4.3 Million Xbox Accounts Are Blocked By Microsoft

Microsoft is transparent and for the first time publishes figures on the interventions in the Xbox community. According to a major report, more than 4.3 million Xbox accounts were banned in six months. An extreme increase compared to the previous year.

Between January and June 2022, more than 33 million reports were submitted by Xbox players , primarily complaining about “lack of communication” (46 percent) and “problematic gameplay” (43 percent), according to Microsoft. In other words: spam and cheating. In response to these reports, more than 2.5 million accounts have been banned for violating community guidelines, according to the latest Redmond-based transparency report.

Xbox bot detection is alert

Even greater is the number of Xbox accounts that Microsoft has been able to proactively take down before they could do any harm. The scanning and filtering technologies caught more than 4.3 million accounts that were classified as “not authentic”. In detail, these are said to be primarily automated accounts or accounts created by bots, which “cause unequal competitive conditions and can impair the positive gaming experience.”

Microsoft has seen a nine-fold increase in proactive bans compared to the same period last year, also due to improvements in automatic filtering systems. Accordingly, the number of interventions that Microsoft had to carry out in response to reports from users fell by 1.4 million. Apart from cheating and not authentic account creation, it is above all the distribution of sexually explicit content, fraud, harassment, insults and phishing that lead to account suspension.