Baldur’s Gate 3 dev ‘looking into’ Xbox players being banned for recording explicit scenes

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian has claimed it’s working with Microsoft to resolve an issue that was seeing players on Xbox being banned from accessing their account.

The issue appears to stem from players using Xbox’s recording feature to capture footage of explicit scenes in the game. Baldur’s Gate 3 includes full nudity, as well as sex scenes.

Players began reporting that they were facing account issues with their Xbox accounts and were being notified via the game recording feature that their account had received “strikes” due to the explicit content.

Now, Larian’s director of publishing, Michael Douse, has said that the developer is working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.

“We’ve seen the reports that some players got banned or otherwise faced issues on Xbox having uploaded screenshots/videos of their ‘gameplay content’. We’re in discussion with Microsoft, and we’re looking into it. Annoying and uncool,” he wrote on X.

While it’s possible for developers to manually block some elements of gameplay from being recorded, as is often employed when spoilers or licensed music is included in a game, this appears to be an issue with the system’s automatic detection rather than censorship.

Baldur’s Gate 3, which was released for PC in August and for PS5 and Mac the following month, is one of the current generation’s most critically acclaimed titles and has been a big commercial hit too.

The game arrived on Xbox in December, launching minutes before the game won Game of the Year at The Game Awards.

Larian announced in November that the game would be getting a physical Deluxe Edition, which will be released in ‘Q1 2024’ and will be available on Xbox Series X, PS5 and PC for $79.99 / €79.99.