Collectively We Thrive: Celebrating the Pleasure of the LGBTQIA+ Neighborhood in Gaming

Video games is usually a highly effective medium to specific and discover one’s identification in a inventive and secure setting. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind permits gamers to romance and marry characters no matter their gender. Overwatch options overtly LGBTQIA+ characters, resembling Tracer, who’s heroic, robust, and prominently featured within the sport. Inform Me Why tells the story of Tyler, a transgender man, with sensitivity and depth. Video games is usually a highly effective strategy to discover identities throughout the security of inventive play whereas enabling all gamers to expertise new views that could be completely different from their very own.

This Satisfaction month, we invite you to affix us on this journey of studying, rising, and thriving. Gaming is for everybody, and collectively, we are able to work in direction of making a gaming group that’s welcoming to everybody and is inclusive of individuals with a variety of views, experiences, and backgrounds. That significant work is achieved via individuals impacting others via training, appreciating the lived experiences of others and constructing empathy with members of the LGBTQIA+ group.

We consider it’s essential to assist organizations that uplift, empower, and handle the wants of the LGBTQIA+ group. Within the final 30 years, along with our staff, Microsoft has donated over $16M to organizations that assist the LGBTQIA+ group, and within the final 12 months alone, we donated over $1.3M. This 12 months Xbox, together with Microsoft, is thrilled to proceed these efforts with a $200K contribution to a number of organizations supporting the LGBQTIA+ group to assist encourage conversations, rally group actions, and empower individuals to share their Satisfaction.   

Moreover, Xbox Sport Studios Publishing is proud to proceed partnering with GLAAD to provide extra inclusive video games from conception to design to improvement. Xbox is partnering with The Trevor Challenge to assist join LGBTQIA+ gamers with useful assets that assist assist well-being and security as they play throughout the Xbox group. Each participant has a singular story, and we look ahead to future tasks the place individuals throughout the rainbow spectrum might expertise the identical empowerment. Learn on to be taught extra about how we’re celebrating the LGBTQIA+ group this month and past:

Spotlighting Xbox’s partnership with The Trevor Challenge

Gaming has lengthy been a supply of enjoyable, group, and self-expression for the LGBTQIA+ group. In response to GLAAD, LGBTQIA+ players are 24% extra seemingly to make use of gaming as a assist to assist get them via robust occasions – with 66% of LGBTQIA+ gamers sharing that gaming permits them to specific themselves in a manner they don’t really feel snug doing in the true world.

This impression just isn’t misplaced on us. At Xbox, we’re dedicated to creating gaming experiences which can be welcoming for all gamers, and that features offering a secure and inclusive area the place everybody might be their genuine selves.

That’s why we’re proud to highlight Xbox’s standing partnership with The Trevor Challenge, a U.S. nonprofit that gives lifesaving and life-affirming providers to LGBTQIA+ younger individuals. Since 2019, Xbox and its security groups have been partnering with The Trevor Challenge to attach gamers with assets to assist their well-being and guarantee they really feel secure and welcome after they play on Xbox.

For us, it’s essential gamers really feel secure. Our ongoing partnership with The Trevor Challenge is a method for us to do this. Extra data on how Xbox helps participant’s well-being might be discovered right here.

Within the spirit of Satisfaction, we wish to share the next security ideas to assist gamers get essentially the most out of their gaming expertise:

• Discover your consumer settings. Xbox affords settings that permit gamers alternative in how they play. Gamers can choose whether or not to make their pals record seen, select to obtain messages from individuals who aren’t pals, or block content material they don’t want to view.
• Take consolation in figuring out Xbox has your again. To assist the broader player-base and LGBTQIA+ group, we take participant security severely. This contains:
  • In-game reporting instruments to assist gamers flag problems with inappropriate habits or content material. Xbox invests in 24/7 protection globally to assist reply to and examine studies.
  • Moderation instruments that work throughout textual content, pictures video and voice, to dam dangerous content material earlier than it reaches gamers.
  • Entry to automated textual content filters, which empowers gamers to customise their gaming expertise and resolve what content material just isn’t okay to obtain – these filters mechanically block content material earlier than it reaches the participant.
  • Persevering with to create proactive measures to dam hate speech and put money into applied sciences to assist average probably poisonous communications, whereas permitting particular person expression.

Gaming and Influence with Rewards with Xbox

Rewards members in the US can earn and donate factors to organizations supporting LGBTQIA+ communities with Xbox. The organizations under can be obtainable on the Rewards hub:

• GLAAD: Based in 1985, GLAAD – the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy group – works with tv, movie, video video games, Spanish-language media, journalists, and social media to inform tales and seek the advice of on LGBTQ media illustration. GLAAD tackles robust points and provokes dialogue that results in cultural change via elevated media accountability, public campaigns, company engagement initiatives, and advocacy packages that assist to make sure 100% inclusion and acceptance of the LGBTQ group. (US)
• Outright Worldwide: Outright Worldwide is devoted to working with companions across the globe to strengthen the capability of the lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) human rights motion, doc and amplify human rights violations in opposition to LGBTIQ individuals, and advocate for inclusion and equality. (US)
• Nationwide Middle for Transgender Equality: The Nationwide Middle for Transgender Equality (NCTE) advocates to vary insurance policies and society to extend understanding and acceptance of transgender and non-binary individuals. Within the nation’s capital and all through the nation, NCTE works to switch disrespect, discrimination, and violence with empathy, alternative, and justice. (US)

Xbox gamers can earn Rewards factors in numerous methods, resembling enjoying video games, finishing Sport Cross Quests, and buying video games and different eligible objects on the Microsoft Retailer (exclusions apply). Begin incomes immediately and redeem your factors for excellent rewards. Donate your factors on the Rewards hub or on the Rewards redeem web page.

Inform Me Why Obtainable for Free in June on Xbox Consoles, Microsoft Retailer, and Steam!

Inform Me Why, the award-winning narrative journey from Don’t Nod Leisure and Xbox Sport Studios Publishing, can be obtainable without cost on Xbox consoles, Home windows PC, and Steam for your entire month of June 2024. As in previous years, the Inform Me Why staff encourages gamers to offer what they might have spent on Inform Me Why to an impartial trans creator or a trans-inclusive charity of their group.

Discover Video games Curated by LGBTQIA+ Communities at Microsoft

Xbox invitations you to play with pleasure.

Throughout June and past, try quite a lot of sport collections that showcase LGBTQIA+ creators, lead characters, and video games with inclusive gender and relationship choices. Obtainable on the Microsoft Shops on Xbox and Home windows, try the transgender and non-binary group video games assortment and the LGBTQIA+ group video games assortment. These collections will exist year-round as a part of our ongoing work to create extra inclusive gaming ecosystems and elevate content material that resonates with communities. For Xbox Sport Cross members, discover what video games can be found to play within the Xbox Sport Cross assortment and the PC Sport Cross assortment.

Featured titles throughout the collections embrace:

Want for Pace Unbound (Obtainable with Xbox Sport Cross Final on Console, PC, and Cloud) – Want for Pace Unbound’s character creator permits for a number of gender expressions through clothes, hair, and voice choices that aren’t restricted to the gender binary. The sport additionally options racing rival, Justicia, a trans girl voiced by trans actress, Sena Bryer, along with together with LGBTQIA+ iconography within the streets and as decals on your vehicles.

Starfield (Obtainable with Xbox Sport Cross on Console, PC, and Cloud) – On this role-playing sport set amongst the celebrities, create any character you need and discover with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey. Starfield boasts a powerful character creation device with a number of physique sorts, pores and skin tones, hairstyles, non-gendered options, and so they/them pronoun choices. Exploration choices embrace pursuing romantic relationships no matter gender.

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Obtainable on Console) – Play as star and stagehand as you establish the story via dialog and tune on this online game for musical lovers. Written by the enduring and overtly homosexual narrative designer, David Gaider, you’ll craft not solely a singular narrative, however a soundtrack to your personal musical expertise based mostly in your selections. Forge your personal story and resolve who to romance.

The Quarry (Obtainable with Xbox Sport Cross on Console and Cloud) – Play solo or in a bunch of pals as any of 9 camp counselors on this thrilling cinematic expertise that leads down a tangled internet of prospects based mostly in your selections. Get pleasure from an evening of enjoyable earlier than a celebration rapidly turns into an unpredictable evening of horror and your relationships are examined by unimaginable life-or-death choices.

This Mattress We Made (Obtainable on Console) –   Chloe Lussier, CEO and co-founder of Lowbirth Video games, desires to inform impactful tales that characteristic unconventional heroes. Set within the Nineteen Fifties, the story that unfolds in This Mattress We Made is tied to actual historical past when being a member of the LGBTQIA+ group was criminalized. Step into the function of Sophie, an indiscreet chambermaid at a resort crammed with secrets and techniques, on this third-person thriller narrative sport that explores the lengths individuals have needed to go to pursue loving relationships as their genuine self.

Have fun Satisfaction in Forza Horizon 5

This 12 months’s Satisfaction-themed Xbox artwork can be added to Forza Horizon 5 as a vinyl: an in-game decal that you should use to customise any automobile. Exhibit this distinctive design in your automobile utilizing #ForzaRainbow on social media for an opportunity to be featured! (The vinyl can be obtainable beginning June 7 from the Forza Horizon accounts on Instagram and X.)

Overwatch 2 Celebrates Satisfaction with In-Sport Map and Calling All Heroes

Overwatch 2 celebrates Satisfaction this month with the return of a fan-favorite map and Calling All Heroes. All month lengthy, the Satisfaction pageant returns to Overwatch 2’s Midtown map. Gamers can look ahead to enjoying on this map as they queue for Unranked and Aggressive video games and straight in a devoted play card on the Arcade. Calling All Heroes is Overwatch 2’s aggressive Esports sequence that gives an inclusive setting to aspiring rivals of marginalized genders, together with those that current themselves as Trans, Non-Binary, and Genderqueer. This competitors returned final weekend, and everybody who tunes in at twitch.television/ow_esports will be capable of earn new drops like the brand new Monarch Enterprise pores and skin.

Xbox Gear Store

Present your love and assist for Satisfaction 2024 with our new limited-edition t-shirts, hoodies and extra – designed by and with the LGBTQIA+ communities. Get your Satisfaction gear now!

Have fun Satisfaction with the brand new 2024 Satisfaction Assortment completely on the Blizzard Gear Retailer! Led via the Blizzard LGBT+ Worker Community, the Blizzard Satisfaction Assortment options Satisfaction-themed attire benefitting The Trevor Challenge from Might 15 via June 30, 2024.

Discover Xbox’s Kingdom of Shade

In celebration of Satisfaction, the Xbox emblem was reimagined as a crystal radiating with energy on the prime of a magic workers. The storybook-inspired picture additionally features a citadel with festive rainbow banners and fireworks. The artist, who’s a part of the LGBTQIA+ group, imagines the Kingdom of Shade as a spot the place individuals who establish as LGBTQIA+ rule and the magic of Satisfaction is unfold to each nook of the realm. Proper from the pages of a leather-bound e-book crammed with colourful artwork and calligraphy textual content, this picture evokes not solely acquainted tales of dragons, knights, and wizards, however launches these tales right into a extra inclusive future during which all gamers discover their magic.

Xbox Ambassadors Have fun Satisfaction 2024

The Xbox Ambassadors Program is celebrating Satisfaction by spotlighting members of the Xbox Ambassadors group who responded to a latest survey about their experiences as players. Learn the Xbox Ambassadors weblog to listen to group members sharing their favourite reminiscences enjoying video video games, recommending video games that do a very good job representing LGBTQIA+ individuals and experiences, and providing tips about keep secure when gaming on-line.

Satisfaction Dynamic Background and Wallpaper Obtainable Now

The Satisfaction Month Xbox design is on the market immediately as an Xbox wallpaper and dynamic background on console – comply with these steps to use the dynamic background:

• Press the Xbox button in your controller to open the information.
• Choose Profile & system > Settings > Common > Personalization > My background > Dynamic backgrounds.

You’ll be able to select between Video games, Xbox, or Summary dynamic backgrounds. Select the background artwork that you really want with the A button.

Radical Pleasure with Microsoft

Within the face of adversity, existence itself might be resistance and spark change. This Satisfaction, LGBTQIA+ individuals at Microsoft share the which means of pleasure and invite everybody to unfold acceptance, abundance, and concord in all places. Be a part of us and uncover extra at Microsoft.com/pleasure.