Xbox Live Director of Programming responds to anti-gay Halo 3 slurs

Posted by

on November 28, 2007

Earlier this week we posted about a gay gamer with the name xxxGayBoyxxx who was ganged up on by a bunch of homophobic gamers. We even interviewed him here.

The good news is that Microsoft's Xbox Live Direcot of Programming, who goes by the handle Major Nelson, just posted his response to the issue on the blog Gaming Today.

Says Nelson:

I just watched (listened) to the video you posted on your site. Needless to say, it was disappointing to see how some Xbox LIVE members behave. As you know, that is not the type of behavior we support. With over 8-million members, it’s unfortunate that some members decide to act like this.

Jonathan, the blogger writing the post on Gaming Today, goes on to say that anyone who encounters this sort of behavior should immediately report it and file a complaint and that he'd love to play with the readers on the site. He finishes off by saying:

This video was obviously an experiment of sorts to test the tolerance of Xbox Live gamers with very unsurprising results. The Xbox Live crowd doesn’t exactly have the best reputation out there. Personally, I get homophobic slurs thrown my way online even with a very innocuous gamertag. I mean seriously, what’s wrong with “RainbowUnicorns4Eva?”

Good for him getting out there and talking about this. I'm not much of a gamer myself, especially not the live stuff. Anyone out there ever filed a complaint before about homophobic behavior? Does Microsoft back up their promises?