Microsoft recently updated its service agreement for Xbox gamers and users of other Microsoft services on July 15th, and it will take effect starting on September 15th. Among a wide variety of changes to various Microsoft services, Microsoft has revealed that gamers who don’t log in to their Xbox Live accounts over a period of five years may lose their gamertags.
Microsoft has been working to release old unused gamertags back to the general public of users, and this update is probably to continue its efforts. As far back as five years ago, Microsoft released unused gamertags that had been unused since the days of the original Xbox console. However, they’ve also been recently working to return inactive gamertags to active users, releasing one million gamertags to Xbox Live Gold users just a few months ago.
Presumably, once these service agreement changes go into effect, any accounts that haven’t been accessed for five years or more will be seized by Microsoft and re-released back to the general public. The average gamer shouldn’t have to worry very much, as chances are most Xbox gamers have logged into their accounts far more recently than five years ago. Microsoft hasn’t yet explained what will happen to users who have their gamertags taken; presumably, they’ll be assigned a randomly-generated gamertag like the ones that are automatically suggested to new users when they sign up.
Chances are that Microsoft is striving to make old, unused gamertags available to the public now in order to satisfy what it hopes to be an influx of new users. The company has been hard at work increasing the appeal of the Xbox One by slashing its price, as well as promoting the release of the upcoming Xbox One S in August and the more powerful Xbox One Scorpio that will release in 2017. Microsoft is surely expecting many new users to pick up their first Xbox console, and salvaging inactive gamertags should help to provide some of these newcomers with the usernames they’re hoping for.
Gamers who haven’t used their Xbox consoles and want to preserve their gamertags should be sure to login to their accounts before September, either by using their consoles or signing in to the Xbox homepage.
Source: Microsoft
