Microsoft Unleashes Banhammer On Xbox 360 Modders

[eXo]

Microsoft has an unpleasant surprise in store for Xbox 360 modders this Halloween. The company confirmed today that it has taken action against consoles modified to play pirated game discs. As usual, the bans are hitting in droves and do not appear to be linked to any particular drive firmware. Additionally, we’ve caught wind of reports [...]

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[Robby]

I survived this ban wave.

 

[Lachrymose]

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_7QG2d528[/YT]

Ohhhhhh yeah. I'm really curious to know how they detected it this time...

 

[KezraPlanes]

Ouch... Sounds like MS is pissed..

 

[agentnnc]

I'm curious to know how consoles who've never accessed XBL are getting the banhammer. Other then that, I LOLed so hard when one of my friends who just recently got his 360 modded was banned. I warned him XD.

 

[James.]

This sounds plausible.

i think its pretty pointless looking for reasons..
personally i think M$ has got the banning spot on. M$ the richest company in the world will more than likely know whether your box is modded or not. its what they do about it that matters. by banning a small amount in regular intervals it does the following

1. keeps the game companies happy that they are seen to be doing something to help with piracy
2. keeps legit users happy that M$ is banning people who don't pay for their games like them
3. makes the end user think M$ cant fully see the hacks blaming X game or Y method and so makes them go and buy another 360 to mod and carry on where they left off
4. converts many users to the way of thinking that if they don't mod they are safe on live so become the users of point 2

if they revealed that they could actually see ALL mods and banned everyone at once then everyone would know hacks where fully detectable so to play online they would have to use paid for games. then it becomes a toss up between the PS3 and the 360 for your online gaming needs. i think the PS3 would get many converts and MS knows this which is why they keep using the trickle effect which has worked wonders for many years so far. so keep the conspiracy theories flying about who/why/what/where/when/how method M$ has finally detected you as you will surely run out and buy a new 360 to mod. lining M$ pockets even more.

the best you can do is cross your fingers and hope your name isn't picked out of the modded console ban wave hat

 

[agentnnc]

I don't see proof to support the claim and MS can see all of the mods. All I see is that the article was written in the spirit of fanboyism (M$).

 

[Abe Froeman]

I don't see proof to support the claim and MS can see all of the mods. All I see is that the article was written in the spirit of fanboyism (M$).

I listened to Major Nelson's podcast from like 6 months ago and he specifically said that they can tell the modded consoles and have ways to determine it that people on the internet haven't even mentioned yet.

 

[agentnnc]

Wow...well they should at least put a mandatory update that disables the mods.

 

[Bizarre]

My buds got hit, I survived though!

 

[Crank]

All I see is that the article was written in the spirit of fanboyism (M$).

Exactly, which shows why pretty much everyone typing MS as M$ is a fucking retard and needs to be slapped (multiple times) with a baseball bat.

They think MS and game developers are a charity, spending countless hours doing hard work so they couldn't make any money from it. Yeah right.

 

[Robby]

As long as your games are stealth patched you are in pretty good shape.
And if you do get banned, from all the money you save, you can fork out some for a new console no problem.

 

[eighty4]

I'm still alive. Gonna play MW2 soon too. So close to Christmas that if I get banned, T'll try and ask for a new one, hopefully an Elite.

 

[yolarrydabomb]

and this is why I got 2 consoles...

They have a internal memory (Nand) that logs offline games that's timestamp when its first time played, last time played, what profiles played, and CRC check.

So if the CRC doesn't match and the release date, then you get ban bammer when the next time you plug in that Ethernet jack to xbox live.

hopefully linux xbox's will find this nand and wipe it clean.

 

[Robby]

and this is why I got 2 consoles...

They have a internal memory (Nand) that logs offline games that's timestamp when its first time played, last time played, what profiles played, and CRC check.

So if the CRC doesn't match and the release date, then you get ban bammer when the next time you plug in that Ethernet jack to xbox live.

hopefully linux xbox's will find this nand and wipe it clean.

The NAND thingy is just a rumor, it has not been proven.

Explain how I was able to play a bad rip of Halo ODST(French version) on live 3 weeks before release and not get banned?

---------- Post added at 09:07 AM EST ---------- Previous post was at 09:06 AM EST ----------

I'm still alive. Gonna play MW2 soon too. So close to Christmas that if I get banned, T'll try and ask for a new one, hopefully an Elite.

I totally forgot christmas was coming up lol, yeah that is money for sure.

 

[yolarrydabomb]

Explain how I was able to play a bad rip of Halo ODST(French version) on live 3 weeks before release and not get banned?

I guess your just pure lucky or Microsoft doesn't have enough ban hammers. lol

 

[Robby]

I keep my privacy settings on private as some bans come from other people reporting you out of jealousy.

 

[LocutusEstBorg]

I listened to Major Nelson's podcast from like 6 months ago and he specifically said that they can tell the modded consoles and have ways to determine it that people on the internet haven't even mentioned yet.

This should have been obvious to people from the beginning. Its a regular SATA drive connected to a more or less regular PC; They can read the firmware. Even if the firmware reading routines have been patched in the firmware, its not been proved that they can't go one level lower.

Just like Sony can do so on the PSP. If they introduced additional code in a random module to detect CFW (which doesn't have any operational effect on the firmware) and report it back to them, no one would notice the check and it wouldn't be patched in CFW (until the ban hammer strikes and people look for it). Maybe DNAS is doing that right now. But I think they will never ban anyone since on the PSP most people who have legit games also have pirated games and CFW. If they ban them they will wipe out half the user base which spends money on the PSP.

 

[Robby]

Is it illegal to modify your own system or is it just illegal to play pirated games?

 

[Abe Froeman]

If I had to guess, I would say just the pirated games part. The punishment for modding your system is the loss of warranty and permanent LIVE account ban.