Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about how XCT Live works

Community Guidelines

Good behaviour, harassment & abuse — last updated June 26, 2026

XCT Live is a community for people who love Xbox games, achievements and collecting. To keep it welcoming for everyone, all members agree to follow these guidelines wherever they interact on the site — feed posts, comments, GIF and emoji reactions, direct messages, profiles, gamerpics and gamertags.

Be a good member

• Be respectful and assume good faith. Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.
• Keep things constructive — disagree with ideas, not people.
• Celebrate other people’s achievements and collections. There’s no “wrong” way to play or collect, so no gatekeeping.
• Respect privacy choices. Some members hide their stats, leaderboards or progress — that’s their right.
• Use the search, tags and reports honestly — help keep the data accurate for everyone.

Harassment is not tolerated

Do not:

• Target, bully, intimidate or pile on any individual.
• Use hate speech, slurs or discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age or any other protected characteristic.
• Threaten violence against anyone, or wish harm on a person or their family.
• Stalk or follow a member around the site to provoke or upset them.
• Engage in sexual harassment or make unwanted sexual advances.
• Post, share or threaten to share anyone’s private or personal information (“doxxing”).
• Impersonate other members, Microsoft/Xbox staff, or XCT Live staff.

No abuse, spam or harmful content

• No spam, flooding, or repetitive low-effort posts, comments or reactions.
• No advertising, scams, phishing, or links to malware or pirated content.
• No NSFW, sexual, graphic or shock content — including in posts, comments, GIFs, gamerpics and gamertags.
• No cheating the system — manipulating leaderboards, achievements, referrals, likes or any other counts.
• No ban evasion. Don’t use alternate accounts to get around a block, mute or suspension.
• Don’t pass off other people’s work as your own or post content you don’t have the rights to.

If someone is bothering you

• Block them. A blocked member can no longer comment, react with emojis or GIFs, or like your posts.
• Use your privacy settings. You can turn off direct messages and friend requests, hide your progress and leaderboards, and limit what’s shared to the feed.
• Report serious issues — threats, hate speech, doxxing or anything that makes you feel unsafe — to the team via our Discord.

Enforcement

Breaking these guidelines can lead to content removal, loss of features, a temporary suspension, or a permanent ban — depending on the severity and whether it’s a repeat issue. Severe violations such as threats, hate speech or doxxing may result in an immediate, permanent ban without warning. We make these decisions to keep the community safe, and we may update these guidelines as the community grows.

Badges and what they mean

A profile can show three kinds of badge: the chips beside the gamertag, the Xbox badges under it, and the cards on the member’s Deck. Hover over (or tap) any badge on a profile to see its name.

Chips beside the gamertag

• #0123Member number. The order in which you joined XCT.live. Its colour comes from the number: gold #0001–#1000, silver #1001–#2000, bronze #2001–#3000, teal #3001–#4000, blue #4001–#5000, purple #5001–#6000, crimson #6001–#7000, emerald #7001–#8000, orange #8001–#9000, pink #9001–#10000, cyan #10001–#11000, indigo #11001–#12000, lime #12001–#13000, fuchsia #13001–#14000, slate #14001–#15000, olive #15001–#16000, sunset #16001–#17000, aurora #17001–#18000, ocean #18001–#19000, fire #19001–#20000, galaxy #20001–#21000, candy #21001–#22000, neon #22001–#23000, peach #23001–#24000, mint #24001–#25000, royal #25001–#26000, obsidian #26001–#27000, pearl #27001–#28000, rainbow #28001 and later. Hover over it to see the day the member joined. A member can bid XCT Core for a free number in the Badge Auction.
• PROXCT Pro. The member has an active XCT Pro membership.
• ✦ LifetimeLifetime. Permanent Pro access: the founding members and lifetime members. A Lifetime member can have their own badge in its place.
• VIPVIP. The XCT.live team made this member a VIP.
• ✦ AmbassadorAmbassador. The member carries XCT.live on their Xbox profile and meets the Ambassador Program rules.
• AdminAdmin. A member of the XCT.live team.
• ✦ FounderFounder and Dragon. Personal badges for the people who started XCT.live.
• Verified eBay accountVerified eBay account. The member signed in to eBay to prove that the eBay account is theirs. Useful when you trade on XCTrade.
• CustomCustom badge. A badge with the member’s own words and colours.

Xbox badges under the gamertag

• Gamerscore badges. Your lifetime Gamerscore. You get the next badge at 1,000, 3,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 35,000, 50,000, 75,000, 100,000, 200,000, 500,000, 1,000,000, 3,000,000, 5,000,000, 10,000,000 Gamerscore.
• Years on Xbox Live. One badge for each year since you made your Xbox account.
• Event and programme badges. Xbox gives these for events, console launches and programmes such as Xbox Ambassadors. See every one in Gallery › Badges.

XCT.live reads these badges from your Xbox profile. On your own showcase, use the pencil on the Badges widget to hide badges or change their order.

Deck cards

The cards on your Deck show what you did on XCT.live: members you referred, a Completion of the Day win, following XCT.live on Xbox, Bluesky and Reddit, ideas that shipped from the roadmap and more. Most special cards pay 100 XCT Core once, when you claim them. The Wanted tab on your Deck lists the cards you do not have yet, what each one pays and how to get it. You can show your favourite cards on your profile with the Deck widget.

How the numbers work

A game page shows several numbers that sound alike but measure different things. This part explains each one and why two of them can disagree.

Gamerscore completion and achievement completion

XCT.live grades a game by Gamerscore. Your completion is the Gamerscore you earned in the game divided by the Gamerscore of its full achievement list. A game with no Gamerscore total is graded by the achievement count instead.

Achievement completion counts achievements, not points: the achievements you unlocked divided by every achievement in the list. Achievements are worth different amounts and some are worth nothing, so the two numbers can differ.

For example, Call of Duty: World at War has two achievements worth 0 Gamerscore. A member with every point holds 64 of its 66 achievements, and XCT.live counts the game as complete.

On your profile, Achievement completion is every achievement you unlocked divided by every achievement in the games you played. Avg completion is the average of your percentage in each game, so a short game counts as much as a long one.

All obtainable. Some achievements can no longer be unlocked, for example after the servers of a game shut down. When members flag one as unobtainable or discontinued and a moderator confirms it, XCT.live leaves it out.

A member who holds every other point then counts as complete, and the game page says all obtainable. That rule applies to the owners list, the typical time to complete and Easy Score.

Retired XBOX One Challenges are left out of the achievement list and its counts.

XBOX rarity and XCT rarity

The achievement table on a game page has two unlock rates. Each one counts a different group of players.

• XBOX unlock rate. The column with the XBOX logo. It is the share of all XBOX players of the game who have the achievement, as XBOX reports it. The rarity tier, for example Rare, also comes from XBOX. RealScore uses this number.
• XCT unlock rate. The XCT column. It shows the XCT members who unlocked the achievement out of the XCT members who played the game. A member counts as a player when the game is in their XBOX achievement history. Hover over the number to see who unlocked it.
• XCT global rate. The game data also divides the same unlockers by every XBOX account linked to XCT.live, played or not. It is not a column in the table.

XCT members are a much smaller group than all XBOX players, so the XBOX and XCT numbers can be far apart. When few members play a game, one unlock can move the XCT number a lot. The XCT counts refresh about once an hour.

The counts include members who hide their game progress, but their names are not shown.

Play time, time to 100%, HowLongToBeat and Easy Score

• Play time. The minutes XBOX recorded for you in the game. XBOX records play time from XBOX One onwards. Older games, such as XBOX 360 games, have none, so the game page shows your first and last achievement dates instead.
• Time to 100%. The time from your first achievement in a game to your last one, for members who completed it. It is calendar time, not play time, so breaks count. A game started in 2015 and finished in 2024 shows about 9 years.
• Typical time to complete. On the owners list, the median play time and the median first to last achievement time of the listed members who completed the game.
• HowLongToBeat. An estimate from howlongtobeat.com, where players send in their own times. Main is the main story and Completionist is everything. XCT.live rounds it to the nearest half hour. It is not measured on XBOX.
• HowLongToBeat rank. The number after a time, for example 80th, means the game is longer than about 80% of the games in the XCT database with a HowLongToBeat time.
• Easy Score. The median XBOX play time of the XCT members who completed the game, all obtainable. A game gets a time when at least 5 completers have a play time. The Easy Score page lists the games with a median of 30 hours or less, rebuilt every 6 hours.
• XCT median time. The Store filter with this name uses the Easy Score number for every game, with no 30 hour limit.

So one game can show four different times. Play time is what XBOX measured for you. Time to 100% is how long you took on the calendar. HowLongToBeat is what other players report. Easy Score is what XCT members who finished it played.

Owners on a game page

The Owners list on a game page joins two groups of XCT members. The line under the heading shows the size of each group.

• In an XCT collection. Members who have the game in their XCT collection.
• Started on XBOX. Members who have the game in their XBOX achievement history.

The counts differ for these reasons.

• The groups overlap. Many members are in both groups, so the Owners number is smaller than the two numbers added together.
• Playing is not owning. A member can start a game that is not in their collection. XBOX 360 and Windows 8 games never appear in XBOX collection data, so for them playing is the only signal.
• Backward compatible games. The page of an XBOX 360 game also counts members who own its modern Store listing.
• Hidden members. Members who hide their game progress or turn off feed sharing are not in the list, but they are in the two group counts.
• Long lists. The list and its count stop at 1,000 members.

Common questions

I saw some old achievements unlock after my initial scan — what’s the deal?

This is due to our scanners “refreshing” both the v1 and v2 achievement endpoints for your gamertag. This sometimes results in achievements that didn’t finish the unlock process being unlocked after our scan.

This is outside of our control, and the same thing would have happened on signup to any other achievement-tracking website.

The good news is you can now hide games from your gamertag if you don’t want a title to be shown or scanned.

Why do my non-backwards compatible digital games show as not owned when I own them?

We can’t track ownership on those titles yet — their entitlements live on the older Xbox 360 endpoint that we don’t read from. In the meantime you can manually tick them as owned in the game’s modal.

We may be adding real tracking for this soon, but no promises.

What do the five Disc to Digital online-status tags mean?

The tags answer two questions: can you play without servers, and are the servers still up. Fully offline — no online features: the complete game works without servers. Plays offline — online features live: offline play works and the optional online parts are available. Plays offline — online features retired: offline play still works but its online parts have ended.

Needs servers — online now: the game requires working servers and is currently playable. Needs servers — shut down (unplayable): the required servers are gone and the game cannot be played at all. Forza Horizon 2 is “Plays offline — online features retired” because its single-player content still works.

Does Disc to Digital change how my physical disc works?

No. If you are offline and the physical disc is in the tray, you can launch the game exactly as you always could. Claiming a digital licence does not alter the disc or remove its normal offline behaviour.

Xbox reports that the Halo Infinite issue where a claimed disc licence only allowed multiplayer has been fixed. If you were affected, reclaim the disc licence by launching the game with the disc inserted or claiming it manually.

Why do Disc to Digital verdicts change? What is a status update?

A verdict that changes is almost never a mistake or trolling, which is why the form and the log call it a status update rather than a correction. It is one of three things:

A genuine mix-up. People confuse editions, or the Xbox One disc with the Series X|S disc, and report the other one’s result. Microsoft enabling new games. Titles that were refused start converting once Microsoft adds them — the Forza Horizon games went from No to Yes this way. A new print run. A later pressing behaves differently from the launch disc; that becomes a disc variant nested under the game rather than a flip of its verdict.

Every status update to a settled verdict is reviewed by Rael XCT before it changes the list, and the previous submissions stay in the audit trail.

Why does a Disc to Digital game show VARIES, and what is a disc variant?

Some games were pressed more than once, and only some print runs convert. Battlefield 4’s Greatest Hits reprint converts while the original run does not; Call of Duty: Ghosts, Alien: Isolation and Sunset Overdrive have copies that behave differently too.

Each game keeps one verdict for the common print, so the unique-game totals stay honest. Print runs that behave differently nest under the game as disc variants in its Info modal, with the edition, inner-ring serial or cover wording that tells them apart once we know it. The VARIES tag and the “Varies by print” filter mark games with a confirmed variant that gives a different result. A variant marked reported is a member result we have not verified yet; confirmed means Rael XCT checked it.

When you submit a correction, add a photo, the inner-ring serial or the cover wording — that is how we tell a real variant from a mistake. A bare contradiction of a verdict several members have confirmed is treated as a likely mistake until evidence arrives.

What is RealScore, and how is it different from Gamerscore?

RealScore is XCT’s rarity-weighted alternative to raw Gamerscore. Instead of every achievement being worth its flat Gamerscore, each one is weighted by how rare it is across all Xbox players — the harder an achievement is to unlock, the more RealScore it’s worth. A rare 10G that almost nobody has can be worth far more RealScore than a common 100G.

The formula is the achievement’s Gamerscore × the square root of (100 ÷ its global unlock percentage), capped so no single achievement can dominate. It rewards genuinely difficult, rare completions rather than sheer volume.

You’ll see RealScore across the site — on leaderboards, on your profile, and on game pages, where a dropdown lets you switch the achievement summary between Gamerscore, RealScore and other scoring formulas.

How do the leaderboards work — can they be farmed?

The headline leaderboards rank members by total RealScore rather than raw Gamerscore, so they reward rare, hard-earned achievements and resist the usual “easy 1000G” farming — stacking cheap completion games barely moves your RealScore.

Boards refresh regularly from your scanned achievement data, and there are per-platform, themed and community boards alongside the global ranking.

What is My Xbox Journey?

Your Journey is a visual timeline of your Xbox life, built from your achievement history — when you started, your biggest unlocks, your rarest and longest completions, milestone moments, and the franchises you’ve played the most. Undated legacy unlocks are woven in at their game’s release date so the story reads in order.

Journeys are free to view. There’s a public showcase at /journeys featuring notable members and gaming figures, and your own lives on your profile under the Journey / Milestones view.

What is XCTrade?

XCTrade is XCT’s collectors’ marketplace, where members list Xbox games — physical or digital — to sell, buy or trade. Each listing links back to the game’s page, and you can browse everyone’s active listings in one place.

When you message a seller about a listing, its details (title, format, price) are baked into the conversation so nothing gets lost if you’re dealing on several at once, and you can filter XCTrade conversations out of your normal DMs.

What is XCT Pro, and what does it unlock?

XCT Pro is the membership that unlocks the full signed-in experience — the community feed, advanced tools and more. Public profiles and Journeys stay free for everyone.

Pro is supported through Ko-fi. After subscribing, link your account using the XCT-XXXXX code shown in your account area (or include it in your Ko-fi message) and your access activates automatically.

What is Core?

Core is XCT’s community currency. You earn it by referring new members and taking part in community activities like the roadmap and events, and you can spend it on rewards. Your balance is shown in the gem widget in the ribbon.

How does the Community Feed work?

The Feed is a live stream of community activity — members joining, big unlocks, game completions, milestones and more — generated automatically from scans, plus text posts you write yourself. You can like and comment, and switch between Community, Friends and your own personal feed.

If you’d rather not share your activity, turn feed sharing off in Settings — it’s respected both when events are created and when the feed is read.

What’s in the Gallery?

The Gallery collects Xbox visual history: profile badges (your Xbox Live tenure ladder and Gamerscore tiers), the gamerpic archive, and game artwork — cover art, banners, screenshots, logos and trailers — that you can browse, filter and shuffle through. Because we keep the artwork URLs even after a game is delisted, the Gallery doubles as an archive of art that has since been pulled from the store.

Why did my Xbox Live tenure (years) update late?

Your tenure badge — how many years you’ve been on Xbox Live — is read from your Xbox profile when you sign in and on a periodic scan. If Xbox has ticked you over to a new year but XCT still shows the old one, it simply means your profile hasn’t been re-scanned since — signing in again refreshes it.

How do I make my profile or stats private?

You control visibility in Settings: you can hide your profile, your stats, your leaderboard presence and your feed activity. Those choices are enforced everywhere — hidden profiles aren’t served, and hidden activity doesn’t appear in the feed or on the boards.

Is XCT affiliated with Microsoft or Xbox?

No. XCT Live is an independent, fan-made community project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Microsoft or Xbox. “Xbox” and related names are trademarks of Microsoft. XCT reads the data your own account already exposes through Xbox’s own services to build your collection, achievements and Journey.