XBox live ban

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

For those who don't know, as of a few hours ago Microsoft has banned modded XBoxes from its XBox Live service.

I assume that we all agree here that piracy is illegal and that Microsoft clearly outlines its feelings towards modded systems and burned games in its Terms of Use.

...that being the case, what about people who bought their systems used from Ebay/Gamestop/other third parties for what seemed like a good price with no knowledge of the modding or, if there was knowledge, no intention of utilizing the mod?

I find myself in the third category, as four months ago I bought a system from a family member. I knew it was modded but didn't care because I don't pirate games and movies. I was offered this system, which my household normally could not afford, and a price that we could (which, consequently, enabled us to start giving more money to Microsoft). We have since purchased a year of XBox Live, bought multiple Live Arcade games, bought games based on our opinions of the demos we played on XBox Live, and have two titles on pre-order at the moment. I myself feel very betrayed, having been banned from a service that we have put enough money into to pay for an XBox 360 Arcade when we have not abused our XBox's modding capabilities. I am sincerely angry and have written to the company, posted on the forum, and plan to make a polite but honest phone call during business hours tomorrow.

Do you think people like myself have a right to feel this way toward this action, or are we just out of luck? Should Microsoft have given any consideration to customers in such a position?

[PoolMan]

Can o' worms, about to open in 3... 2... 1...

I honestly feel for you, Heather, but I can't say I support you on this. I would if you had been duped into buying the Box without knowing it had been modded, or been lied to. But if you knew it was modded, you agree to take responsibility for that. (I don't know whether there were any announcements four months ago that might hint at the ban.)

You make a good point about money spent, I suppose. MS didn't receive payment for the Box itself (your family member paid that bill, and you paid them in turn, so they only got the sale on the one Box), but that's not the real moneymaker anyway. They make the most money on the Live service and software. (of course, that's why they freak out about modding in the first place - they took the hit selling the hardware and then the pirates go about subverting their actual revenue stream by not paying for the software).

Here's a thought - obviously they have a way of detecting the mod on your machine (hence how they banned you), could they perhaps grant you license to get on Live provided they never detect you USING the mod? Something to propose when you call them.

We here all know you're a sweetheart and a decided non-pirate, but Microsoft sure doesn't.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Oh yeah? Well...well...you're really tall! But I kid...

No worries about a Can O' Worms. I figured that was what would happen with such a touchy subject. I'm hoping the thread could be a good venue for discussion here, as any other forum I've looked at on the subject is filled with the usual unintelligible mess. I read plenty of whining from people who admit to modding their xboxes and playing only pirated games. It's as if they're proud of it. Then they go on to say that they're just going to go get a non-modded system and have both. I guess they can afford to do that, since they never pay for games.

I was certainly more than touchy and angry when I first heard about it because I've basically lost that $50 I paid for the online service. I could go out and buy a new system because apparently, as I have read, my account is still intact I just can't access it from my machine. Sadly I can't afford to do that-which is why I bought one from my family member in the first place.

Having slept on the matter, I still feel unfairly blanketed with the pirates though, as you said, Microsoft can't know how I used my system. I'm out of luck. Also, at least they didn't brick my system or cancel my Live Account (fair, but nonetheless it's still useless to me now). From what I have gleaned from theFAQ, it's really quite useless to call Customer Support or try to plea the case. Also I suspect their phone lines are blowing up right now and I really don't want to waste the time on hold that I could be spending doing something more productive.

I still feel like it's a big kick in the backside to the people who bought a used console and didn't know it was modded.

P.S. Thanks for being brave enough to post. I was starting to think no one would want to touch this thread with a ten foot pole. Honestly, guys...the rumors of my maniacal killing sprees have been greatly exaggerated...

[dex]

You said it, PoolMan. I agree, just adding this comment:

Nov 12, 2009 14:58:15 GMT -5 PoolMan said:

MS didn't receive payment for the Box itself (your family member paid that bill, and you paid them in turn, so they only got the sale on the one Box),

And they only delivered one box, so that's fine. Your point about MS's revenue is of course a correct explanation, but it need not concern the customer. The box and Live are different contracts.

A quick search turns up talk about un-modding an xbox. MS should want to help you with that, Heather. If that works, it would automatically solve all problems, right?* I don't think you have in fact done anything wrong; you have my sympathies. Good luck with a solution!

Trying... to resist... a quip about... waiting for the red ring and having it replaced under guarantee... Darn! I am weak.

*Edit: Not if an xbox has an ID that MS remembers as banned, I just realized.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Nov 12, 2009 15:50:26 GMT -5 dex said:

I don't think you have in fact done anything wrong; you have my sympathies. Good luck with a solution!

Thanks, dex. Another thing I want to add that I forgot earlier: These Xboxs can't update their software anymore. I now have a piece of equipment that won't update, on top of being banned from the XBox Live service I payed for. Also I'm reading (but haven't checked this out myself, yet) that the hard drives of banned consoles are made incapable of saving any games to them. This seems strange to me, as I thought you had to own the disc of any game you play in order to play it, and that saving it to the hard drive is merely a way of making the game play faster when you put the disc in. That being the case, what would be the purpose of blocking a user's hard drive from saving games?

I have been trying to look into how to un mod an XBox and am hoping that I can reach my family member and find out if he knows how to do so.

EDIT: Okay just talked to him. Apparently un-modding it won't help. Once it's been banned it's banned. Also, he reiterated something I've read from quite a few people on the boards: It's perfectly legal to mod your XBox so that you can play games you have on backup. I don't know where I've seen a provision for that in Microsoft's Terms of Use, but if that's true then how can they ban their customers for doing something they are allowed to do?

[Rett Mikhal]

Legal issues aside, let's look at the business sense this decision makes.

The Xbox can only be sold once and makes minimal, if any, profit. With all the price cuts, they probably lose money at this point.

Games can only be sold once. Sure they can be rented, traded, borrowed, etc, but it all comes down to the original purchase by the wholesale game store to the public.

Xbox Live and XBox Arcade can be renewed an infinite number of times.

Therefore it seems the only real cash cow they have is the online service itself. PS3's online system is free, minus stuff you can buy like backgrounds (spare me...) or games downloaded directly to the HD. So, how does Microsoft expect to compete with a FREE service if they just banned a million paying customers for life? Even if they pirated games, they HAVE to pay for the service, there's no getting around that. You can argue they use those 3 month or 1 month free cards, but those come inside games... which the pirates don't buy. It seems an airtight situation. You either pirate games and don't get discounts, or you buy them and get discounts.

So why would they mess with the balance of that system? Well, let me rephrase. Why would they throw that system into the blender and expect everything to be alright? Obviously they can use whatever means to protect their products, but why go so drastic so fast? Clearly there are going to be innocent people caught in this, as we have seen here.

Not to mention the amount of forum, email and phone traffic going to Microsoft right now. Considering the intelligence of the people who answer those phones (THOSE stories are infamous), I seriously doubt anything is going to get done.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Nov 12, 2009 18:25:01 GMT -5 Rett Mikhal said:

So, how does Microsoft expect to compete with a FREE service if they just banned a million paying customers for life? Even if they pirated games, they HAVE to pay for the service, there's no getting around that.

I agree with that 100%. I share all your views on this, but that one just really makes me scratch my head in disbelief. I really think Microsoft has dropped the ball here.

[PoolMan]

Ha... "brave"? As usual, I just felt that irrepressible urge to comment. I ought to learn to curb that.

Rett, I think MS has a responsibility to its publishers and developers, too. Yes, the Live service may be the true cash cow for MS itself, but there is still money to be made by the software development community that piracy will ALWAYS circumvent. It's not money in MS' pocket, but it certainly is for its most valuable partners in this business.

Put another way: if MS can't guarantee to the development community that they'll make money putting software out for the Xbox, why would anyone develop software for them?

Heather, obviously I feel bad for you... I believe you're being honest and not trying to screw anyone over. But again, how could MS possibly know?

[Rett Mikhal]

That is a good point, one I didn't even think of. Perhaps the years of feeling beaten and bruised by the developer's horrendous decisions have left me disenchanted to their suffering. I mean, seriously, no more Sierra?

For every one amazing game that changes your life there are 100,000 utterly forgettable and worthless games. It's easy to assume these games are less made by actual people and more some sort of cloning facility/Frankenstein's lair hybrid.

But, you know, piracy grows in response to something. My father was one of the first video game pirates, pirating Atari 2600 games. Back then, games cost 20 bucks (nearly 80 equivalent dollars) and for what? A simple game that couldn't be beat and was most likely crap, programmed and manufactured for pennies? What a rip. He figured out the entire game was actually on one chip, so he rented them for a dollar and copied them at his job, cannibalizing a cartridge to make a simple chip reader. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I still hold strong that if a game is made well, pirates will be too desperate to get it and buy it. I realize it might be hypocritical to snuff the game developers when I would be very upset if my own products were being bootlegged, but lately, they treat us like dirt so I'm happy to return the favor any chance I get. Ever since John Romero video game developers have been typecast as holier-than-thous who think they know everything and everyone should worship them. I thought Steve Jobbs made this look archtype look the way it was supposed to; like you're a worthless pile of something something.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Nov 13, 2009 10:08:11 GMT -5 PoolMan said:

Ha... "brave"? As usual, I just felt that irrepressible urge to comment. I ought to learn to curb that.

Ah, but if it weren't for those of us who can't resist the urge to comment our forum would be a rather boring place, wouldn't it?

Put another way: if MS can't guarantee to the development community that they'll make money putting software out for the Xbox, why would anyone develop software for them?

I agree with Rett that you make a good point there. That makes total sense. What I don't believe makes any sense is blanketing what I hear is now over a million customers as "pirates" simply because the machine is modded. You asked how MS could possibly know that I'm not a pirate and I'm saying that is my point exactly.

I feel that MS should have put another plan in action that could better detect whether or not the machine was being used illegally. They can detect when a burned game is being played online (users I know never play burned copies online). I would have appreciated if MS had looked at whether or not I was playing any burned games online (this being the obvious reason for the ban, what with the new Call of Duty slated to be the biggest game out there for online gameplay and piracy) before deciding that I'm a pirate.

Also I don't feel like this was a guarantee to the software developers against piracy. This hasn't stopped or even put much of a dent in piracy. All it has done is kept the pirates from getting online which can be bypassed by simply buying a new console to use for online gaming while keeping the old one for burned games or, as my friend already knows how to do, modding the console further to lift its ban. It seems this has been nothing but a bad decision, one that has only served to lose money in the form of the lost revenue of XBox Live and Arcade games and alienating already frustrated Microsoft customers to the point of not buying their products.

That said I have two games on pre-order: Left 4 Dead 2 and Bioschock 2. If it weren't for my love for these games and feeling that Valve and 2K are worth giving my money to I wouldn't be buying them and I certainly won't be buying any more new games for the 360. We've been planning on getting a PS3 for a while now and I think it's time we made the move.

[Rett Mikhal]

Was it really in response to that? I heard that Grenade of Grenade 6: Grenade Grenade in Grenading for Grenade in all the wrong Grenades (oops, I mean Call of Duty 6, SATIRE) was the most pre-ordered game in history.

Now, how could that have lead them to believe it would be so heavily pirated? If Microsoft could find out about the pirates planning on making copies of the game, they must be really stupid pirates. I mean, this is Microsoft. The guys that took until 2005 to figure out what 'LOL' meant and brought it to the public as breaking news when they decoded it.

[PoolMan]

Nov 13, 2009 15:46:11 GMT -5 BlackCatWhiteCat said:

I feel that MS should have put another plan in action that could better detect whether or not the machine was being used illegally.

Okay, I haven't been sniffing through the EULA or anything, but I'm reasonably confident that the act of modding the machine probably voids the warranty and any service agreements with MS. Not HOW you use such a mod, but just the mod's presence. In which case, the Xbox is "illegal" in MS' eyes the second the case is cracked open by someone who isn't a licensed service rep.

Again, I have no idea if that's accounted for somewhere in their EULA or not. But I'd be shocked if it weren't.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Nov 14, 2009 10:59:30 GMT -5 PoolMan said:

Nov 13, 2009 15:46:11 GMT -5 BlackCatWhiteCat said:

I feel that MS should have put another plan in action that could better detect whether or not the machine was being used illegally.

Okay, I haven't been sniffing through the EULA or anything, but I'm reasonably confident that the act of modding the machine probably voids the warranty and any service agreements with MS. Not HOW you use such a mod, but just the mod's presence. In which case, the Xbox is "illegal" in MS' eyes the second the case is cracked open by someone who isn't a licensed service rep.

Again, I have no idea if that's accounted for somewhere in their EULA or not. But I'd be shocked if it weren't.

Yes, if you open the box it voids the warranty. It's easy to tell, because the sticker gets damaged. That is, unless you know how to remove one without that happening. It would be nice if people who know how to do this weren't using it as a way to mask whether or not their box has been modded when they sell it, but they do.

EDIT: Also, what about if your warranty is already up on your machine (as mine certainly was) and you open it to clean out the dust/cathair/replace the horrendous fan that sounds like a jet engine with a quieter one? In my eyes it doesn't seem right to ban those people as well.

It seems it is very easy to come across what one would otherwise believe is an acceptable, unmodded console. On top of my feeling that it's not doing anything to quell piracy, the amount of people who are banned because they own used consoles that they did not mod and do not use illegally is another big reason why I feel the ban wasn't sensible.

I've also been wondering about a couple of other points:

1. Is whatever method they used to tell whether or not a console has been modded a completely flawless method? I would venture to say that it isn't and that some people may have been banned using an unmodded console.

2. Now that I've been reading up on this I see it happens pretty much every November, though this has been the largest ban so far. I wonder why modded consoles are allowed online at all rather than there being a system in place to prevent such a console from even connecting to Live. Wouldn't it a consistent ban of these consoles be a more effective action against piracy? Maybe it's just my frustration that Microsoft walked away with nearly $50 of my money for a service they don't even have to provide me anymore, but it seems slightly shady to allow the consoles online and then ban them after they have paid for the service, rather than not let them connect in the first place.

EDIT 2: EDITING BOOGALOO (sorry, couldn't resist): It also raises my eyebrows that every November, right before Christmas season, Microsoft takes an action that makes customers need to buy a new console

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Nov 13, 2009 21:34:10 GMT -5 Rett Mikhal said:

Was it really in response to that? I heard that Grenade of Grenade 6: Grenade Grenade in Grenading for Grenade in all the wrong Grenades (oops, I mean Call of Duty 6, SATIRE) was the most pre-ordered game in history.

Now, how could that have lead them to believe it would be so heavily pirated? If Microsoft could find out about the pirates planning on making copies of the game, they must be really stupid pirates. I mean, this is Microsoft. The guys that took until 2005 to figure out what 'LOL' meant and brought it to the public as breaking news when they decoded it.

Most news coverage I've read has agreed that the new Call of Duty is the reason. I'm not sure how much of a coincidence it is that this game was released in November, the time of year that Microsoft does these bans.

[BlackCatWhiteCat]

Also, having only tenuous connection with the rest of the thread, I played a demo of CODWAW and don't see what about it merits 80 billion sequels.