MS "Cracksdown" piracy with Halo3 Beta

Well microsoft has banned a lot of people that downloaded the Halo3 beta with a copy of crackdown, it seems they also banned people that got it legit with a code, but with modded firmware, so if u have a modded firmware take care of your account

For those who understand spanish i have a nice screemshot (not from my machine ofcourse) :

http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/9249/dsc00326mj2.jpg


well i also have one for the non spanish ones

http://mrhyde.cnchost.com/xbl_banned.JPG

 

Makes you wonder why the beta had those delays now :noooo:

I'm not bothered about it actually as long as they dont start adding this protection to newer games/updates.

My guess is the bannings are coming from the "scene" release copys of crackdown.

 

http://majornelson.spaces.live.com/

Well, Thats my 360 going on ebay soon. :110:

 

just had a call off my stepdad who says hes been banned trying to download the halo 3 beta, and moaning at me because i did his firmware months ago as a favour for him!

lucky ive never modded my firmware, and i only have a silver account,cant justify spending £40 a year to play online on a console i play probably once a month

on the one hand i do feel sorry for all the people who have been banned, but on the otherhand theyre just plain dumb for using backup games on live in the first place!

i know im probably gonna start a flamewar on here for what i just said, but at the end of the day everyone know this was coming.. it like the whole halo 2 thing a few years back on the original xbox, m$ flick a switch and 1000's get banned from xbl

 

My friend just IM'd me telling me his console is banned...the catch is that he has neither modded it nor has he downloaded Halo 3 beta as he no longer has Crackdown (and didn't get it by the other two means). The first call to tech support ended with them blaming his router, cable modem, etc. and that pretty much being the end of it.

*UPDATE* His second call got him as far as them checking and seeing that his console is in fact not banned despite the console telling him otherwise...I think MS dropped the ball on this.

If they don't resolve it for him (and others that are being banned for not having a modded console in this case, I would've told him to let me know when he was taking his console+games to GameStop so that I can do the same.

 

well everyone knew this day will come ...
really i just care about it cause ms prolly lost current gen wars today ...
maybe one more year would be better for them, but atm its not a clever move.

 

Oh man, there will probably come a crack or something that circumvent the banning or something. And M$ at the moment are attacking the open source community like crazy at the moment on the other front.

 

I haven't had any problems so far and I'ev downloaded and played the beta. Clearly there are issues. Forinstance when I downloaded the beta, it took forever for the option to download it to appear. My friend couldn't get it to appear for him for awhile. Then when it was downloaded and I ran it, it told me the beta was currently unavailable or expired. I had to exit out to the dashboard and start it again before it worked. And even then several times me and my party members were stuck waiting for it to match us up against other people. Seriously sometimes it took 15+ minutes.

M$ is good at this stuff though. But still I don't think this signals any big problems for them. People will bitch and throw a fit and go right back to sucking on M$'s tit.

 

About time MS did something.

 

I remember getting banned from my Xbox 1 when I had the 29-wire something enigma chip (and it was cutting edge!). They let people play with the Beta Live for a long time, then one day dropped the hammer

 

This isnt good for the hacking community but I saw it coming. I love my 360 and I like Live. So I never modded it because Im more about homebrew and emulators then I am just playing backup discs (UNLESS THEY CAN RUN FROM HDD ^^)

I feel sorry for the people who have modded consoles. 360 is largly based online. Will people have to rely on updates from game discs to play them now, can they still get downloadable content?

I for one hope they find a way past this. Why would MS kill so many users when they are paying them 50bucks a year for Live plus more for other stuff. Its more profitable to just let them go and get the money then to shut them down and drive them to the compition...

 

Well.. I guess we will se lots of x360 on ebay soon.. I hope they atleast have the decency to say that the consoles have been banned, but I doubt it.

 

i was thinking exactly the same!!

 

Because said users are pirating scum and Microsoft loose money for every console sold and won't make it back unless people buy the software?

 

you can use linux with the modified firmware. and some people just like to mess with things. every person who has a modfied firmware isn't "scum"

 

As far as I know, the only use for the current XBOX 360 mods (which I believe replace the drive firmware) is to like to the 360 about the media type and claim that burned disks are pressed disks. You are still limited to only running software thats signed by microsoft.

So, 360 mods are only of use for playing pirate games at this time.

 

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showforum=164

it's not easy, but you can get linux on it. and i'd like to mention again, some people just link to tinker. in the same way many people here own rare and obscure games they don't play.

 

Probably less than 1% of XB360 firmware mod owners are doing it to mess with things or for the possibility of Linux in the future. Either way, it's all the same to Microsoft.

 

Well I have never modded my 360,never had a reason to.And yes some peeps use linux,but you need to have the right flash to get it working and have the firmware modded and such.But I really think the majority of peeps who have there 360 modded just pirate games,which is why Im glad MS took action.

 

The only content signed on the disc is the executable. So, in theory you could modify the game to do neat stuff... Link: Stuff like placing the boss character's files over a playable character's.

And Link: use models of characters from story mode

So, yeah... I got banned.

What MS actually did was start data mining in early spring. The update then took a hash of your drive's current firmware, if your firmware had changed in any point since then you were banned the other day. It really has nothing to do with Halo or Crackdown, other than the timing.

But I haven't pirated any 360 games before... But now I'm considering it since I can't play on XBL. So, this kind of back fired on MS.