Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Disconnects Modded Xbox Users
S-4'N3 writes "The BBC reports that Microsoft has disconnected approximately 600,000 Xbox users from Xbox Live because the devices they are using have been modified, either with software or with new chips, to play pirated games. 'Microsoft confirmed that it had banned a "small percentage" of the 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide.
Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console 'violates' the service's 'terms of use' and would result in a player being disconnected.'"
Listen, I hate Microsoft. I think the people who run Microsoft are criminals. I cannot for the life of me believe I'm about to say this:
You buy an XBox 360, you can do whatever you want with it. Mod it to your heart's content.
But the Live network belongs to Microsoft. They have a right to disconnect you if they want.
Now excuse me while I find someone to fulfill my user name.
The great thing about online console play (the only thing, really, that it has over PCs) is their closed nature. It's much, much harder to cheat on a console than on a PC game. Don't get me wrong. I fully support their right to mod their own hardware. But I don't want to play them online.
Which is why so many now mod the controller not the console. It has become very popular to mod the controllers for turbo fire and the like. The reason this sort of thing works is because of the brain dead console development expectations, say it with me "trusting the client is never right".
More games need to enforce maximum rates of fire and the like.
That entire first-hand-account is ... annoying.
I was pulling my hair out thinking, 'No, why me?'
That's a question easily answered.
It's like telling someone their dog's just died.
He likes his xbox too much.
I still think they should lower the prices. There are 16-year-old kids out there, they don't earn money so they go screaming to their parents saying, 'Can you buy me this game?'
Their parents should say "No. You buy it yourself. Go earn some money." And why should they lower the prices if people are buying them as it is? I guess normal supply-and-demand isn't good enough for people that don't want to pay for their entertainment. It should be cheaper for the sake of being cheaper...
Fair enough, one game once in a while but the amount of games coming out, good games, everyone wants to play them all.
I would love to have a 100 acre ranch near where I work, too. Unfortunately, they're too expensive.
My favorite quote.
I play with my mates all the time. It's just a good laugh, we all sit there chatting, playing games. Now I don't know what to do.
How about sit there and chat with your mates? Or is playing video games the only thing you and your mates know how to do, and you can't actually have fun without it. *sigh*
what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
"enough" is not determined by the buyer. You don't go into a store and argue with the cashier - at least not in most western economies - that the price is too much. You either buy it or you don't.
If Microsoft decides their price is too high and people actually can't afford it and that's why their sales are going down, maybe they'll lower the prices. As it is, people can afford it, Microsoft is making money, and there is little incentive for game publishers to lower their prices.
It's like asking an IT guy to lower his price because, while I and many others can afford his service, I think it's too expensive. You know how you solve that one? You don't hire him to do the work in the first place. I guess with entertainment it's different... because we are entitled to cheap entertainment - "cheap" being defined not by what we can afford or supply/demand but by what we feel like paying - at the expense of these evil corporations...
Why would they want to sell more 360s? Don't they still lose money on each one? My understanding was that they did, but made it up on the games and such. Buying an extra 360 isn't going to cause a user to buy more copies of the game, so why would they be trying to encourage more 360 sales that cut into their bottom line?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Hum. Out of curiosity, does the slashdot crowd think copying 30-40 games and "saving £600" is good? Wouldn't that actually be considered ... basically stealing? Maybe he couldn't afford £600 of games. I don't feel sorry for him. Not being able to afford something/something being too expensive doesn't mean you should get it illegally (and it's ok, as long as you couldn't afford it).
I don't think it is good. I think it is terrible. It is exactly people like him who are the ones which are giving the corporations the impression that such things are the norm and therefore they feel they need to do something to stop it.
People like that piss me off because it makes my complaints (non-interoperable hardware, laws damaging freedom/privacy, few legal digital options) seem less valid because there always seems to be 'that guy' standing next to you making faces and fart noises while you attempt to engage in rationale discourse.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
99.9% of them are people who want to play free games, or cheat on games. People who cheat on games ruin the experience for everybody else. Most modded Xboxes were modded by some guy at a games store, anyway, and that guy charged for it, it's not like these guys went through the effort of modding it themselves... they just paid some goon so they could steal games.
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it. Slashdot pretends this group is the larger percentage, but Slashdot is wrong about a good many things.
Comment of the year
You really think so? The "backups" that most people use in their modded XBoxes are backups from some guy on a torrent site who himself probably only rented the game. How are these people their best customers? They probably play more games and have higher gamer scores, and might even pay for XBox Live Gold, but MS still isn't making as much from them as someone who buys only a few games a year.
Cheaters are not their concern (at least, it certainly doesn't seem to be). Microsoft's best customers are not so much the people that buy their consoles - it's the people that buy games for their consoles. The argument here is that people are modding their xboxes to sidestep Microsoft's DRM protection in order to play "backup" games. The people doing this are not particularly interested in creatively modding their xbox so much as being able to (via someone else's creative work) download torrented disc images, burn them to dvd, and play them on their xboxes.
The only problem with this approach is that some (undoubtedly small) percentage of users who are in fact doing creative things by modding their xbox could also fall victim to being a false positive from whatever method Microsoft is using to identify the modders.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
I've long argued, especially when it comes to games and entertainment related media, there's absolutely NO justification in copyright infringement EVER
When you start dealing with works that are over 100 years old (which we will soon) my outrage scale falls off VERY quickly.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
First of all let me say that the market for used xbox consoles just got extremely dangerous!
Microsoft needs to set up a system where you can check the status of an xbox console remotely so people can still sell consoles with confidence... 600K Xboxes are about to go up on ebay for a deal that is just too good to pass up.
Secondly if you assume that you do not mind playing games offline that you have pirated, you can still beat the system. Is that not what this is all about?
Step 1: Buy an xbox that has been live banned for very cheap off ebay. It has already been modded, so you dont have to pay for that.
Step 2: Download 50-60 dollar games for free and play them to your hearts content, offline.
After a few games you have already made your money back from the initial purchase of the console.
What if you want to play on xbox live? You have a live console that you do not hack and just enjoy online games there.
You still have to buy games that you want to play online, but there are a lot fewer online games that are worth playing than there are short and sweet single player games that you can just download for free.
I don't know how it is where you are living, but a 16 yr old American has quite a few legal employment options.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Mow lawns? Yard work? Do stuff for your parents? I know it's a strikingly new idea to most teens, but your parents don't HAVE to give an "allowance," and I would dare say that some of them may even be willing to pay their children to do jobs that they otherwise have to pay someone else to do... like clean the house if they do maid stuff, or mow/garden/etc if they hire landscapers, etc...
Did Microsoft really think this through? The people who mod Xboxes are their best customers. They are the enthusiasts who care enough to learn more about the console.
Got news for you. The console manufacturers- not just MS- are in this for the money, and enthusiasm for the console doesn't really do that. Matter of fact, they probably don't want people finding out too much about the console anyway, because that opens the way to homebrew and/or piracy, regardless of the intention of the original hackers. (Even if it wasn't used for piracy, MS and its gaming rivals would rather you could only use your console via their official channels, which likely make them more money).
Nothing new here; 25 to 30 years ago, Atari tried to suppress information about their VCS console and 400/800 computers to stop other people making their own games and reducing Atari's slice of the pie. (They did, however, and their efforts beat the heck out of Atari's third-rate offerings).
In short, MS et al don't care about enthusiasm. Their "best customers" are the ones who spend lots of money on games through official channels.
(BTW, though I disagreed with the above comment, I didn't consider it "flamebait".)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
1. With XNA there is 0 argument for writing software for your 360. MS has given you all the tools to write/send software to the 360
2. If you have a modded box, MS really doesn't care, what they care about is if you play online and have potential advantages over other players
If you mod, just don't play it online - they can play offline and do whatever they want, just don't play on Live
Then don't buy it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
They may not have lost something, but he still isn't entitled to obtain the works of other's for free just because he wants it.
Exactly.
An artist puts on an exhibit and charges an entrance fee (so he can buy food/housing and then create new art). If I sneak in, the artist hasn't lost anything, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
A movie theater plays some new movie. They're going to play it whether I sneak in the back door or not; unless the theater is full, they're not losing money since I only take up one seat. But that doesn't mean I'm entitled to see it for free just because I want it.
(And so on and so forth, as applied to DVDs and streaming video, games and other software, music, pirated satellite/cable tv, hacked cable modems, etc.)
You really think this kind of thing has an impact towards cheating? I suspect it has a bigger impact on MS's bottom line, as these are people who are paying a monthly fee to play online. Way to go MS, demonstrating part of the RIAA strategy: let's prevent our customers from being able to spend money on us! Way to go!
What this probably kicked off was people who had modchips to play overseas games, and absolutely 0 of the "cheaters".
Oh, and welcome to console DRM at it's finest. You bought into it, now when they kick you out you're pissed that everything they sold you was on a "license" basis and you technically own 0 of it. enjoy!
Yeah XNA is great for 360. But as it's directly supported by MS, people don't need to mod or hack their 360 to develop homebrew software for it. Which just strengths my point that only reason people mod their 360 is to play pirated copies.
I have several friends with modded consoles and hand held systems. The only chatter they generally spread is encouragement to mod your own system so you too can download ripped games.
There was nothing "random" or "arbitrary" about banning a select group of members from online services due to the detection (in one fashion or another) of non-standard hardware.
The argument that it stifles innovation or profit is rather flat when taken at face value. For some systems it might make sense, but there are outlets already in place for people that want to develop for the XBox 360. There is a thriving independent developer community out there. Streaming media? There are plenty of ways to get that rolling as well, legitimately.
You just can't rip games is all.
Maybe I've just missed it. Can anyone point to a real life example of something worth modding your system for that doesn't involve torrented games, tv shows, music, movies, etc.
And before someone sidesteps the discussion, no, putting in a larger hard drive doesn't count in the context of this discussion.
And that right there is why MS is evil.
You shouldn't have to pay them to put code on your own box.
Now, mind you, I *would* be ok with them only allowing signed games to get onto XBL. They could very easily do that without outright refusing to run the games at all though.
Unfortunately, telling a pirated game apart from a homebrew game is not easy, and it's clearly in in MS's business interest to treat them both the same.
You don't HAVE TO PAY to put code on your own box. You just have to pay if you want that code to interact with Microsoft's servers.
If you don't want to play on XBox live you can do whatever the hell you want to your Xbox. Just don't try and connect to Microsoft's servers. It's very simple. It's not really nefarious.
When a company wants to increase its revenue they will initiate a ban. The pay method of the individual is never banned. The company will no longer have to provided the service that the end user payed up front for. It is then predictable that a high percentage of users that were banned will immediately repurchase it.
600,000 Gold accounts are worth how much?
Arbitray:
600,000 x $27.50 USD (3 months) = $16,500,000.00
AVG user is on day 10 of 90 day prepaid Gold Service
Ban-Hammer is dropped
M$ just made 14,850,000 pure profit by not having to honor remaining service
Follow week after the Ban-Hammer 50% of users repurchase Gold accounts $8,250,000.00 of new cash surge
If M$ or any company for that matter wanted to curtail cheaters and modders, they would ban your Credit Card (pay method).
The worst part of this tho..
Games used to allow local lan play, most don't anymore... It basically killed the idea of a LAN party. You have to connect to live, just to play a game with someone sat next to you.
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