Recently, I’ve seen quite a few questions regarding the reputation system on Xbox Live. I wanted to outline what the reputation system is, why it’s important, how it works, and how we continue to evolve it.

What are we trying to achieve?

Xbox Live’s goal is to be the world’s best social gaming network for all types of players. We have a diverse and passionate community and all gamers deserve to be welcomed and respected. Xbox Live provides a host of features that enable members to share experiences and have fun together. Like many social networks, however, some people misuse the network in inappropriate or harmful ways. At Xbox, we do not tolerate this behavior and our rules around this are outlined in our Terms of Use. We’ve all seen our fair share of ‘bad apples’ at play: spammers, player-killers, people who constantly use foul language, people who send harmful messages, etc. These bad apples are a part of life but empowering our community with tools like the Xbox Live reputation system helps to make Xbox Live a more fun place for everyone to enjoy.

The Xbox Live reputation system

Reputation empowers community members to provide feedback with the goal of improving everyone’s experience and giving players the tools to identify those who may be exhibiting poor behavior.

Reputation works by keeping track of feedback that gamers receive as they interact with other players and games.

As you play online and interact with others, you may accumulate feedback in various ways:

* Your opponents might report you for being abusive in tone, for example, if you are swearing at them a lot.

* Your teammates might report you for intentionally team-killing.

* A game might report you for habitually quitting matches.

* A gamer might report you for posting an offensive comment on an Activity Feed.

* You might be muted a disproportionate number of times.

This feedback helps our algorithm identify which gamers appear to be behaving the most abusively. We know that most gamers don’t intend to hurt others; they simply may not realize that what they’re doing is offensive to others. So before we take any action against those gamers, we send warning messages to them to encourage them to shape up. If they ignore the messages and continue to accrue negative feedback, their reputation is impacted and we ensure that their ability to impact others is reduced.

How it works

The Xbox Live reputation system incorporates all the feedback that you’ve received during your last few weeks of multiplayer sessions to determine your reputation. Different types of feedback are weighted differently and our Policy & Enforcement Team often verifies feedback accuracy. We also use automated safeguards to ensure sure that feedback is accurate. As an example, we confirm that you’ve actually played with someone if you’re complaining about their multiplayer behavior.

If you get a large number of reports from other gamers, your reputation might drop to “Needs Work.” You’ll get a warning message from Xbox that you’re having a negative impact on other people and other gamers will see a “Needs Work” warning bar on your profile. It typically takes over a dozen unique reports or several dozen mutes for your reputation to drop down to “Needs Work.”

If you continue to get reported for your conduct after you’ve entered “Needs Work,” we’ll send you another message as a final warning. If you ignore this second message and get reported a few more times, you’ll enter the “Avoid Me” reputation classification. At this point, the network will limit your multiplayer experience and, depending on the game, you’ll either only be able to match with other “Avoid Me” players or have your microphone muted by default. You can always still play and chat with you friends but if you join a party with your friends, the whole party will be classified as having a bad reputation.

As you play additional hours of multiplayer without receiving negative feedback, your reputation heals. So if you wind up in “Avoid Me” or “Needs Work,” you can improve your reputation by playing multiplayer games, even with your friends. It takes a typical gamer a few months of play for their reputation to completely heal.

How reputation has evolved

We’re always listening for community feedback and making improvements. We’ve learned a lot over the years and we continually tune the system to make it work better. We’ve encountered issues with feedback accuracy, weighting problems, and gamers manipulating the system by blocking one another, so we’ve made changes like the following:

* We no longer incorporate getting blocked into your reputation. We know that some players block others to avoid playing with them again versus for abusive behavior, particularly in competitive environments.

* Members of our Policy & Enforcement Team are empowered to undo any feedback that they deem inaccurate; they can flag players as inaccurate feedback submitters; and If a player is being particularly abusive, they can issue suspensions.

* We’ve updated how reputation appears on the console and in the Xbox app. We’ve heard that our reputation “gas gauge” is confusing, so we’re moving away from this in favor of displaying a warning bar on the community-facing profiles of those with bad reputations.

Learn more

To learn more about your reputation, you can access your detailed six-month history here: https://enforcement.xbox.com/home/reputation. This page (sample below) provides a rolling six-month history of your reputation.

You can see your current reputation, how your reputation has changed over the last six months, the feedback that you’ve reported on other people, and a high-level breakdown of the types of feedback you’ve received.

There are three types of reputation feedback that you can file or have filed on you:

* “Fair Play” includes reports for quitting multiplayer matches early, participating in unsporting behavior such as team-killing or crashing into other players in racing games, and cheating.

* “Communication” includes inappropriate or abusive in-game or party voice chat and messaging.

* “User Content” includes any content that you publish to the network, like your gamertag, gamerpic, gameDVR clips, and screenshots.

In the sample above, this particular gamer was harassing people over chat and being a bad sport. He received over seventy reports from the community over the past six months (see “Feedback You’ve Received” section). His reputation dropped down to “Avoid Me” between May and July (see “Your Reputation Over Time” section).

The page also tracks the reports you’ve submitted on other people (“Feedback Filed by You”). To safeguard privacy, we do not display the account information for reporters of feedback to the recipients of the negative feedback.

Reputation is an important part of keeping Xbox Live fun and safe for everyone. As a member of the network, it’s important that you have the resources to understand how your reputation is impacted. We rely on the Xbox community to be our guide in tuning the reputation system and will continue to listen and make improvements to ensure the most effective and transparent system possible.

For more information about the Xbox Live Reputation System, check out this page.