Xbox Live Assigns Scarlet 'Cheater' Label To Autistic Boy (Updated)

UPDATE: The boy’s mother admitted that her son solicited help in racking up the achievements, meaning Xbox Live’s labeling of the boy as a cheater was correct. The original post follows;

An 11-year-old autistic Seattle boy may have been so good at video games that Xbox Live mistakenly branded him a “cheater” and reset his statistics.

Xbox Live administrators are known to give the treatment to gamers who use mods or team members sharing the same profile to rack up impossibly high achievement scores. When the Xbox police identify a wrongdoer, they correct their scores and affix a “cheater” label to their profiles.

Seattle Q13 reports the boy’s mom insists he played fair, but her complaints have gone unheeded. She said the Xbox 360 provided one of her son’s few social outlets, but is now unsure if she’ll let him play anymore.

“It disgusts me that they did this to my child,” the mother says.

Kotaku posts Microsoft’s response:

“Gamerscore resets are done when cheating is detected to keep LIVE fun, fair and safe for everyone. We only do them when we are 100% confident that cheating has occurred, and they are not something that can be appealed. Details can be found here – http://www.xbox.com/Live/Cheating.”

In addition, Stephen Toulouse, Xbox Live’s director of policy and enforcement, tweeted the following: “We confirmed there were cheated achievements and gave the parent the details. This wasnt a “he played too good” situation at all.”

Xbox Live Labels Autistic Boy “Cheater” [Seattle Q13 via Kotaku]

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