Larian Studios
- Xbox banned users from Xbox Live for automatically uploading Baldur's Gate 3 sex scenes.
- Baldur's Gate 3 allows characters to remove their clothes and romance other characters.
- Xbox said players should turn off the automatic video upload feature to avoid the bans.
Xbox Live users playing Baldur's Gate 3 are getting caught with their pants down, literally, sort of.
Baldur's Gate 3 crashed onto the gaming scene last year, nearly sweeping The Game Awards and taking home the prestigious Games of The Year prize.
The massive role-playing game — set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons — has attracted 1.3 million players. Those players have spent 8,196 years on just the character creation screen alone.
One aspect that attracted many players to the game is the many variable "romance" options, which allow you to court several of the game's playable characters based on your decisions, which can lead to steamy, completely nude sex scenes.
It's these spicy scenes, however, that are causing Xbox Live to ban users when their devices automatically record and upload them.
News of the spreading bans exploded on Reddit after a user named Daddy-Vegas posted a photo showing three different bans on his account for the automatically uploaded scenes, the longest of which lasted until December 28, 2024, Kotaku reported.
Xbox Live has a feature that will automatically record and upload short segments of a player's game time to the "community" tab so that they can be viewed by other players who play the same game.
In an interview with Kotaku, Daddy-Vegas said that the bans on his account were implemented "in 30 seconds with no warning or chance to correct the error" after his lewd clip uploaded automatically.
Xbox issued a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, where it recommended users turn off the "auto-upload" feature when they think they are coming up on sensitive content. Sensitive content can be found practically every second of Baldur's Gate because the game allows players to remove all their clothes at any point.
"Our team evaluates appeals and can reverse suspensions if action was taken in error," the statement said. "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)."
Xbox added that a moderator views each clip for violations of its safety and content policies before taking action.
Still, Xbox's decision to ban users over the auto-uploaded content at all has attracted the ire of many on social media.
"Just checking," one X user said in a reply post to the statement. "This is from a game you allow to be bought and played on your console, correct? And you are suspending accounts for having auto-uploaded content from a setting that is turned on by default? Better yet, you're suspending anyone at all for content in such game?"
Larian Studios, which makes Baldur's Gate, said on January 5 that users who are banned for the flagged clips would "see their bans begin to lift" and that work is still ongoing to resolve the issue.