Microsoft Makes Gay Gamer Change GamerTag

An Xbox 360 owner with the GamerTag "theGAYERgamer" logged onto Xbox Live this week to learn that customer support was forcing him to change his tag. The problem? The tag isn't a joke - theGAYERgamer is, in fact, a homosexual. Way to clean up the mean streets, Microsoft.

"Grant", the gamer with the forbidden GamerTag, told the Consumerist that he called customer services to complain later that day to straighten things out. According to Grant, the customer service supervisor who ordered the name change said that she "didn't personally find the fact that my gamer tag had gay in the name offensive, but that the greater Xbox community did, so I would have to change it." The greater Xbox community was too busy humping an opponent's face in Halo 3 to comment directly on the issue.

The word "gay" is used commonly as an insult (especially on Xbox Live) and this customer service rep maybe assumed the GamerTag belonged to some smart-ass, not someone who was actually gay. It's sort of like how you can't buy a custom jersey from the NFL store with the word "Gay" on the back, even though there's an actual player named Randall Gay (whose Wikipedia page takes a regular beating, by the way). However, this possible confusion by customer service doesn't explain why the GamerTag wasn't reinstated after Grant explained.

If the argument is that sexual terms like "gay" don't belong in player's tag then maybe customer service should look into the hundreds of tags containing the term "teabag" because I don't think they're talking about Earl Grey. I'm sure Grant will survive with another GamerTag and he's probably endured much worse discrimination in the past (from say, playing 5 minutes of any game on Xbox Live) but this is an easily correctable mistake by Microsoft that can only end in bad PR if they don't act on this.