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Interesting results! I don't have great data on this, but the XBox game culture report says about 1/2 of respondents play online multiplayer games. I think you have to have the social features turned on to do that, so I'm going to guess about 50% of XBox users have those features turned on.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/11/19/xbox-culture-of-play-report-gaming-survey/
About 17% of respondents here said Yes. That's much lower. I have a couple of guesses why: first, a lot of commenters didn't seem to consider features like a game profile, friends list, or the activity feed "social features".
Others were quick to say that they only use social features with real friends and family. I'm not sure why that would be a "but..."; it's the whole point of those features.
@evan Seeing what my kids are playing is the most used steam social feature, followed by occasional chats with them.
It seemed to need clarification from what I consider most people's usage social features of a gaming platform.
Screaming obscenities at strangers or at by strangers, never had much of a draw for me.
Primarily single player gamer, but yeah I'm "on" just about every platform, but good luck interacting with me there for the first time.
@mrcopilot so, yeah, here's another issue. It seems like a lot of people have strongly negative ideas of what "social features" of a game or game platform could be -- especially related to interactions with strangers.
@evan Ever start a game of Marvel Rivals with the live chat sound on?
@mrcopilot No, but I'm sure it's a real mess. I don't usually play multiplayer games with strangers; I don't think that is the only "social feature" of gaming platforms, though.
@evan For me, it was because my first thought when I read the question was like, playing on Xbox Live with strangers, which is something I pretty much never want to do. It's also pretty notorious for being an awful space, at least with most popular multiplayer games.
Finally, I think Fediverse users are generally more protective of their privacy than the general population.
@evan I think there’s also an aspect of differing opinions on what it means to “use” a feature.
If I have a community “profile” on steam, but I never think of it, never look at the friend requests, never willingly interact with it, I would say I do not use it. But the bean counters at Valve would presumably count me as part of their “social users” population.
@philip Sure. It could also be related to your self-image.
Anyway, my answer: yes. I have a profile on XBox, Switch, and Google Play Games. I connect with friends on all the platforms. I share achievements and activities and screenshots and sometimes chat.
In my book "ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web", I talk about federating gaming platforms. I think you should be able to connect to an account on Steam from your XBox (or Mastodon) account. Add them to your friends list, and follow their activities.
@evan I’m also yes 😄 gaming is the one thing where I have my guard down, but I honestly cannot track which email i use in which platform since i use a password / credentials manager, so I am naively hoping no one can build an exploitable profile of me 🤞
@evan watching my kids play, I think there is a lot of not using the gaming platform's social features, but still being social on Discord or Facetime. My sons friends will use group chats like those out-of-band to the game itself.
My theory there is that it happens because games are fractured in their social features and don't map to real world relationships or movements. Folks don't want to be tied to a single environment.
BT Free is a non-profit organization founded by @ozoned@btfree.social . It's goal is for digital privacy rights, advocacy and consulting. This goal will be attained by hosting open platforms to allow others to seamlessly join the Fediverse on moderated instances or by helping others join the Fediverse.
