Xbox Live subscribers who love their gamertags should make sure that they log in to the network at least once every five years, or else the gamertag will be freed up and allowed to be claimed by somebody else.
Of course, a five-year period to log in to Xbox Live would not be a problem to most subscribers of the gaming network, which reported monthly active users of 49 million for the second quarter of this year.
In case this reminder seems to be coming out of the blue, it is because Microsoft amended its services agreement, with the five-year log-in condition among the new terms that have been added.
The new services agreement will be taking effect on Sept. 15. It should be noted, though, that the change is seemingly retroactive, so Xbox Live users who have not yet logged back into the network since Sept.15, 2011, could suddenly find their gamertag assigned to another gamer by the time that they get back. Gamertags that will be dropped through this condition will be made available to other gamers who would be setting up new Xbox Live accounts.
Only the gamertag will be dropped if the user does not log in within the stated period, though, and not the whole account and the content that has been purchased with it. Upon losing their gamertag, users can simply select a new one.
Microsoft has seemingly been cleaning up unused gamertags recently, as a couple of months ago, the company freed up about 1 million dormant gamertags belonging to accounts, which were never migrated to the Xbox 360.
Users on the NeoGAF forums were mostly indifferent to the addition of the login period requirement to keep gamertags, as most Xbox gamers would not be taking five years in between their sessions on Xbox Live. The move is seen as a means to free up more dormant gamertags for new users, but users who have not signed in for a while could be pushed to do so in case they will once again become active once the powerful Xbox Project Scorpio is released.
The amendment to the services agreement added that if an Xbox Live account is found to be possibly compromised, Microsoft could disable the account's access to some content within the gaming network.
Some important changes in other parts of the services agreement can also be found in the Code of Conduct section, which has prohibited the uploading of terrorist content along with an explanation for the Code of Conduct required to be followed by Xbox gamers.
