Stephen Toulouse

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also known as Stepto, former Director of Xbox LIVE Policy and Enforcement at Microsoft.

Hosted AMAs


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Stepto-onreddit557 karma

Testicular Pancakes.

Stepto-onreddit287 karma

I always used to game with a laptop next to me. When I came across bad behavior I always gave them a warning shot. "Hey you should check out my Bio and launch tags, I'm actually the head of enforcement, please stop doing what you are doing, etc etc"

Without fail, every time, I got back "Fuck you, asshole"

So I would move over to the laptop, click something, and they would go away in front of everyone. I usually took a moment to remind everyone of the code of conduct and move on from there.

There were two exceptions to this however, if the person just popped off a curse or something and that was the only thing they were doing and they weren't habilitually doing it I wasn't so puritan as to come down like a ton of bricks all over that. Sometimes when you spawn and get popped immediately from across the map by a sniper that is only one response you can have.

The second caveat is that I would not take action against someone even if they were disobeying the code of conduct if it meant my team would immediately win the match or would otherwise imbalance the play of the game. In that instance, so that I would not personally benefit from my role, I would call in one of my enforcers to evaluate and take action to provide a "double check"

Stepto-onreddit280 karma

I was afeared something like this would not be the top comment. Thank goodness for Reddit.

Stepto-onreddit270 karma

Three questions in to hit my confidentiality agreement. Well done reddit that showed remarkable restraint! I can't answer your question with specificity, however let me give you some general opinions.

Personally I believe people have a right to tinker with their hardware in general. Innovation has always been driven by the quest to understand technology and improve upon it or find new uses for it. I think you only have to take a quick look at what happened with Kinect after we launched to see the benefits of hardware modification and tinkering. But that's just my general opinion on when it is used for good.

When it comes down to specialized devices subsidized by a business model that requires the protection of IP, that position can become a bit problematic. Because the model starts to break out somewhere around a small percentage of those people just tinkering and a larger group of people intending to subvert the system to pirate content or cheat. And in that model, any company would have to work to protect its ability to be attractive to content developers.

The short answer in general is that of course Microsoft would be serious about protecting the integrity of the Xbox LIVE service and the IP of our partners. Work was always going on in those areas and we publicly stated that. As to it being quiet, thats most often because we never really publicly broadcasted what we were doing. Beyond that I cannot answer with specifics.

The overall situation involving modding, etc is just far more complex in a model with subsidized devices than not.

Stepto-onreddit242 karma

Nope.

Stepto-onreddit239 karma

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY

Stepto-onreddit221 karma

I saw this excuse more than once and it never failed to amuse me:

"Please unban me, when I did that I was totally tripping balls on [insert drug] and I'll never do it again please please I don't want to lose all my stuff I was just so high when I [insert horrible thing they did]

Stepto-onreddit172 karma

ಠ_ಠ We can do saturday.

Also seriously twitter, facebook, messenger, email but we're using my AMA to dog park matchmake?

SEE WHY I LEFT PEOPLE? <g>

Stepto-onreddit141 karma

When I was introduced to Nathan Fillion at e3 a few years back as the Xbox LIVE enforcement dude and I shook his hand and said "Thanks so much, I love your work" and he did the double handed handshake with me and said "no man, thanks for your work"

After that, no matter what happens to me from now on, I have no reason to complain.

YES it is a big deal to him. I'd say it's an unhealthy obesession, but technically clear perfect ice is actually better for you.

Stepto-onreddit132 karma

I'm being coy.

Actually let me gear up first and I will join the next session.