The Forza Horizon 5 community was rocked by the news that a player was banned for 8,000 years for a livery they made. Since then, a former Turn 10 Studios employee has confirmed that there are extraordinary suspensions handed out to players under certain circumstances.
On November 29, a Reddit user announced that their friend had been hit with a permaban in-game, with their suspension lifting in the year 9999.
The images related to the case showed a red livery in Forza Horizon with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un superimposed onto a KFC logo, as well as other details.
The user wrote: “So my friend just told me that he got an 8,000-year ban for one of his liveries, looks like T10 doesn’t like jokes or something. He never received any warning before this ban either.”
Since this news broke, we have spoken to a former Turn 10 Studios Community Operations Manager, who goes by the name of Co Pilot on social media, to gain more insight into how the development team has historically dealt with these issues.
Forza Horizon 5 ban system: How it works
During their tenure on the Forza dev team, it was Co Pilot’s job to design and overhaul the team’s enforcement program and functionality, which includes creating policy on player bans.
Based on their insights as well, context is the key word when taking such strong action against members of the community.
They told Dexerto: “I see a lot of similar posts and stories about being perma-banned, like the 8000-year enforcements you see. What I think is probably missing in this story is that this player probably has a history of questionable, borderline and/or enforceable user-generated content. On other accounts on the same console, likely.
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“Enforcement is heavily context-based and what players don’t see is that stuff. Unfortunately, there are quite a few issues, cut corners, and just flat-out unchangeable things that come into play.”
Was the 8,000-year ban fair?
As Co Pilot is now on the outside looking in, after leaving Turn 10 Studios in 2019, it’s difficult for them to say if the reported 8,000-year ban was the right call.
However, they did give us some insight into how the ban process works.
“The idea is to change player behavior through a tiered enforcement system. It’s important to remember that the context and offensiveness of content are constantly changing.
“Without knowing anything about the player’s history, I would have given this livery a 3-day suspension, potentially Googling around to find out more about it – is it a current sensitive event joke, etc.”
Co Pilot is still a huge fan of the Forza series and has been grinding through Forza Horizon 5 on Twitch, where they stream regularly.