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New Xbox Live Security Update Bans Cheaters
NiteStar writes "Major Nelson, the Xbox Live Director of Programming, has released a statement stating they have initiated additional security measures on the Xbox Live service. These measures are aimed to block out cheaters who used modifications to gain an unfair advantage over other players, such as faster cars in Project Gotham Racing 2. He also says "Modified consoles will be banned, and information about those banned machines will be tracked to prevent them from connecting to the service again." Thanks also to BlueMoon who wrote in to mention that "The Xbox enjoyed 53% market share among consoles in the UK last week."
Anyone who has installed linux on there xbox knows that you have to back up your x-box key... before you do any HD changes just incase you lose it.... so how easy is it to just get a generator.... if you get banned just changed the xbox key
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It wasn't that bad on Rainbow Six, but it is terrible on Star Wars Battlefront.
I dunno about the money issue. The thought process I would go through would run something like this:
You can't cheat unless you have a modded xbox. So if all modded xboxes are blocked, there can be no cheaters.
Otherwise, how would you detect cheating? Each game would have to have logic built in for that. Logic which could, of course, be hacked. They really seem to want to have a fun experience with Live, and cheating seriously harms that. They get money when people buy games because their friends say 'Dude, this game is so fun, and unlike the PC, there's no cheaters!' At least I do.
There isn't one psychotic thing about keeping modded consoles off Xbox Live. The bottom line is that if cheating becomes rampant, as it is with other hardware, then Xbox Live as a service is worthless. As it is, with Microsoft aggressively trying to keep cheaters off the system, it's worth the $4-5 a month (at least by the yearly fee) to subscribe for a stable, cheat-free environment.
Actually the Action Replay for Xbox is just a glorified save manager program the only real cheating that can be done is with the Evo-X Trainer engine.
You can cheat without a modded X-Box. Run it through a proxy and have the proxy do the cheating. Some networked PC games act like this, you can run the proxy on the same box or on another.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Which is usually the first thing anyone mods on their XBox .. More than likely anyone who dumped a larger drive in their system will be banned right along with those whose BIOS doesn't match up correctly, or those whose dashboard isn't the correct checksum either. There are so many ways they can run checks against a system being modded it isn't funny.
"Modified consoles will be banned, and information about those banned machines will be tracked to prevent them from connecting to the service again."
I've always wondered how this was supposed to be a threat? I'm not a heavy online gamer, in fact I hardly play online, and haven't done it since I had my xbox modded a month ago, so it doesn't mean a huge amount to me. But when they deal out threats like the above line, it means there are two options:
* They don't ban me, I continue paying A$8.95 a month, and can play my occasional online game and run XBMC
* They ban me, they don't get my $8.95 a month. I continue playing games (though not online) and continue running XBMC.
(Not to mention, the fact that copied games can be played offline, but not online, means that people like me may be more likely to just copy games if they aren't allowed to play online.)
So they are threatening to not take my $8.95 a month? And that disadvantages me.. how?
XBMC is a far greater benefit than XBL.
- Chuq