Last week, a story began doing the rounds about a Baldur's Gate 3 player who had been banned for accidentally uploading X-rated content from the game to the Xbox Network, and this resulted in developer Larian Studios calling the situation "annoying and uncool", telling fans that Microsoft would lift bans like these in the near future.
However, in an update last night, Xbox Support insisted that the bans were manually applied - suggesting they were "found in violation of our safety and content policies" - and advised turning off the auto upload feature when choosing to capture "sensitive" content from a game such as Baldur's Gate 3. Here's the full message:
"To provide clarity on Baldur's Gate 3 mature content enforcement actions, Xbox account suspensions are not automatic. Each clip is reviewed by a moderator and, if found in violation of our safety and content policies, actioned accordingly.
"Our team evaluates appeals and can reverse suspensions if action was taken in error. If this was a first offense, for example, we will remove the suspension and let players know why it happened and how to avoid future issues (e.g. how to turn off auto-upload when sensitive content is being captured).
As you might expect, this has drawn criticism from Xbox fans, with many questioning why they can't upload content like this with an "Adult" filter, for example. An even bigger point of contention is the decision to make automatic uploads a default setting, meaning your screenshots and clips can be shared on the Xbox Network accidentally.
Jez Corden on Twitter: "Such a stupid policy. They'll ban you for recording footage of games that exist on their own platform? Why aren't the game devs banned for creating the pixels you recorded in the first place? Lol. Make it make sense."
@PeterP_85 on Twitter: "Every console should come with Auto Upload OFF, and a warning should a user turn it on that it may result in suspension. Insane that a shot from a game on Xbox, uploaded to the Xbox Network can result in a ban to an Xbox user."
Despite the many critical replies, we've also seen plenty that are in favour of Xbox Support's stance. Some believe that adult content simply shouldn't be allowed to be uploaded in the first place, and therefore the policy makes sense - although again, it would seem as though turning off automatic uploads by default is a popular suggestion.
Obviously the good news here is that any suspensions over the past week for Baldur's Gate 3 clips and/or screenshots should be reversed now, most likely with a warning about why that content was flagged at the time. The key thing is to make sure you turn off automatic uploads if you want to share any kind of adult content from the game.
In related news, Xbox also appears to be working hard at a solution for the Baldur's Gate 3 save issue, with a new Insider update containing various fixes to try and address the problem. Hopefully it'll be a thing of the past very soon!