Do you lose your Xbox One games if your account gets banned?

Since all of your Xbox One game licenses are tied to your account, what happens if you get banned from your account as part of a disciplinary action? Losing multiplayer access is punishment enough, but losing access to all the games tied to your account would be a bit much. It’s no surprise that Microsoft doesn’t seem to know what happens any more than the average gamer yet. Recently, the official Xbox Support on Twitter gave an alarming reply to someone that asked about the effects of an account ban.

If your account is banned, you also forfeit the licenses to any games that have licenses tied to it as listed in the ToU.

It’s not the answer we wanted to see, but at least it’s a clear answer. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Major Nelson, answered the same question quite differently when asked during E3 in this Reddit interview.

Chloe Dykstra: “If someone is banned, whether their fault or not, will they lose access to the games they purchased?”
Major Nelson: “Absolutely not. You will always have access to the games you’ve purchased. Absolutely not.”
Chloe Dykstra: “Yay!”
Major Nelson: “Yay? Really? Come on! You had to expect that.”

Major Nelson is right. You should expect that, but as we’ve seen in the past with other companies, account bans with game licenses tied to them can sometimes lead to all sorts of unintended consequences.