Microsoft to tackle anti-gay trolls online.

Gaming giant unveils a 'Reputation' system for Xbox One, which will segregate homophobic, sexist, abusive gamers.

Microsoft is planning to tackle homophobic trolls when it launches its new console the Xbox One.

The computing and gaming giant will isolate idiots who choose to use anti-gay, sexist, racist or general abuse towards other players on multiplayer online games.

It will have a ‘Reputation’ system, tracking gamers’ behavior when playing.

Speaking to gamer site Official Xbox Magazine, Microsoft’s senior product manager Mike Lavin said: ‘What we’re looking at doing is creating a very robust system around reputation and match-making.

‘Ultimately if there’s a few percent of our population that are causing the rest of the population to have a miserable time, we should be able to identify those folks.’

He joked the ‘segregated’ area of Xbox Live would be its own ‘version of hell’.

Lavin also suggested gaming groups would be given a score for their whole group reflective of the lowest person’s score in that group, in the hope peer pressure would force a change in order to raise the group’s gaming reputation.

‘We’re one of the only platforms that really take an interest in exploring and investigating major problems, and this extends from sexual harassment, to age harassment, to gender to everything else under the sun,’ Lavin said .

‘Really fostering a sense of community and providing an infrastructure for that is a huge deal.’

Microsoft has previously been criticized for what some believe to be homophobia. But the organization also has a strong LGBT staff group and has been faster than most tech firms to embrace pro-LGBT policies and support equality moves.

In 2008, a gay player was forced to change his Xbox Live screen name ‘theGayergamer’ because other members found it offensive.

Another player, shortly afterwards, was banned from the network after identifying herself as a lesbian. The policy was changed in 2010.

In 2009, Microsoft was forced to pay out after a gay employee sued the company for failing to do anything when co-workers branded him ‘Fag Boy’.

The company later met with GLAAD in order to combat homophobia on Xbox Live.

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