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.'"
Apparently some people have gone as far as calling death threats to a "Director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox LIVE" and his wife (theres also irc logs where he came to say it on #360banned)
There has been modded xbox360 bans before too, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to people when they do get banned. And at least it keeps the cheaters off games.
By "disconnecting" it means banning from playing in the "live" online network (which you must pay to play anyway).
It is still possible to play offline games with banned xboxs
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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.
This should mean I'll never lose to some 12 year old in Halo or CoD again, cause I'm sure they were all modding. Yep, that's definitely it.
600,000 of 20,000,000
there are some who would call this "three percent"
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
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.
I took it into a shop [the Xbox], there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me [chipped it]. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I'll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I've paid the money back.
I've probably saved about £600 and I've copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I've downloaded or I've taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.
So at what point do you put two and two together and realize that getting kicked off playing online is not such a bad thing if you've saved £600? Is there really any wonder why XBox Live wants to deny you service? How exactly do you maintain outrage at being banned?
His sob story was going pretty good until he got up to those last paragraphs of admission and even saying he'd never do it again (implying he is wrong).
My work here is dung.
Hitler is going to be pissed!
PISSED!
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Mmm, how was it he didn't pay?
You mean other than the part where he says he didn't buy the games and just copied them because he felt he was owed them?
guess he paid for the Xbox, he paid money to the guy for 'chipping' his box, and he paid for the Xbox-live service.. what you are saying was that he didn't pay enough?
If one wants to play a game, one has to buy it. If one can not afford to pay for the game doesn't mean you are allowed to copy it. One is not entitled to the work of another for free just because someone wants it.
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.
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.
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.
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).
There's a large, officially supported homebrew scene on XBL. They even have a channel to publish your games and get paid for them. There's a lot of officially published info on the system, including getting into the graphics hardware and creating networked games. There's not a whole lot you can't do with their system other than not writing managed code (which may/may not be a big deal depending on what you're doing). I'd say the main intent here is to get rid of pirates.
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
The remaining 0.1%, yes, actually just wants to write software for it.
Actually, there's no reason to mod your xbox to write software for it.
There's a hobbyist dev kit! It's a free download, even. You can write code for the XBox on it for free, and some schools are doing this. Now, if you want to install that code onto your own XBox... you need to pay an annual membership fee for the service that lets you do this, and then you can load the code onto your own unmodded xbox, and you can connect to it with a debugger and stuff. No hacks or mods necessary (in fact they interfere).
(And that fee also covers what you need to submit the stuff you write to the process that lets other people download it, and lets you get paid for that. I have bought a game or two that were written this way. There's some innovative stuff in there.)
Then don't buy it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So, now if you want to go to eBay and pick up a used console, you are at HIGH RISK. (This goes for the entire used XBOX market.) MS really should set up some kind of verification system where you can call in a serial number and check an XBOX or "preowned" system where you can get a guaranteed, stamped approval. I'd bet that pretty soon, we are going to see a flooded market of XBOXes that won't be able to connect. Imagine what Craigslist is about to look like.
:) DOUBLE BAM!
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
There aren't that many good online LIVE games IMO, so it makes a lot of sense to have the cheap "dead" console to play the majority of the enjoyable ones. And if you really want to play LIVE, just mooch off your friend
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.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the XBOX 360 mod is basically flashing the DVD drive so that it can load games from backup DVD's.
The mod does not however remove the protection such an extent that homebrews can be loaded.
So, assuming this is still correct (haven't had a a 360 for over a year), what can you possibly do on a modded xbox 360 if you aren't copying games?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
This is still correct and the answer is there is nothing you can do with a modded xbox except play pirated games. End of story.
Some people are confusing the two because this wasn't the case with the original gen 1 xbox, others are confusing them because they don't know the full story and I guess a few are deliberately blurring the issue because they want to believe in the nobility of modding consoles or something. However MS make a pretty sophisticated (.NET based) dev kit available for free so you can write your own software, and will even help you sell them to a huge worldwide audience. You don't have hypervisor level access but then you don't need it to write your own software.
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.
Now what about if you aren't using LIVE? Nothing's going to stop you from running pirated games now, and it's probably going to be really cheap to get these "dead" consoles now. Life's good! If you buy a $50 or $100 used console and download a few games, you have already saved yourself the cost of a console. BAM!
Except that the last ban wave will cripple some offline features as well, such as HDD installs (a *big* loss since the DVD drive sounds like a jet engine when spinning), being able to move savegames to other consoles (no more playing you're savegames at a friends place), and I think even some of the media center functions. Also, you won't be getting any game patches anymore, which is also a major downside since so many console games are released full of bugs these days.