Xbox Boss Phil Spencer Calls For Cross-Platform Ban Program

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has revealed that Microsoft would like to help get rid of bad actors in the online gaming landscape by creating a multi-network program whereby bans that apply to Xbox, for example, might also carry over to networks from other companies.

Speaking to The New York Times, Spencer acknowledged that this would be a "hard one" to achieve, but it's something he hopes to see someday.

"Something I would love us to be able to do--this is a hard one as an industry--is when somebody gets banned in one of our networks, is there a way for us to ban them across other networks?" he said.

Alternatively, Spencer said he would embrace a system that allows players to bring their "banned user list" to them on another platform. "And I'd love to be able to bring them to other networks where I play. So this is the group of people that I choose not to play with. Because I don't want to have to recreate that in every platform that I play video games on," he said.

Also in the interview, Spencer spoke about how Microsoft uses AI on Xbox to "monitor the sentiment of a conversation" to detect "when a conversation is getting to a destructive point." There is also a Report A User button in the Xbox UI to report bad behavior.

Activision's Call of Duty games have a multi-platform ban strategy. Players found to be cheating or taking part in other bad behavior have their Activision Account banned across platforms, even those they've never played on.

As Spencer alluded to, a system-level cross-platform ban system would seemingly require the owners of the different networks to work together, which might make things difficult. However, there was also a time when cross-play between Xbox and PlayStation seemed unlikely, but now it's relatively common, as rival companies opt to work more closely with one another.