Limitcast Episode 35 - The Great FFXIII Debate
Gamer Limit Review: Final Fantasy XIII
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review
Gamer Limit Review: Mega Man 10
In a stunning move by the gaming giant, Microsoft has permanently cut off as many as one million Xbox 360 owners from their Xbox LIVE accounts. Any and all banned machines will be “unable to connect to Xbox LIVE,” Microsoft told the BBC.
In an age where modded systems are no longer housed in seedy, underground gaming dens, it should come as no surprise that Microsoft has decided to take such a firm hand in dealing with these pirates.
“We do not reveal specifics, but can say that all consoles have been verified to have violated the terms of use,” Microsoft stated. “Users of banned Xbox consoles can recover their profile to another, unmodified Xbox 360 console to resume their Live service.”
However, several Xbox 360 customers have already lashed out at Microsoft for banning their systems, they believe, without good cause.
“Discs are very fragile things and some users like to have their games backed up,” said gamer Donald Glass. “After all you will have paid £40 for a new disc. It is my opinion that once you buy a disc you should be allowed to do whatever you want with the media as long as you do not break copyright laws.”
Source: BBC, via Armchair Diplomat
Well, I remember reading in the back of Nintendo’s old manuals that back up copies of games were prohibited and I don’t think Microsoft’s opinion is going to differ on the matter. I don’t think Donald’s opinion holds much weight here.
According to Wikipedia, 31 million XBox 360s have been sold worldwide. Banning 1 million modders is a drop in the ocean (roughly 3%).
I should say, my point is that they shouldn’t have bothered. There is a legitimate use case for using backup discs for games, I know I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone but myself to look after the original game discs. Most people are atrociously bad at putting them back into their cases after use.
That is an awesome header image for this post Simon!
i got banned today so fuck up
@Owen
I think the portion of those 1 million who use their consoles for “backup purposes” are probably about 3% of the total too ;p
Lets call a spade a spade – the heavy majority of modded consoles are used to play pirated games.
All I can say is… hah, owned.
Donald is an idiot!
“After all you will have paid £40 for a new disc. It is my opinion that once you buy a disc you should be allowed to do whatever you want with the media as long as you do not break copyright laws.”
How in the world does he believe that copying a disc does not break copyright laws? Look at the word for christ sakes man copyright = the right to copy.
Any gamer complaining about this needs to back up and think about what they are saying. fact 1) when you sign up for xbox live you agree to a tersm of service. fact 2) you broke your terms of service. fact 3) if your account has been banned your are not a victim and you have noone to blame but yourself.
There is no truly legitimate reason you would need to mod an xbox and when people create fake excuses such as ‘I make copies because discs are flimsy’ it just makes gamers look bad. you know whats easier than making copies, keeping your disc in a box!
Personally, I think they deserve to be banned, the crappy thing is they don’t have to tell anyone that their box was banned and if they sell it to someone who then try’s to get onto XBL then that person got ripped off. Kind of sucks for anyone who may go on craigslist one day and buy a banned console.
That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard “Discs are very fragile things”
It makes it sound like we’re handling disc’s made of thin crystal.
I don’t know about anyone else but I leave the disc in my Xbox when I turn it off but then when I want to play something else I…. well I guess you see where I’m going with this. I’m not going to teach you to suck eggs
Maybe Donald is using a microwave to store his games, and every now and then he forgets about them.
TNR x KiLL3R is a modder and should be shut down… cant wait to exact revenge
TNR x KiLL3R is modding on gta 4, xbox live