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Midgen
PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:26 pm 
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As many as 1 million modded 360's banned from connecting to live.

Yahoo Tech Link

Christopher Null @ Yahoo Tech wrote:
Hope you didn't have a hacked or, ahem, modified, Xbox 360 lingering around your place:Microsoft has kicked them all -- possibly up to a million consoles -- off the Xbox Live service. Why? Because Microsoft hates piracy, and if you're modifying your Xbox, it's so you can play pirated games.

Microsoft's statement was rather blunt: "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty, and result in a ban from Xbox Live."

While pirated copies of games are easy to come by on file-sharing sites (often before they are ever released), unmodified Xbox consoles are unable to play these games unless they are modified, a process that requires cracking open the case and fiddling around with its innards. So-called "mod chips" are generally quite inexpensive, usually well under $100 (plus extra for professional installation) -- and likely to be even cheaper now that the ban is in place. No one is sure how Microsoft is detecting hacked consoles, but it appears to be doing a great job of it.

Now comes the fallout. Hundreds of thousands of gamers are up in arms, but they don't have much recourse here. Even opening the case of most consumer electronics products voids your warranty and is a violation of the company's terms of use, and mod chips are strictly against the law, as this poor guy can tell you.

Assuming you're on the straight and narrow, how does this impact you? The immediate upshot is that these hacked Xbox 360s are now flooding the used console market: Ebay alone has over 3,000 used 360s for sale as I write this. Chances are good that, should you buy one, you'll find it's been modified and banned from the Xbox Live service, leaving you able to play single-player games but unable to log in to the Live dashboard, making it impossible to play multiplayer titles, earn achievements, or do any of the other online activities, like watching Netflix streaming videos, that make the Xbox so compelling. Be very careful out there....
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DFK!
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 9:09 pm 
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Foresees lawsuits in the future for those failing to disclose that a console was banned.

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Caleria
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 9:42 pm 
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Do you even need a mod chip anymore? I thought the newer consoles just needed an update of the dvd-drive's firmware.

Even so, they should've been smart enough to NOT connect to Xbox Live with a modded/hacked console and try to play pirated games. Hell, some of the games are released 2-3 weeks before it hits the stores. I bet a large number of these idiots were playing the games on Live before the games were even released. Way to fly under the radar, guys.

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darksiege
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:09 pm 
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Microsoft has been giving warnings for some time now saying to make sure you were not using anything against the ToU... because they were making changes.

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Screeling
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:16 am 
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Did that hit you, Lenas?

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Lenas
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:12 am 
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No. I'm fine. The people that get banned are stupid. However, I also happen to be in a fortunate position. If I wanted, I could play on my roommate's 360, because the console gets banned and not the gamertag. Also, in the unlikely event that my console got banned, I could trade it to my girlfriend's little brother, who has no plans at all of playing on XBL ever.

Anyway, like I said... stupid mistakes. Caleria is right on the money.
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Midgen
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:48 am 
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There are many ways for them to detect the mod'd boxes.

Some accounts of people playing the game early and gettting achievements ofline, then going online. When the dated achievments are uploaded, they are time tamped, thus making you easy to find. This of course is easy to work around if you put a little though into it.

There are other ways as well.

Bottom line, if you must play bootleg games, for whatever reason, don't play on playing on live.
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Lenas
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 2:02 am 
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So far as I can tell from my own experience, dates aren't recorded when getting achievements offline.

Besides, achievements likely don't have anything to do with it because they ban the console and not the gamertag.
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Foamy
PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 10:52 am 
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Hrms...Since I have no real intentions of playing on XBL, I am wondering how much these banned consoles may end up being sold for....

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Midgen
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:41 pm 
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Foamy,

It's not just playing games on xbox live.. you wouldn't be able to sign in at all, which means you couldn't even get dashboard updates, or game patches. Some of these things can be downloaded from xbox.com for the time being, but there are rumors that they may stop doing that in lieu of a having you order a CD instead.

As far as achievements being time-stamped.. they most certainly are. or at least the data that is sent to them when the achievement is upload contains the time and date on the console at the time the achievement was obtained (time is an easy thing to work around, so this is easily avoidable).

Every time your console uploads anything to the network, the payload includes all kinds of fun things like a hardware hash, all of the profiles and their associated live accounts, console serial and internal ID numbers, an emumeration of what content is on the HDD, and more (I got busy with work and stopped looking at the captures)....

Trust me, Microsoft has all of the information they need to detect mod'd xbox's and ban the associated consoles (and a lot more). Just the act of powering up the console while it's connected to the network (unless you are somehow blocking this traffic with a firewall or something) provides them everything they need.. You don't even have to sign in to xbox live.


Last edited by Midgen on Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Midgen
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:44 pm 
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One other thing to point out here.

Microsoft has never confirmed the number of consoles banned. The numbers being thrown around are estimates and extrapolations. Certainly there were a lot of them banned.

Microsoft understands the impact of banning a million xbox's, and I'd be stunned if that number was even close to reality.

They also however understand the value of putting a large number out there (or not denying it), to try to keep honest people honest (if you know what I mean).
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DFK!
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:48 pm 
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For those that forget, Midgen is some big-shot IS guy. I'd isten to him! :D

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Midgen
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:50 pm 
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DFK! wrote:
For those that forget, Midgen is some big-shot IS guy. I'd isten to him! :D


Erm..I am soooo not a big shot, that I am the anti-big shot... I'm the quiet guy in the back of the room no one knows is there... :)
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DFK!
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:04 pm 
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The Game Master.
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Midgen wrote:
DFK! wrote:
For those that forget, Midgen is some big-shot IS guy. I'd isten to him! :D


Erm..I am soooo not a big shot, that I am the anti-big shot... I'm the quiet guy in the back of the room no one knows is there... :)

That's the most dangerous one.


After all, it isn't the king you worry about, it's the king's wizard.

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SuiNeko
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 6:34 pm 
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no.(NSFW)
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Aethien
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 11:32 pm 
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SuiNeko wrote:
no.(NSFW)


You are an evil, evil man, Sui. Crap, those are hilarious (and pretty well drawn). Funny, but I think I even recognize the "traveler" in the Snow Queen's boudoir from the old TSR comic, Phineas Fingers.

Huh, got so busy, forgot what I was going to say in reply.

Foamy, I've had the same thought as you. I have no real interest in XBL, and probably not so much in NetFlix, either. I probably wouldn't even care if it gets its firmware updated, since I'd probably only use it for about a year before getting something else. An intriguing thought.

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Kaffis Mark V
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 8:40 am 
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Keep in mind, subsequent games will require firmware upgrades even fresh off the CD.

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Coren
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 8:32 pm 
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Lenas wrote:
So far as I can tell from my own experience, dates aren't recorded when getting achievements offline.

Besides, achievements likely don't have anything to do with it because they ban the console and not the gamertag.


Yeah, they're timestamped, but you're not likely to get banned for gaining achievements early. There's really no way of knowing from achievements alone if you have a hacked console or just know a store that breaks street dates. (Like when I got Mass Effect almost 2 weeks early and had most of the achievements before the game was out hehe).
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