So What Are You Going To Do About It?
The crackdown on illegal gaming is shifting into gear lately. There was the RCMP beginning their campaign to crush illegal game piracy. And now this. I'm sure I am, like, the last one to know, but Microsoft is now bringing their own heat. In coincidence with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft cracked down on its online Live service and banned somewhere around 600,000 Xbox 360s from accessing Xbox Live. And they were all, supposedly, modded. Read that story here 600,000!
If the link does not work, here is the full website. http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/wave-of-bans-hits-xbox-live/1372276
<--- You won't be seeing many of these babies playing online anymore.
And over 1,000,000 gamers were supposedly banned for pirated games. Read that story here. 1,000,000!
Again, here is the full link. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029441,49304244,00.htm
Provided the numbers feed each other, that is still one million gamers banned. A whole lot of people, obviously, and probably a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's clientele, which shows that Microsoft is very serious about this problem.
I personally support this decision to a point. I like the fact that true creativity will now be more protected from nasty pirates. But I also read in one of the above articles that supposedly innocent gamers were booted and could not get back on because Microsoft wouldn't accept their excuse. Whether those excuses were valid or not, I don't know. But Microsoft may drive some gamers off by their zero-tolerance stance.
So, what I'm basically asking is, what do you think? Are you dancing with victorious glee now that your favorite license is safer from piratical harm and that nasty cheater with the modded controller is gone? Or are you furious that Microsoft just kicked what must be a large portion of their gamers? (I believe about 1/6, as the count I found said around 6 million gamers total on the service.)
I am happy about it. There is nothing worse than playing a game with someone that has an unfair advantage because they modded something on their system. Even though it may be a large portion of gamers, it sends a message. Live will probably be a better place without all the cheaters anyway.
yah down with the mods haha....no not the staff here on GI. You guys rock
I think modded boxes are a double edged sword. Everyone has equal opportunity to mod the box... I had XMBC on my original Xbox for years... and I think that it was a bad idea for MS to enforce no cheating instead of allowing the developers to handle it on their own, in this sense MS went the route of "big brother"
The other side of it is that it really does aggravate many gamers, but usually because they can't cheat too. By removing the pirates and cheaters they have decreased the people on the system, which might drive sales down and developers don't want to put work into a system that people aren't going to.
Hrmmm... I'm split about this topic. I'm glad that someone is actually cracking down on pirated games, but look at the cost of it. They lost 1/6th of their gamers. I don't even know if I got banned yet because I haven't been on XBL yet and I recently bought an imported game from Japan (The IdolM@ster) and I'm kinda worried now that they thought I boot-legged it and banned me when I bought the game for resale in Japan. I also had a friend refurbished his Xbox 360 and now he's banned because there was no records of him sending the Xbox 360 to Microsoft to be fixed. But I really can't defend him here because he refurbished the 360 himself even though I told him multiple times to just send it to Microsoft. I don't like pirating but I don't want to see too many gamers banned like that. Maybe they should let the banned people have a second say before they ban them permanently. If they can show that they got banned but have evidence (records of sending it to Microsoft, receipt numbers for the games, etc.) they should lift their bans.
i support this action of banning pirates. its never fun to play a game where there are hackers. personaly i dont see the need to modify a gaming system, other than a pc.
Glad they're finally doing something about it.
good no more hackers and moders... right
I'm pissed. Hey banned MY XBOX even though my xbox isn't fully modded yet. I'm putting the finishing touches on it now. If I can't use LIVE then I think I should send a small message. Thats $60 less.
That Xbox looks awesome.
I support the banning of those who pirate games. It's a good thing that Microsoft uses their power over LIVE to eliminate that problem.
However, I do not necessarily agree with the bans of those who own modded consoles. If they are exploiting their modifications to cheat, that is one thing. But what if, for example, the person bought it from Extreme Mods? Is that really so bad?
I like what Shawn said: They are a double-edged sword. That really sums it up nicely.
Okay, I really have two opinions on this whole situation. First off yeah I do think that pirating games is bad and yeah that it sucks to play against someone with a modded xbox and that they cheat. Even though free games would be nice. But on the other hand you have to look at it like this what If someone just made a backup copy of their own game that they payed 60 dollars for and one day their real copy got scratched up and would not play. So now you are out 60 dollars all because your game wont play and now you have to go buy it again. But if you could just play your backup copy that you made then your still okay. So yes there are many different ways that you can look at this situation.
Most people just illegally download games without backing them up... It's really 98% of people abuse the system while 2% use it the way it was meant.
It is good to protect a honest gamer, but if a honest gamer was kicked off you might see some lawsuits.
What consitutes a modded system? Lights and color or software stealing devices. If you use a Microsoft external HD why is that wrong?