Over 1 million banned from X-Box Live for piracy

[lwcook]

The HDD info that Hobie-wan linked to is correct when a console is banned from live. On top of that, they went so far as to make any achievements and game saves accrued on the modded console AFTER the ban will be corrupted on the HDD.

Meaning even if you get a new console and use your old HDD, you'll have bad saves on any games you played after the ban.

[BigTinz]

WOW.

That's the worst customer service....

[RadarScope1]

"Safety" of gamers my ass. They are doing it to protect their own interests, financial and otherwise. It's pretty damn severe but I guess they have every right to do it. They set up the system and everyone who uses it bought into knowing as much.

[corn619]

Refering to the "safety" issue, if you lose games sales on a 1 million+ consoles guess who makes up for the loss, we do. I don't know about you but thats a major issue to me as a paying customer. $60.00 might be what we pay now, 1 million+ pirates are sure to make game prices go up to cover losses. With production costs for games skyrocketing, companies need to make as much off a game as possible. The way I look at it, less pirates means a more stable price and better games for everyone.

I see keeping there online system free of pirates a safety issue to me. Lets face it, I'm pretty sure a lot of online cheaters are playing pirated games. I'll admit I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to hacking stuff, but as customer I wouldn't want my online experience ruined by some shitbag playing a modded version of the game. Like everyone said though I'm sure it has a lot to do with loss of profits that prompted the ban hammer more than anything.

[gtmtnbiker]

Refering to the "safety" issue, if you lose games sales on a 1 million+ consoles guess who makes up for the loss, we do. I don't know about you but thats a major issue to me as a paying customer. $60.00 might be what we pay now, 1 million+ pirates are sure to make game prices go up to cover losses. With production costs for games skyrocketing, companies need to make as much off a game as possible. The way I look at it, less pirates means a more stable price and better games for everyone.

I'm not sure that the number of pirates has anything to do with what you will pay for a game. It's a factor of how much the production costs and how much consumers are willing to pay for the game. If more people are buying the game, they surely are not going to lower it to $50 or $30. They'll just keep raking the money in. Only when sales slow down will you see price drop to attract more buyers.

[Niode]

For all the people taking about the 'Safety of other users' regarding pirating, I'd just like to let you know that it's completely impossible to modify 360 game and have it work on a modified 360. There is currently no way of modifying the data on the DVD and still have it work on the system. The copy has to be a 100% exact 1:1 copy of the original. The only thing the mod does is bypass the security check on the tosec, allowing the copy to boot. You can't even mod the region on the disc and have it work.

The only way to cheat on the 360 is to modify your saves on your harddrive, after all, the HDD on the 360 is just a SATA drive in a fancy enclosure. Remove the enclosure and stick it in a PC and voila, you can edit your files. (I know it's not as simple as that but there's no need to go into detail).

So Microsoft banning all these users for 'safety of other users' is absolute bullshit. I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of players on the 360 aren't cheating, and if they are chances are they're abusing bugs in the game, something banning pirates won't fix at all. Judging the clientel of Live, I doubt the vast majority would know a SATA port from their asshole anyway.

This is just another dick head move from Microsoft, such as the banning of third party memory cards.

[corn619]

I'm no fan of Microsoft believe me they suck ass "my 360 just RRODed the other day" and this will be 360 #4 but I can understand why they did this. There a business and of course they want to protect their bottom line. 1 million+ modded consoles is not nickels and dimes here, thats a LOT of sales down the tubes due to piracy. I think all gamers suffer when people play games without paying for them. Things like DRM, downloadable only games and consoles, extra content on the disc that must be paided for are all thing to help thwart piracy. I'll admit the DLC thing is kind of a greed thing mixed with piracy prevention though.

In the end guess who gets it up the ass because of piracy, the paying customer "aka me". People complain that we don't see that many new IPs anymore, maybe companies would take more risks with original games if they had the extra money to play with. People also complain about the PSPgo. That is a direct reaction to the sky high pirating rates on the console. Sony was losing third party support because of the piracy rates. You can justify doing it anyway you want, but pirating current games is fucking everyone. I know a lot of people may disagree, but its the truth.

[miked]

Heck, if you don't care about online play, banned 360's seem to be going super cheap on the old sleazebay.

Ch-ch-ch-check it out: http://completed.shop.ebay.com/i.html?M ... =1&guest=1

[JDMThoughts]

I don't even own a 360, thought about getting it for christmas, but Microsoft seriously has the worst service. I have had friends send their shit back for RROD multiple times. Some people on their 5th 360. I heard about the piracy thing when I waited in line with a friend who was getting the game for himself, I have yet to pickup the CODM2. However, with that said the people who have had their systems banned who don't even do anything, that's fullblown bullshit. I am not really sure if I want the system now, I was going to overlook the rrod, but now I don't know if I can. All the more reason I love my playstation3.

[Niode]

I think the false positives are in a very small minority and I'm pretty sure it's the exception rather than the rule. The guy in the link probably got his 360 used or it had some sort of mixup when it was returned for RROD and he got a refurbished one that has been modded in the past or something like that.