1 Million Xbox Live Players Banned

[Dream]

Microsoft this week booted as many as 1 million players from its Xbox Live gaming service due to the company's belief that they modified their consoles to play games illegally downloaded from file sharing sites.

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty, and result in a ban from Xbox Live," Microsoft said in a statement.

The move comes amid this week's release of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", the mostly highly anticipated Xbox 360 game of the year.

So-called warez copies of the game reportedly showed up on pirate sites prior to its release—a development that may have prompted Microsoft to take action, possibly in concert with or at the behest of Infinity Ward, the games publisher.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221601267

That's a massive amount of players! Looks like MS is finally doing something about modded consoles. I heard the Wii has an even bigger problem with pirated games.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Can't say I have much sympathy for anyone affected by this. You play pirated games on a modded and networked console, you're playing Russian Roulette with it.

 

[Sheep]

Hopefully that means less douchebags online as I get ready to jump back into competitive multiplayer (with MW2).

 

[firehawk12]

I find it amusing that this made the national news up here. I guess games have finally made it!

As for the bans, it's about time.

People like to bullshit about how the PC is being killed by piracy, but the last time I checked, Modern Warfare 2 was leaked on... yeah, that's right, the 360.

 

[Aragorn]

Hopefully that means less douchebags online as I get ready to jump back into competitive multiplayer (with MW2).

I'm guessing the 12-year-olds that call you "noob" and "fag" and then turn on you when they get bored aren't modding their consoles.

 

[Jax]

Hopefully that means less douchebags online as I get ready to jump back into competitive multiplayer (with MW2).

I'm guessing the 12-year-olds that call you "noob" and "fag" and then turn on you when they get bored aren't modding their consoles.

One of my brothers friend (13) had a modded console but M/S didn't get chance to ban him cause RROD got him first and of course he was fucked due to modding it....The dickhead, why the fuck mod a console that ain't that reliable and costs £150-200 quid...more when he originally brought it.

 

[ALF]

The big question is, what will the secondary market now charge for buying/selling those Xboxes, now rendered useless only to "online" players.

I can imagine heaps of online junkies looking to unload their modded units and get back online ASAP.

1 million Xbox units are now undesirable to their owners. Shall I start the bidding at $25?

 

[JonathonWally]

The big question is, what will the secondary market now charge for buying/selling those Xboxes, now rendered useless only to "online" players.

I can imagine heaps of online junkies looking to unload their modded units and get back online ASAP.

1 million Xbox units are now undesirable to their owners. Shall I start the bidding at $25?

Just like with the original XBOX, after you mod it, you would hook it into a second ethernet port on your computer and play online through a makeshift network that was set-up for the sole purpose of playing a modded XBOX online.

I'd imagine they would do it again for 360s.

Modding the original XBOX was hard in the beginning and took a bit of skill, then got easier and easier. I modded for the sole purpose of traveling around without hauling around the fragile discs of the games I owned. And had a separate xbox to play over live and stay hooked up.

I wouldn't mod a 360 as they have such a high failure rate and they're still pretty expensive to become bricks with voided warrenties with 12 months. Maybe once used units are down to $100.

I have no interest in pirating games. Game costs only go up and more developers will get disenfranchised with the whole system.

Between used games and trading in games, the only time you really have to shell out full price for a game is if you want it at release. Otherwise within a few months you can get it used for cheaper.

 

[Praxius]

The only bad experience I had on a Wii in regards to hacks or cheats is with mariokart wii online..... too many hacks running around with no-stop star power or blue shells, keep taking first place, already have a score of like 999999999 and keep on screwing it up for everybody else.

There is no online moderation on nintendo's side of things and there's no hosting of games on the console so you have no admin powers to boot anybody, and the only way to beat these clowns is to hack and cheat like them.

I looked into it myself after getting a little ticked off for too long of these jerks screwing up my enjoyment of a game I paid for, and the amount of crap I had to do to hack just wasn't worth the effort. However they have put out a number of patches and updates, so perhaps one of those eventually removed their abilities to go online with a modified saved game file.

I heard the X-Box was pretty modifiable. Sucks to be these 1 million people who got canned..... that'll learn em.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

MS are not only banning modded 360s from XBlive they are also removing the install game to HDD feature, so once the 360 is banned you can no longer install games onto the HDD, all data on the HDD is corrupt as is your gamertag, that would mean that unless you had another unbanned 360 you could never use your gamertag until you recovered it again.

Talk about kicking them when they are down.

 

[FordSVT]

People like to bullshit about how the PC is being killed by piracy, but the last time I checked, Modern Warfare 2 was leaked on... yeah, that's right, the 360.

The difficulty of pirating 360 games versus PC games isn't equal. One requires hardware modification and software jury-rigging that most owners don't have the resources or inclination to perform, the other... well to pirate a PC game you do basically nothing but download it, open a key-gen or install a crack patch and proceed as if it was an retail copy. Whoop-de-friggin'-doo.

Plain and simple, if you want to play current games and participate online, Microsoft has ultimate control of the firmware and software on your 360 while PC vendors don't.

 

[firehawk12]

Assuming it's possible to pirate MW2, you still can't play online since it's tied to Steamworks.

Yeah, the crappy DRM of Securom and Starforce are ultimately breakable and I'm sure some Steam games have been pirated, but if you actually want to play the game online, I don't see a way to do it.

Meanwhile, there are no such concerns on the 360. And from the videos I've seen, it's pretty easy to open up the 360 and flash the firmware if you are so inclined.

 

[Tomato]

One of my brothers friend (13) had a modded console but M/S didn't get chance to ban him cause RROD got him first and of course he was fucked due to modding it....The dickhead, why the fuck mod a console that ain't that reliable and costs £150-200 quid...more when he originally brought it.

Well I'm a modder and I don't pretend what I do is right but couple of things. Modding is uber simple $30 is Cdn, in less than 10 minutes flat at a store here. My Xbox RRoD. Got my new Box back, modded, in and out in less than 10 minutes.

Now if the 1M number is true. 40 x $1M = $40M of lost revenue for Xbox. In additions to all the map packs.

Also if I needed to buy a new system to play on line. I would seriously think about PS 3 (it is free) and use my Xbox for single player.

Regardless this is fascinating and wonder what it is going to do to MS market share. Are modders going to go back to MS or PS3.

 

[firehawk12]

Not for nothing, but I don't think MS cares if they lose pirates as consumers, especially when they take a hit on all the consoles they sell anyway?

There are legitimate reasons to mod a Wii or a PSP, even though most people abuse the ability to mod those systems... but the only reason to mod a 360 these days is for piracy.

 

[Sheep]

Hopefully that means less douchebags online as I get ready to jump back into competitive multiplayer (with MW2).

I'm guessing the 12-year-olds that call you "noob" and "fag" and then turn on you when they get bored aren't modding their consoles.

I don't know about that. Most of the modders I've seen are younger than 18, and do it to amass a huge library of free games they'll never play. Most adults have the funds to buy games and lack the time to have a practically unlimited game library to play. Not saying it's all kiddies of course, but I'd venture a guess there are more of them than you think.

 

[firehawk12]

Trust me, there are a lot of adults that have modded 360s as well.

 

[Praxius]

Don't forget that the wii is also has free online play and web browsing too. So long as you have your own internet connection, if you want to do anything online, you can.

That's one thing that turned me off on the XBox 360, where you seem to have to pay monthly just to play the games you already paid for.

Same with World of Warcraft. I bought it thinking it was similar to the old Wcrafts I used to play, only to find out that when I got it home I have to pay more monthly just to play the damn thing, which I already paid for. Why the hell pay for something that you can't even use unless you pay more?

Frigging racket if you ask me. Of course when I headed back to return it, I finally seen at the bottom of the box and in small text something along the lines of "Additional fees may apply for online play" ~ Yet that's the only damn way you can play the thing.

To say the least I simply gave that game away to someone else and chalked it up to a learning experience.

This is another reason why I went to the Wii and not the 360 or PS3.... one thing was cost, the other was online play that was free (oppsed to what I already pay for internet with my ISP) and the other thing was its overall originality over the other consoles..... sure they may have fancier graphics and such, but their cost compared to the type of games you get (which were pretty much the same style of gameplay as the previous generations, just prettier eye candy) I just never saw any logic in buying a 360.

It's #1 drawback for me was the additional fees each month to play online. If I wanted to keep paying for something in order to keep playing it, I'd rent the damn thing.... if I buy something, I expect to be able to use it as much and for as long as I please..... not end up having to pay additional costs where other similar games etc. on other systems don't do this.

 

[Yoda]

I was definitely one of those kids with too much time on my hands that pirated every damned thing that came out and played very little of it. If I had simply spent the money I wasted on blank CDs and DVDs on retail games that I actually did play I probably would've broken even . Hell, if I spent the time I wasted on my game pirating on mowing people's lawns or something I'd have netted a profit! And be in better physical shape to boot!

Of course now it's kind of the same thing, I buy more games than I'm able to play! The strange thing is that I have an Acekard for my DSi and I modded my Wii. The nice thing is I can do homebrew stuff on those systems, which is great fun, but I still pirate the shit out of retail games. I'd like to say I eventually pay for the stuff that I do like... but my record is pretty spotty. I did buy a copy of Mario Kart Wii for a friend though!

As for Xbox specifically... well, Microsoft is finally turning the tide somewhat on the pirates. With the original Xbox I didn't care whatsoever for Xbox Live... it just wasn't that good at the time, so I didn't care if I got banned. On top of that it was fairly easy to go 'stealth' and not get yourself banned if you wanted to. The original Xbox was so much more useful modded... XBMC.. emulators... lots of great stuff. The homebrew scene was light years ahead of what you have for Wii this generation. Anyway, with Xbox 360, the fact that the mod was strictly for playing DVD-Rs, and the potential to get yourself banned from online play is what ulitimately kept me from modding it. The fact that the modders are getting hit hard makes me feel less like a sucker for actually paying for my games!

Back to Mario Kart Wii for second... they do ban people for using the hacks... I don't know if they do a good enough job, but it seems like it's been a long time since I got stuck playing with cheaters. Maybe I've been lucky lately.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Don't forget that the wii is also has free online play and web browsing too. So long as you have your own internet connection, if you want to do anything online, you can.

That's one thing that turned me off on the XBox 360, where you seem to have to pay monthly just to play the games you already paid for.

Same with World of Warcraft. I bought it thinking it was similar to the old Wcrafts I used to play, only to find out that when I got it home I have to pay more monthly just to play the damn thing, which I already paid for. Why the hell pay for something that you can't even use unless you pay more?

Frigging racket if you ask me. Of course when I headed back to return it, I finally seen at the bottom of the box and in small text something along the lines of "Additional fees may apply for online play" ~ Yet that's the only damn way you can play the thing.

To say the least I simply gave that game away to someone else and chalked it up to a learning experience.

This is another reason why I went to the Wii and not the 360 or PS3.... one thing was cost, the other was online play that was free (oppsed to what I already pay for internet with my ISP) and the other thing was its overall originality over the other consoles..... sure they may have fancier graphics and such, but their cost compared to the type of games you get (which were pretty much the same style of gameplay as the previous generations, just prettier eye candy) I just never saw any logic in buying a 360.

It's #1 drawback for me was the additional fees each month to play online. If I wanted to keep paying for something in order to keep playing it, I'd rent the damn thing.... if I buy something, I expect to be able to use it as much and for as long as I please..... not end up having to pay additional costs where other similar games etc. on other systems don't do this.

To be fair, while I do not play any MMO games anymore, the very reason they do charge you each month is that they are constantly expanding the game. Those servers and bandwidth aren't free, and they continually add new features and regions, fix bugs, etc. to a far greater degree than pretty much any offline game. Considering how much gets changed in WoW on a regular basis, I don't think the $15 a month is unreasonable. Plus, you can buy time cards for it if you aren't interested in paying month after month.

 

[ALF]

MS are not only banning modded 360s from XBlive they are also removing the install game to HDD feature, so once the 360 is banned you can no longer install games onto the HDD, all data on the HDD is corrupt as is your gamertag, that would mean that unless you had another unbanned 360 you could never use your gamertag until you recovered it again.

Talk about kicking them when they are down.

Dude, are you serious? So, music and photos people put there are being intentionally corrupted by Bill Gates?? Holy jumpin' jackflash lasershits.