Since the launch of the first Forza Motorsport back in 2005, it has been a central priority for Turn 10 to create and maintain a safe, fair, inclusive, and welcoming environment for the Forza community. We recognize that it is our community of players that makes Forza continue to thrive and be the best racing simulation franchise available to millions of players around the world, and we hold that community to an extremely high standard.
Whether it be racing in one of over a dozen Forza games that has released over the last 15+ years or communicating in our various community channels across Forza.net Forums, Discord, livestreams, and more, it is imperative that our community members understand the Code of Conduct on how to behave, interact, and play the right way.
In addition to the Microsoft Services Agreement and the Xbox Community Standards that every single Forza player has agreed to, we wanted to put together and share our own Forza Code of Conduct that covers The Driver’s Code, along with our extensive violation, suspension, and reporting policies we will be administering moving forward.
The Driver’s Code
- Everybody Can Drive – The road is open to everyone regardless of age, gender, race, sexuality, or nationality.
- Drive Cleanly – Whether it is your first time on the track or your 1000th, you owe it to your community to drive a clean and fair race with no unsportsmanlike conduct on the track. Aka, no intentional ramming!
- Drive with Integrity – Honorable drivers are fair and don’t use any cheating/hacking to gain an unfair advantage on the road with race results, credits, or XP. Drivers who don’t follow the rules will suffer repercussions.
- Drive with Creativity – Customize your car liveries however you wish, as long as they follow our UGC rules and are appropriate to be viewed by drivers of all ages.
- Enjoy the Drive – Remember that Forza is a game, so have fun, be a good sport, and be courteous to your fellow drivers.
Violations
At Turn 10, we organize all the various violations a user could be enforced on across 5 different categories:
Extreme Violations
This covers offenses that Turn 10 has ZERO tolerance for, including hate speech, credible violent threats, child sexual exploitive abusive imagery, terrorism or violent extremism content, sexual/nude imagery, and more.
If a user is found to have evidence of supporting any of these acts, those accounts (and any accounts associated with that console/hardware) will be permanently suspended. No exceptions!
Cheating/Unapproved Modding
Whether you are a seasoned vet or a newbie behind the wheel, we want every online interaction you partake in across our titles to be fair and square. It is vital that the integrity of our games be upheld, and any evidence of cheating or manipulating the game to give oneself an advantage will be taken extremely seriously.
This category covers offenses including, but not limited to: obtaining unreleased cars, modifying game files, running cheat tools alongside the game, fraudulent leaderboard entries, Auction House automated scripts, stream-sniping, piracy, and more.
Inappropriate User Generated Content (UGC)
We love giving our community the ability to customize their own liveries and strive to always apply policies fairly and consistently, including by recognizing that culture changes over time. Our moderation team closely evaluates every individual piece of UGC that gets flagged in-game or across other channels and runs the content through the same consistent checklist to determine proper suspension time if necessary. The parameters we evaluate will continue to evolve over time, and we will do our best to update this list moving forward as to not catch our community members off guard.
Pieces of UGC content that are eligible to be enacted on can consist of any of the following: Notorious iconography, profanity, child endangerment, defamation & impersonation, spam/advertising, drug symbolism & imagery, sexually inappropriate/suggestive, harm against people/animals, and much more.
Unsportsmanlike Conduct
This one is simple: any evidence of players intentionally ramming, wrecking, pinning, pitting, spearing, shoving, and blocking in any online race will see action taken against them.
We always review the submitted video evidence fully, and we understand there could be scenarios where Player A might’ve frustrated Player B for the entire race, just for us to see Player B retaliate with a ram of his own. Do not fall for this trap! Rule of thumb, always play it straight and honest, and you won’t see any suspension time. Be the better player, don’t retaliate, and just report!
Our moderation team will also evaluate unsportsmanlike conduct violations in the context of the game, whether it be Motorsport or Horizon, where we may be a little stricter when it comes to Motorsport races.
Communications
Last, but not least, it is important we all do our part to make this a welcoming community for everyone across our Forza community channels everywhere, whether that be in-game, Forza.net Forums, Discord, and anywhere else.
Under no circumstances should you ever do any of the following from behind your keyboard or controller when communicating with other players: personal attacks, vulgar language, antagonizing others, plotting illegal activities, threats of harm, circulating or distributing hacks/cheats, soliciting, plagiarism, or phishing attempts, evasion of bans/suspensions, leaking unannounced content, disrespecting/rebelling against moderators, harassing Turn 10 or Playground employees, and more.
Suspensions/Banning
To achieve our goals for Forza, our suspension policies should be fair and appropriate to the severity of the offense and should provide opportunities for people to improve their behavior, while maintaining a safe and fun environment for people to play.
Violators can experience initial warning messages, and suspension times ranging from 24 hours, to 1 month, to permanent account and console bans, all depending on the severity of the violation and the frequency at which you are collecting these violations. The key is that we want to make sure we are informing the player of their violation and why they were suspended for every scenario before they have a chance to go and repeat that same mistake.
Our goal is to educate and correct player behavior wherever possible. We want you all to enjoy Forza, and we think it’s in all of our best interest to give you the opportunity to behave and play the right way.
These suspensions can be enacted to remove player access from specific features from the game like matchmaking or using the Auction House and will result depending on the type of violations. Beyond that, permanent banning can result in account termination from our games at our discretion, including hardware bans where all associated accounts on that device will be blocked from playing Forza as well.
In addition, any players trying to circumvent the enforcement action taken by using alternate accounts associated with the player will also be suspended.
For viewing any active suspensions on your account, check your Message Center in-game in Forza Horizon 5, or go to aka.ms/ForzaBanInfo
Appeals
If you feel we suspended you by mistake, you are always eligible to submit a Ban Appeal through our Support site ticket system. Once submitted, our Support & Safety team will evaluate each appeal individually, along with all of the supporting evidence and come to a conclusion. We will always have a different moderator evaluate the appeal than the moderator who issued the suspension.
Reporting
Below you’ll find details on how to report players and UGC content in our active Forza titles. Our players remaining active in policing our games and submitting tickets/reports when applicable is a tremendous help to keeping Forza a healthy place to play.
As a reminder however, any repetitive motion or spamming of tickets towards our Support team will be considered potential harassment of our support agents. Though this will initially be met with a warning, it could lead to more stringent enforcement action including a permanent suspension of the support site and creation of new tickets if the behavior is repeated.
Reporting Cheating & Unsportsmanlike Conduct
- To report a player that you suspect of cheating or unsportsmanlike conduct, please create a ticket on our Forza.net Support Site, and the Forza Support & Safety team will investigate.
- Please fill out the required form, especially include the player’s Gamertag, along with any screenshots/links/videos for evidence (this must be included for us to act).
- To take a screenshot or video capture on Xbox: Press the Xbox button on your controller -> Y for Screenshot or X for Video Capture
- To take a screenshot or video capture on PC: Press Windows key + G to open the Game Bar and using the Capture widget select Screenshot or Video Capture. You can also customize key binds for recording in the Settings menu.
Reporting In-Game UGC (Vinyl Groups, Liveries, Photos, Blueprints)
- To report inappropriate UGC, Select Creator Info -> Report -> Report Offensive Content -> OK
- For Auction House items: Select Auction Options -> Report Auction -> OK.
Reporting Xbox Live Profile Content
- For reporting any inappropriate gamertags, gamerpics, abusive Xbox messages, and any other platform-wide features, select the user’s Gamertag in the Xbox menu -> Report or block -> Report -> Select your reason.