Xbox 360 Pirates: Were you banned from Xbox Live?
Filed under: Gaming, Xbox 360
Following on from our report yesterday, which informed you about the number of Xbox 360 owners being banned for using modded consoles to play online, it is now thought that the figure has risen to 1 million Xbox 360 owners.
As you might know by now, the figure was previously thought to be at 600,000 – but the new 1m figure means that it equates to roughly 5% of the total Xbox Live subscriber base.
While we defintely don’t support Xbox 360 modding, speculation has begun on whether Microsoft are banning the wrong people. Over at Burn360, they have stated that Microsoft are banning people with modded Xbox 360 consoles – regardless if you have been online with it or not.
Our first question is: Have you been banned from Xbox Live? Our second question is: Are Microsoft over-reacting with the whole situation? Leave us a comment below with your thoughts.
Pic: GameGuru.In
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you know microsoft is stupid you buy a product for 200 dollars and it breaks within 6 months so you send it in and get a refirbished one that breaks within 3 months then you another that breaks within a year then your warranty is gone so you either pay 110 dollars to get a refirbished one or 200 for a brand new one so you get the brand new one so that’s at least an extra 110 dollars your paying for their screw-up and their banning people for an 80 dollar game…seems unfair to me
The 360 has a 3 year RROD warranty!!! Sony on the other hand gives you 3 months. Sony has been screwing users over with the Defective Blu-Ray drive problems and other issues the PS3 happens to have. PS3 users are currently paying to get those problems fixed!!! Sony had to have a Class Action Suit filed on them to get them to fix the major Defective DVD drive problem the PS2 had!!!
Stealing the game is WRONG. Your not screwing over MS so much as your screwing over the game Developer. Not the same thing at all. Like the B.S. of saying well I already pay for my Internet, why does MS have to charge me for LIVE? You pay your ISP for Internet service. Not a single dime of that goes to MS or anyone else. Many places charge for access on their site on the Internet.
Get a clue. You don’t seem to know what your talking about.
Well MS makes over 100mil from people who pay from buying there **** xboxlive mem. Cards now there banning people for what a couple 1000$ thyre not getting from modded users?! Well know this Bill Gates this ain’t the end and we will find another way just like we did before to bypass the firmware detectors and by the end everyone will have modded 360s and u won’t even know it becuase were better than you just like SONYs dumbass on bricking psp’s if modded we always find a way to hack there system too much love to modded users ,modders, and others showing there support… **** you microdicks
i totally agree, this is very annoying, yes my xbox was modded but i haven’t been on xbox live for over 2 months now, i finally got on yesterday to see if their were any updates and i find out im banned from xbox live. Also with the xbox they send back, its just bullshit, they send me a refirbished one and it broke within 20minutes of me getting it back, so i resorted to my own methods of fixing it, and it hasn’t broken. Tired of their crap service i decided to do what ever i want.
Overcourse Microsoft is over-reacting. Considering how faulty the Xbox360 has been, everybody has already purchased 2 or 3 units. Now, they have the nerver to ban someones working Xbox360. They have some nerver.
xbox live is jst being gay, its a GAME people cheat, and some get into and trash talk to Guess what it’s jst as if you were playing a sport there is mouthing off and people do cheat so microsoft should get over it
Um my xbox 360 was banned, I have done nothing in their terms of use, however I bought my xbox 360 at a pawn shop. I have no idea if it has been tampered with but I personnaly have not. I am bed ridden because I am sick and when I called customer support she told me I have no options, they cannot tell me why it is banned, and I need (this last one is important because she stated I need!) to go buy a new xbox 360. Now I have spent close to 700 dollars on my xbox controllers games and live, now they are telling me that they have pretty much screwed me over so they can make more money. I am mostly hurt. Luckily I have never had the three rings but I know several people who have, they make plenty of money off of their faulty systems and now they want to push it to another level. Anyway don’t buy a used box I guess because if they tampered with it you will get screwed over by the heartless microsoft.
Hey I bought my Xbox from somebody else too and I got banned playing a legitimate copy of DJ Hero. I just upgraded my account to a 12-month membership. I’m gonna talk to a lawyer and see if there’s something we can do.
Hey, let me know if it works out for you. I bought mine from some guy and I had no idea I was being screwed over. Now I’m banned from Live because of someone else’s mistakes. It doesn’t seem fair.
Here is the thing:
You agree to a “terms of service” thought up by MicroShit lawyers…ok…yeah you agreed.
What you agreed to was to NOT do anything illegal or offensive on Live or they will ban you. Ok, fair enough.
HOWEVER…and this is the key, while MICROSOFT THEMSELVES expressly say they can ban you from Live, they DO NOT mention the physical crippling of the hardware. That is the lawsuit right there. You never agreed that modding your console could result in loss of install features, loss of divx support, loss of Media Center Extender support, you agreed to losing Live as a punishment. What Microsoft did is this:
Customer “ok so I am interested in this car, sir”
Salesman, “ok, well here is the price..you cool with that?”
Customer, “yeah”
Salesman, “ok, now here is a contract about the sale. you are agreeing to not add an after-market air filter setup or change the tires on the car.”
Customer, “ok…uh…sure, what if I do?”
Salesman, “you void your warranty and lose the ability come here for free repairs”
Customer, “DEAL!”
Now the guy goes home and adds a huge after-market air kit and 20″ rims with low profile tires. WHOOPS! Broke the contract, right? No warranty, no free service…he says he can live with that.
The kid wakes up in the morning only to find the engine removed from his car and no doors on the thing.
He calls the salesman…”WTF? Where are my engine and doors?”
Salesman,”oh, you violated the Terms of Service. We banned you form the shop and voided the warranty.”
Customer, “Ok, what about my engine and doors?”
Salesman, “Oh thats just part of the ban. You lost those features too!”
Customer, “Thats stealing…unfair! My car is useless. You broke it!”
Salesman, “No No NO…we did not break the car. You see, doors and an engine were part of t the car. We just disabled those features. You can still use the car. We left you seats and a radio. So technically we did not BREAK IT…we limited its functionality. Sorry. You should not have modded it.”
make sense?
Yeah.
Microsoft stole features from the console which have nothing to do with live. They violated the law outright. They deserve to be sued. I got banned. My console is not even modded. Go figure. What did they say to me when I called? “Whoops. It happens. The core system price is down, maybe buy that and change the hard drive?” Yeah, fuck you.
An interesting point, however I feel that there is a difference to making legal modifications to your car, whereas the modifications made to your Xbox 360 are illegal.
It is not illegal to modify a piece of hardware that you own. After you buy something you can do whatever you want with it. What is illegal is copying games that you have not purchased. My brother has kids and he got his system modded so he could back up the games so when his kids destroyed them he could just make another copy. This is legal.
You are stealing from the makers of the games you play – period. You were caught. Quit trying to rationalize it.
Your analogy is faulty. Your car dealer isn’t saying that the warranty is void if you change the car by adding 20” wheels. The dealer is saying that if you change the car to accept an illegal third party part, then your warranty is void. You can buy the 20” wheels, as long as you don’t modify the car to accommodate the stolen wheels (assuming stolen wheels don’t fit on an un-moded car).
Thieves feel entitled to more than everyone else. Once you have created something and tried to make a legitimate buck from it, only to have some low life steal it from you, will you get the proper perspective.
He just said that he DIDN’T mod his xbox. It was an error on Microsoft’s part. Stop being such a pompous self-righteous asshole. Microsoft has been screwing over their customers with faulty equipment and now they’re banning xbox 360’s by essentially breaking them. Banning the xbox live accounts would make much more sense seeing as the modders themselves would have to keep paying for subscriptions only to get them cancelled upon logging in. Instead, this stupid conglomerate choses to target those specific devices in question which may or may not be performing illegal activities. This is like carpet bombing a major city because you suspect that a terrorist is in one of the houses. Yes they’re not just banning completely at random, but not all modifications are for piracy issues.
So my message to you “D of K” is stop judging others, if they wish to perform activities at risk to themselves so be it. however, these activities in question should have to be legitimately deemed ILLEGAL with proof, otherwise they should be sued for destroying your property.
It isnt right to punish those who have been banned for what MS describe as a “Violation”. Alot of users have indeed been banned for nothing, as some of the comments of other users above suggest. An annoying, costly mistake by Microsoft for sure.
i mod, and i escaped the wave. but i still think it was smart on M$’s part because they took a lot of different aspects of the whole situation into account. first; They did it right before the holidays so the traffic from gamers (eager to play mw2) buying new consoles, will boost their figures. Second, They banned consoles not accounts so gamers who had accounts would buy new consoles so they could continue use of it. Where as if the account were banned the gamer may quit Xbox all together. And Third, M$ waited till the traffic of halo odst and mw2 to go it, getting the most piraters they could. although the wave upsets me (and kinda scared me) they did a good job.
Just to clarify for everyone it is not illegal to modify a piece of equipment that you own. After you buy something it is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. The illegal part is copying games that you have not purchased. I modded my play station so I could play Japanese games in the 90’s. That is legal. What people did do was agreed to xbox live that in order for them to play ON XBOX LIVE they had to leave their system as is. But xbox took it a step further and crippled the systems so people can not connect to their computers get download-able content things that had nothing to do with the user agreement.