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Kotaku

Gameindustry.biz is reporting that Microsoft is being plagued by a bug that can delete your gamertag as well as your achievements. One of my friends, with over 70,000 achievement points would be 175% angrier than he is now.

Microsoft is investigating a serious system design flaw in its Xbox Live accounts system which is leaving some active Xbox 360 gamers with no choice but to start afresh with new Gamertags, deleting any achievements they may have accumulated in the past four years.

The problem stems from the Windows Live ID email address that’s required to set up a Gold membership, and specifically those which are automatically set to expire after a period of inactivity, such as Hotmail.

If a user allows their Windows Live ID email to expire – perhaps because they use an alternative such as Gmail on a day-to-day basis – the email account is deleted, along with any Gamertag that may be associated with it, even if the user has set up additional non-Hotmail addresses in the meantime.