Up to 1 Million users of Microsoft’s XBox Live service have been banned for altering their consoles in order to play pirated versions of games. So, that buddy of yours that downloaded the recently released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 from a pirate site, ask him if he can still play on XBox Live. Chances are, he can’t.
InformationWeek speculates that because pirated games appear on sharing sites in advance of their release, Microsoft may have been asked to ban those who are ripping off the software developers. XBox 360 consoles have digital rights management (DRM) technologies built in, and it can detect pirated software. Some have modified their machines to circumvent the DRM protections and have still been able to connect to XBox Live… until now.
XBox Live boasts over 20 million members, so the 1 million or so banned members represent 5% of the XBox Live gaming population. Still, a million members pirating and modifying their systems is a number that can’t be ignored. Microsoft states that “All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and modifying their XBox 360 console violates teh XBox Live terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban for XBox Live.”
Microsoft goes on the say that “We can assuer you that if an XBox Live member follows the XBox Live terms of use, purchased a retail copy of Modern Warfare 2 and played the game on an unmodified XBox 360, no action will be taken.” From that statement, it is clear that a good 5% of the XBox Live community are playing pirated software on their modified systems.
The ban is not simply for the game itself, but for the entire XBox Live service. The violators have been booted off the service and they can pretty much kiss their fifty dollar gamertag fee goodbye. It would have been so much cheaper to have just bought the game instead.
