Microsoft Facing Lawsuit Following Mass Xbox 360 Ban
Filed under: Gaming, Xbox 360
Last week we heard how over 600,000 Xbox 360’s had been banned by Microsoft for piracy, this number is now apprently close to 1 million consoles, which as you can imagine has left many customers disgruntled.
A high number of these customers have accepted they have done wrong and decided to purchase a new console and play legitimate games, some have decided to switch to PS3 and some are still moaning.
A law-firm called AbingtonIP are organizing a class action lawsuit, the lawsuit basically claims that Microsoft over-reacted and used this as an opportunity to exploit the popularity of Modern Warfare 2 and Halo: ODST.
Personally I feel that Microsoft were well within their rights to take the action they did, and I feel that most customers have probably saved hundreds or thousands of dollars on games over the years, therefore they should not now complain, find out more on SlashGear.
Do you think the lawsuit will be successful?
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I have to say I think they have a point, just as the uber hyped (with a 360-tied marketing campaign, and 360 super elite console) MW2 launches, MS decide to ban users that illegally pirate software… and from what I can tell completely innocent people that have never pirated a game in their life have been targeted!
So, fair enough their Live account has been shut and they’ve lost all their achievements and things right? That will teach them a lesson… No actually, they can conveniently keep their Live account on the condition they go out and buy a new console.
This is the problem I’ve always had with 360’s sales – how many people just continue to go out and buy new ones when their 360 fails or is blocked? How many of the 1,000,000 blocked fanboys will just go out and buy another to get chipped before Christmas? A very well-timed boost to MS’s NPD figures…
Kind of handy that their consoles are so easy to mod when MS have the technology to detect it and nuke them remotely don’t you think? Maybe they should have spent more time on anti-piracy methods rather than on console rebuying techniques. Let’s face it most people are very attached to their XBL profile and to the 100’s or 1000’s they’ve spent on games and DLC, so a lot would just bite the bullet and get a new one, handy that (and not really a punishment – heavy use pirates would probably consider rebuying a console every couple of years a small price to pay).
It’s also funny how they didn’t decide to do this in the Summer during gaming’s quiet period, or say the week after the PS3’s redesign/price drop, the timing is purely coincidence though I’m sure…
The problem MS will have is with those that insist (or can prove) that they have done nothing illegal but have had their accounts suspended anyway.
@PS3 fanboy: Get over it, the PS3 is a great system, I own one but it will always play 2nd fiddle to my 360 (I’m on my 5th one, paid for three). Regardless of what the total console sales are, the bottom line is in the software department, the 360 continues to outsell the PS3 and ultimately, this is what developers care about. For gamers to buy multiple 360’s despite its notorious breakability, speaks volumes about the quality of the overall experience the 360 provides.
I think the ban is a great thing.
I work hard for the money I earn and at the end of the day if someone is free-loading at someone elses expense then something should be done about it. Modify a cashpoint to make money – u get nicked
If I were a developer and MS didn’t do anything and I was losing a lot of money, I wouldn’t be happy. I’m sure there was a lot of pressure from developers to do something. Don’t cheat the system and you won’t get banned.
Its simple you agreed to a terms of service and broke that terms of service and were banned as a consequence. Any argument against that will fail in court seeing as you agreed to a legal agreement not to modify your Xbox 360 in order to play illegal games and that legal agreement even provided the consequence and that was to be banned.
This is not a double edged sword and does not work both ways its like robbing a bank and suing the government for sending you to jail.
Yes Jason, we agreed to the terms of service, and I believe they have every right to ban me from xbox live for modding my console. Thats what they said they would do, right there in black and white. Had they stopped there, I would agree that they were within their rights. They, however, didn’t stop at that. When they ban you from XBL, they also make it so you can’t install games to your hard drive to keep the cd from spinning. You can’t connect your xbox to your computer and watch videos. You can’t put the old hard drive on a new console, because all the information will corrupt. Also, game saves are all gone, even if you own a legit copy of the game. There’s no getting them back. Was that in the Service Agreement? If that had been in there, I would not have agreed to it, and would have voluntarily left XBL.
I modded my console after microsoft refused to fix my RROD…they were charging me $120 because they can’t design a system. I swore off buying any more 360 products since that day. I’m banned and that’s fine fight fire with fire, whatever. But banning off of xbox live shouldn’t include crippling your save data and not letting you play installed game discs anymore. I think many people will agree that microsoft is crossing the line in doing that. They’re fine banning us from live though — whatever, really.
I hardly doubt anyone that got banned bought a new Xbox 360 console or that any accepted getting ban that pure bullshit the only true might that they switch to PS3. Also you can un-ban consoles they are method. I play Xbox 360 flashed never been ban.
That is what I did I got the red ring of death and had it fixed that was all. I have never played not one single game online. Always bought content and the guy gave me a free game with modding it. Didn’t matter really if he did or didn’t. My kids play the game more than me. I don’t give a crap about my online gaming profile. But really banning me for fixing what they never have? Oh, well bet I don’t buy microsoft products again.
Agreed. I’m just going to buy a PS3 and put the controller in an Xbox controller shell.
I modded mine and got banned. It was totally worth it. I got a used 360 and like 30 games for the price of just the console. Plus a year of free xbox live! Awesome stuff. Don’t plan on buying another console though cause I never really used the service anyway. And heck if I want a new game I can just download it. With the failure rates of xbox 360s and the lack of effort microsoft put into actually engineering the thing, i feel like i may have actually been *gasp* justified in not wanting to risk paying $50 per game for a console that’s going to RROD or E74 or whatever the popular new error is these days. PS3 and Wii on the other hand, now those are some reliable consoles that I’d be willing to put some money into. My only regret is that they will no longer allow me to purchase xbox live arcade games *sigh*.
Man walks into a Microsoft Headquarter. Wow these guys are making far too much money. I don’t see why they should have my money.
Hey that PC looks cool Hey I think I’ll take that PC overthere, hmmm … I’ll take that too, hmmm cool. Walks out, is arrested.
What’s the difference between a criminal who is caught and one that isn’t?
The problem with console modding for piracy, is software is to some extent intangible, so the stealing of it seems harmless. However it isn’t.
The previous entry is amusing. Even after getting an xbox with 30 pirated games, the value which is probably 5 times that of the xbox itself. He then goes onto complain about the quality of the xbox. The xbox he bought was probably sold at a loss for Microsoft. Then he didn’t even use the apparently free services.
I challenge you to buy a PS3 and buy a game!!!
Doe:
It was more like “Hey, I’d like to buy an xbox and a lot of games; I’ve played the console before and its fun. But oh, it has a ridiculously high failure rate (http://gizmodo.com/5344302/microsoft-responds-to-542-xbox-360-failure-rate-claim-doesnt-dispute-it). Ok, so I’ll buy one, but instead of paying $50*30 discs = $1500 on games that will be no better than drink coasters when the thing inevitably breaks, I’ll get them for free so when it does break, I can just throw the lot out, move on with my life, and not feel like I’ve been taken advantage of for my $1500.”
Before I bought my own 360, my roommate went out and got himself one, and what a joyous day that was! He then bought the $100 steering wheel thing with pedals for forza, dirt, grid, and all the other great racing games, bought an extra controller with headset so we could rock out on some halo and unreal tourney online, and even got the wireless adapter so we wouldn’t have to run a cable across the length of the house. So I have no clue how much he spent on the thing but I think you can see where I’m going with this. It broke! Bummer right? Luckily it was under warranty, so for four or five weeks we sat in silence being forced to enjoy each others company (god forbid) while the thing was in Washington or wherever being tinkered with. And then it came back and what a joyous day that was! He bought _another_ steering wheel and two more controllers so the whole neighborhood could come play along!
And then it broke again. RROD all over again. The nightmare of seeing forza 2 just collecting dust on its shelf kept me awake many nights. Four or five weeks later…. well it was getting hard to be joyous about the machine frankly, and we were right in feeling less than exuberant at its return, because of course it broke again. This time, however, it was no longer under warranty, and while it may have been a good idea to go purchase another in order to play the amazing games he had amassed, he had become somewhat disenchanted with its price, reliability, and how little he got from the latter from so much of the former. About two years later, now, and some of his games and one of the steering wheels is still sitting around in his closet steering no-one to nowhere, because there apparently isn’t as big of a market as one would expect for second-hand xbox 360 bits and pieces.
If there were a 10 year warranty on the thing, I would buy one in a heartbeat and buy whichever game I wanted at whim for however much it cost. Heck, even a five year warranty would be motivation enough to buy legit games. However, when I’m going to have to subscribe to the $300 a year replace-your-360-with-a-new-one-cause-the-old-one-E74ed club, I’m also going to have to subscribe to the get-your-awesome-games-for-free-cause-they-made-them-for-a-shitty-system club.
Microsoft needs to keep its programmers, replace its electrical engineers, and fire the guy in charge of deciding to sell the xbox 360 with its current combination of extremely low reliability and useless warranty.
Oh yeah, they sell them for a $75 profit per console, compared to like a $300 loss per console for Sony and the PS3. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/11/8239.ars
Furthermore, screw the PS3, I’m buying a Wii!
Fuck you MICROSOFT.
My console is not modified and I do not play on live.
My console got banned for no fucking reason and Microsoft will not do anything about it.
I am on board for the Class Action.
I hope MS burns to the ground along with there WINDOWS division.
GO MAC and Linux