rock Band leaderboards. “Rapeclown.”
@HIV 2 Elway: But I just want to play a video game! I don’t want to turn into an asshole when I learn guitar!
@spryte: Yeah but that would require, y’know, implementing this whole big expensive “offensive gamertag accusation and rebuttal” system. Much cheaper to just delete after N complaints and have tech support deal with a few peeved customers.
My fiance’s rocker name, “Sven Jargensbar,” was not considered classy enough for Rock Band, either.
Heh, “The Steph Tytus Experience” sounds sorta like, “The Hepatitis Experience”, I wonder if they did it because of that, which would still be completely stupid and lame. I wonder if Tommy Lee was in her band…
God I’m glad I don’t pay people to play my own console on my own internet. Now that’s lame.
@NeroDiavolo: Well, xbox live doesn’t have to cost any money. If you download extra songs for Rock Band or Guitar Hero, for instance, that does cost. But just having the service to play against other folks and check scores and such is free.
MS wants to avoid a big ass lawsuit just in case someone actually would track down a person using their real name. Sounds extreamly, extreamly far fetched, but it can happen.
Secondly…it takes more then one or two complaints to get a name ban thingy. When they do this….they aren’t going through 12 million gamertags LOOKING FOR THE BAD ONES!!! Guess who they rely on? The Gamers. If someone find the name offensive, the simply submit a complaint via the dashboard, and if XBL gets enough of them, people seriously look into it to see what is wrong. Now either MS really finds that against TOS and all that; or some people really didnt like the name..but it happened and the root cause is people submitting complaints against that persons gamertag.
Hey guys:
So I used to work for Xbox Live as a Support Engineer. Here’s the reason why your name was banned…
It’s because it’s your name. I can’t tell you how many escalations I dealt with every day of someone getting their account stolen because they used their first and last name. That’s basically all someone needs to start the process. Next, they’ll call in and say they forgot their password, ask a few questions and probably get denied quite a bit in the process. After a while though, some noob will give the caller a little piece of info and after several more attempts, the caller will have enough info to call in and have the email and password changed. Next thing they do is start stealing all of your points and racking a bunch of charges on your account.
Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with your name. It’s a safety issue for your account and that should have been explained to you.
Judging from Varun’s gamertag it can be offensive if it is an anagram of something that might be offensive to someone.
So! My gamertag is above, meaning it could technically be read as Randansex. Is that offensive to someone? My brother’s account is a far better anagram of ‘AmenGayBook’, which almost seems like a religious slur, and yet it’s actually arranged in a completely inoffensive way usually. So is that likely to get banned?
Basically here’s my thoughts; I reckon the majority of Gamertags out there can be rearranged into something you might find offensive. So surely we’re all in the right or we’re all in the wrong. Besides, Gaywood? Man he must’ve got beaten up in highschool, give him a break microsoft!
Maybe they are trying to keep people from using their full names on the internet, particularly children and teens, for safety reasons.
It’s about time Apple releases a console.
Seriously, if you get reported by someone you have to change your gamertag. Pretty much end of story. Maybe there’s a Halo clan (or something) that gets their jollies by reporting random people that then get banned.
I’m chiming in here to say that I used the name “Geno” and was also told that this was not “classy”. What the hell is considered acceptable to Harmonix?