There has been a lot of talk in the media about the so-called "Epstein Files" that have been released in batches by the US government, revealing individuals who have had various forms of contact with Jeffrey Epstein, a person accused of both human trafficking and sexual abuse (he died in 2019, the same year he was arrested).
In connection with the latest released documents, it has now been exposed that the gaming industry is involved in his business in various ways, something that The Verge editor Tom Warren now has discovered includes Microsoft - though not in any scandalous way, quite the opposite. Via Bluesky, Warren reveals that Microsoft actually banned Epstein from Xbox Live in 2013 due to "harassment, threats, and/or abuse of other players," which is also described as "severe, repeated, and/or excessive."
However, the reason was not necessarily that Epstein was acting like a scumbag online (he did most of that in real life instead) but rather "the policy of the New York Attorney General's partnership with Microsoft and other gaming companies to remove New York registered sex offenders from online gaming services." Gaming services have oftentimes been accused of enabling grooming, so there is no doubt that this was the right decision on Microsoft's behalf.
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