Xbox gamertag reclaims after 5 years policy

On 15th October 2016 a new policy came into effect that if an account was inactive for 5 years the gamertag would be reclaimed and released back to active members to claim. However it is still unclear to me whether that means that accounts inactive for 5
years or more before that date would have their gamertags reclaimed or whether the first reclaims under this policy would be in 2021.

There is a gamertag that I want however it has been inactive for years and has barely any gamerscore, it did not migrate to Xbox one. Am I going to have to keep checking it regularly to see if it's available or is it still going to be inactive until 2021
assuming it does not become active in that time?

:)

 

Resetting Gamertags

It's now policy that if you don't sign into a gamertag in 5 years, it becomes active again.

www.polygon.com/.../log-into-xbox-live-every-five-years-or-say-goodbye-to-that-gamertag

 

Trying to change my name from TheRealShiftrr To Shiftrr But taken by a inactive account

Yes. As I stated, after 5 years it would be freed up. That policy just started in 2016.

 

The 5 years is from the date the policy came into effect.

 

You are just going to have to keep checking as it's a lottery

There is no time table for specific gamertags nor is it an on demand service

Also should be noted gamertags aren't nessarily inactive as they are used by other services

 

Another issue you might run into is that if the person who owns the account with the gamer tag you want, if they are still using the account for other things other than Xbox then that account is still active. Meaning if they never play on Xbox again, that
gamer tag will remain on that account until the account itself is inactive for 5 years not just inactive on Xbox.

 

The account in question shows up with an Avatar on Xbox One (from when it was created on 360) yet when you search it on Xbox.com it shows a blank one and no game history on either Xbox or the website despite the fact it has 365G. Also none of these answered
the original question and 2 of them seem to contradict each other... Smwutches seems to imply that the first reclaims will happen in 2021, 5 years after the policy came into effect. Whereas ngocphi seems to imply the reclaims started from when the policy came
into effect in 2016.

I am aware of the other issues surrounding it to do with accounts not necessarily being inactive and the fact that there is no timetable for releases of old gamertags. It's just frustrating when I know it's not in use and hasn't been on Xbox for many years.

 

so it's a windows 10 account which is required

Again as mentioned xbox isn't the only system that uses gamertags or avatars

Blank avatars means they haven't used the editor yet from the windows store or using something else like officd