Legal loophole or intentional exploit? What makes so sure that Microsoft wasn't fully aware this semi-complicated process could easily be done?

This is exactly (probably) why I can't play my perfectly good XBLA games without being signed into LIVE. What a suckie feature. Anyone know of anyway around this, because I'm sure there will be times when I'll be without internet???

How is this any better than what Uwe Boll is doing?
Legally or illegally, it's still wrong.

Have fun when Microsoft finds you and bans you from Live.

Hiro Protagonist- I don't think it's wrong. My brother and I both shared an Xbox 360 at home and I bought many of the XBLA arcade games. Then I went to college and my roomate has a 360, but it turns out he's one of those Madden gamers and he didn't even know about Arcade. Since he didn't have any of those games on his system I shouldn't be able to play the games I already bought? I say they should ask for something like a credit card number to verify but I should be able to play the game if I bought it already. There's no physical copy of the game so if something ever happens to my original system I wouldn't be able to get it again. I did try transfering my gamertag to his 360 and it worked but I was never able to transfer any game info. By now it's practically not worth since he moves it in 10 days. But in any case, just like if I have something over the internet on any PC I could access it, if Microsoft wants to truly be "Live" I should be able to retrieve my content from any Live enable 360.

If you play the game on a console *other than the one it was purchased on* you will have to be signed into Live.

I think this is a VERY fair and smart mechanism from Microsoft. It is slightly painful if you own TWO 360s and Live is down (like yesterday) - but really that's such an edge case I'd hardly fault MS for that.

@P

I have the same issue. With a secondary Xbox 360 you can't play the games you payed for while offline. I have contacted MS support several times in regards to this with no solution. Finally, an Xbox forums moderator, who apparently also works for Xbox support, said that several representatives had been made aware of such issue and would walk you through the following process: create a new silver account on your 360, credit this account with the points necessary to purchase your problematic games, and finally buy the games through marketplace so they register to your xbox.

So, apparently there is a workaround but I still haven't stumbled upon a representative that knows what he's doing or is aware of this issue. With yesterday's outage, I'm sure a ton of people run into this problem and are contacting MS left and right wondering why they could only play the trial of a game for which they paid in full.

"Since he didn't have any of those games on his system I shouldn't be able to play the games I already bought?"

Should you also get a free copy of all of the physical 360 discs you bought because your brother owns those? Yeah yeah XBL Arcade games aren't physical products blah blah marginal cost of production why do you expect more out of a $5 arcade game than you do out of your $60 copy of Saint's Row?

It's not that "you can't take it with you", you could have taken your own 360's hard drive to college and used it on your roommate's 360.

This will likely end up being patched up in the next firmware update.

Also, grammatical error in the first sentence: too.

Legal? Hell no.
Exploit? Yes.
I know that some of the games are not worth their price, but this is theft. This is the same as buying a game with a friend, go home and burn a copy of the game so both can use the game as the same time.

Hiro Protagonist: You are a corporation's wet dream.

How is this wrong? There can be no possible reason for this being wrong.
Microsoft have left open an option (whether intentional or not) for people to play games that they have bought on multiple machines without paying twice.

Taking the hard drive and taking the memory card are functionally the same.

If you take your hard drive, the system ID is still unique to the non-hard drive portion of the system, so you'll still need to be logged into live.

Welcome to November 22nd 2005.

It's not exactly a perfect solution, you need to be signed in to Live in order to play it on an Xbox 360 other than the one the content was downloaded on.

It tells you how to do this every time you download a piece of content - why is it news now?

Kyle, what makes you think this is legal? I know it's not the EULA on xbox live arcade games, is it just because you don't need a modded console to do it? If so, I have bad news... piracy is piracy whether it required modding or not.

Here, from section 10 of the xbox live EULA, they even put it in little words:

"You may not copy, download, modify or create derivative works, publish, transmit, sell or attempt to sell or transfer, or otherwise use or exploit any software or associated content unless we or our suppliers have expressly allowed you to do so."

If you want Doom, buy Doom 3 Collector's Edition for Xbox. It works on the 360, comes with Doom 1 and 2, and cost's about $5 used.

Doesn't the Lumines Live! download now include a terms of use-style section in the initial download? I remember seeing it, something about only using it on one 360, but I didn't pay it much attention.

Well, if it isn't intentional, be sure that it will be gone by the next update, or sooner, if they find it to be that big of a problem (and considering Microsoft's ferocious devotion to their DRM, it could be priority 1 if this catches on)

The stupidest thing whoever reported this could have done is to, well, report it, once people know, it becomes a problem...

I got 3 red lights and had to replace my 360... Now I have to be logged in all the time...

I got armor horse (yes, that's stupid) for Oblivion on the old console, now if I'm offline and play the game, my entire horse is gone!!! hahah

Even free content, like Dead Rising free costumes, if I play the game offline Frank get's the default costume (at least he's not naked!)

Also, other gamertags in my console can't play arcades and content I bought, like they did before

When you purchase premium content (XBLA games, maps, skins, etc.), two licenses are created - one for the Gamer Tag that purchased it, and one for the XBox 360 console that it was purchased on (the console, NOT the hard drive or memory card).

The problem here is that when you get a faulty XBox 360 and have to have it replaced, suddenly all your content doesn't work the way it's supposed to. You can't use things you've purchased offline anymore, nor can other accounts on your 360 besides the one you purchased it with. You can redownload things for free, but everything is still safe and sound on my hard drive so that's not a problem. If I was to redownload, nothing would be accomplished - the licenses are still tied to the old, broken 360 which I no longer have. There's no way to switch the association.

I couldn't play any of my games yesterday, and my girlfriend can NEVER play any of the games I purchased. This is a problem - this is not the way things would behave if I hadn't been unlucky enough to have a faulty 360, yet there's no mechanism to get things back to the way they should be (short of the workaround where you have to call MS up and wait 8-10 days for a refund authorization that allows you to redownload things on your new console and create the proper new licenses).

There needs to be an easy way to authorize/deauthorize 360s so you can use your content the normal way if you have to replace your 360 for whatever reason. I'm going through the current process right now, and it's a pain in the butt. And I only have a stupid refurb right now, what if it dies again? Will I have to go through this again? And what if I don't choose to go through Microsoft next time and decide to get a brand new 360 instead of another crappy refurb? Microsoft won't have record of the switch, and they probably won't give me a refund - I'll be forced to actually pay all over again for all the content I bought (we're currently looking at around $75, and I can imagine that growing quite a bit)!

#10: He's not a Corporate wet dream, he's an Indie Dev's savior. By stealing an XBLA game, you're not paying an Indie Dev, who actually needs the money, unlike the RIAA or the MPAA. So yes, it IS wrong.

BTW, Hiro Protagonist = J Allard.

Why does that guy have to explain it so complicated, when it's so easy?

I have been doing this for like 8 months between my two 360's

Hardly seems like a problem or a bug. They clearly wanted you to be able to move your games around, but not to be able to freely distribute them. The solution of requiring a Live connection to validate the licenses if you ar eplaying hte games on a different box than wher eyou bought them seems pretty sensible to me.

It's definitely a loophole, but it's certainly not illegal or "wrong." Microsoft's usage restrictions are clearly stated and this type of usage falls squarely in it. The tradeoff is that the person with full access doesn't "own" the game on his drive, and the other guy can only play it when connected to Xbox Live.

It's designed to let you bring a game over to your friend's house so that you can show them the game (but not give it to them), but I don't really see how you can distinguish the two situations under the current system.