If you've been using a modified Xbox 360 to beta test first-person shooters on Xbox Live, you're about to be shunned by the online world like a leper operating a Simple Plan Myspace page. "How could this happen to me?" you ask. Well, Major Nelson bluntly blurts it out on his temporary post-meltdown page: "As you can imagine, we have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to modded consoles connecting to LIVE. We're very serious about this, and if we detect you have a modded Xbox then you will not be able to connect to Xbox Live."
Aside from the sudden disconnection, modders will be informed of their newly-banished status by the above screen and the status code, "Z: 8015 - 190D." Those recipients without eye patches will no doubt be livid and ready to assault message boards with all manner of exclamations and emoticons, but when used for evil, the power of Mod can open the door to online cheating and other unfair unpleasantness. Sometimes innocent bystanders have to pay the price in Microsoft's war on enemy solders.
[Thanks, keeel]
Microsoft booting modders off Xbox Live
78 Comments by Ludwig Kietzmann May 17th 2007 7:36PM
Filed under: Hacks, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online
Tags: Halo 3, Halo3, Major Nelson, MajorNelson, Microsoft, mods, XBLA, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, XboxLive, XboxLiveArcade












(Page 1) Reader Comments
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What kind of Mods are there?
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I bet it'll be less than a week.
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Every console I've ever modded have NOT been to pirate games. It's always been to import games. Want a solution to slow these efforts? Make the systems region free.
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ban the cheaters not other modders
stupid police state
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I was just about to talk about Idolm@ster when I heard about this.
And for anyone that asks: no, I do not feel like purchasing a brand new system (Japanese) to play a couple of games that will never or will arrive castrated to the United States. I have my system, and I want to play my commercially bought discs, no matter where I bought them from.
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One of the best things about the original Xbox was modding it to make it a cheap video and audio server. Modifications do not have to be nefarious by nature.
Modders and homebrew users unfortunately get put into the same category of cheaters and pirates.
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If you pirated, you should expect this.
But only if they could do something about the whiny 13 year olds playing certain M- rated games.....
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The modders are usually the cheaters, I believe.
Now, if only they could find a way to detect and ban assholes.
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I have 4 modded consoles. I've never cheated in an online game. To cheat, you have to mod. But to mod doesn't necessarily mean you will cheat.
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I love it! Suck on that pirates while the rest of us plays the Halo 3 beta!
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Thanx for correcting me. I realise that I would be pulled on the comment the second after I posted it.
I stand corrected.
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Have you even looked in 360 firmware flashing? It doesn't do anything to bypass region-locking on the games. It's purely to bypass the security check. It's more or less only useful for "backing up games". learn2research
Btw, the 360 itself isn't region locked, though it specifies itself to a region. The games are the ones that decide to run or not
Also, Senko no Ronde comes out next week to the US, though with a vomit-inducing cover.
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Well look at this.. and I in my humble ignorance, thought that modded xbox360 ONLY played COPIED games from the SAME REGION the console is.
seems like I'm wrong don't I ?......
Please...
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Maybe we can extend this policy to the highway! Next time someone puts a fart pipe or a way-too-big spoiler on his civic we'll just ban them from driving!
Or we can do the same if you just import a car!
/sarcasm
While i do agree that cheaters are a bad thing, solve it by looking for the cheat. So if you want to play cutting edge games, region free, and still be able to do anything you want with your hardware, stick to the PC.
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The reason I wouldn't bother modding the 360 is because, at the moment, the only available mod that works with current firmware is strictly a DVD firmware hack--so it's not any good for anything exception pirating or playing region-free.
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Also, this seems to be a lose-lose situation. By canceling someone's live account, they just lose that user's subscription fee AND the modder in question can keep playing burnt games, just not online.
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It's clear that some people are getting banned unfairly, and, as someone else has already said, what exactly does NAT reachability have to do with it? That can be an issue on the part of your ISP. I've gotten hardware from an ISP that was improperly configured, causing NAT issues. Ban the modders, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Also, here in the states, under the terms of Fair Use it's just fine to make a personal backup, and I couldn't agree with that more. Let's use oblivion as an example. I bought the game used for $50, and have bought every piece of downloadable content except for the horse armor, making that game worth over $100 to me. If my nephew is over for a visit, and puts the disc in the microwave while no one's looking, you're telling me I should have to buy another copy of the game? "But Mike, if you want to protect your investment, why not pay $5 to insure it w/ gamestop?" Because, speaking strictly legally, I don't have to.
Modding and piracy are two different things, and people lose sight of that very easily. While I haven't modded my 360, I did mod my original xbox strictly to use XBMC. It's the finest media player available by far. I continued buying new games for the system right up until I got my 360. Granted, I'm sure more than half of the modders are probably pirates, but it's not really fair to the other half now is it?
Some things to think about:
You could beat someone to death w/ a 360 and not get banned.
If you hit someone with your car, they don't take away your radio.
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Take a gander at how many xbox live users there are. And how many of those xbox liver users are modders? Home brew users? And just plain backup users? I can garuantee to anyone that almost half of the xbl users out there are of afore-mentioned.
Another thing I'd like to say is..Please...please and please Microsoft. Don't put so much security in your game consoles because. You can't even bypass your own code!!!
How many XBOX 1 games are playable on the xbox360!!
They take so many security measures into their next gen consoles, that they create a whole mess for themselves! The xbox 360 is basically a cheap and shitty emulator in it's beta stages for the xbox 1 console games.. It is complete crap.
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wow, where to begin.
nowhere in the world do you suddenly gain the 'freedom' to legally pirate games because "they're priced too high." if you don't want to buy them, rent them or wait for a sale. I'd love a maserati, but I doubt the police will let me off the hook for stealing one because the sticker price was "overly priced", as you butchered the language to say.
technically, the DMCA says you don't even have the right to backup your 360 games. so any firmware mod that would function to allow you to play backups of your games is implicitly an illegal object, as well. conceptually I am sure Microsoft has no problem with you playing a burned copy of a software you already bought. however, there is no way for them to tell who bought what, or rented what, and whether or not you're playing the burned copy long after you traded your copy in, or anything else. so, long story short: the DMCA is LAW, and backups are against that law.
it isn't about whether or not modders are cheaters. cheaters are technically only assholes, and modders are technically criminals, and Microsoft have every right to protect their intellectual property. it isn't assholish to want to protect your technology from being exploited.
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On the note of backups. Take care of your games and you won't have this issue. People always bring up the fact that they want to copy their games to make sure their original stays in perfect condition. This is crap as the majority of pirates out there use this excuse....bottom line take care of your games and put them back into their original cases. Make sure that the top of the disc (printed side) stays scratch free as this is the portion of the disc that is most vunerable.
I love it when I talk to a modder/pirate and they say they just back up their games only to find out that they had traded in all their games they own and only had "backups" of the original software. Support the industry and then maybe prices wouldn't keep going up. These companies need to make money to reinvest into other projects and ultimately more games. I applaud Microsoft for keeping these guys in check.
OH..and Modders (IE the Cheaters) suck and completly destroy online gaming.
That's my rant..I'm done
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Don't buy any used systems from now on I guess.
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Okay, Big Brother, you're all-powerful. I've had it. I'll never anything from Microsoft ever again. Vista, Xbox, Zune...sell it to someone else, I'm done with your shit.
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This post makes me incredibly happy :)
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Any "cheating" is the result of: poor programming.. or.. *drum roll* you're not as good as you think are.
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THE PUNS
FLARAHALA
Yeah that's my friend probably banned then.
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To all the cheaters and pirates: "HAW HAW! GUUUUTTTTTED!"
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Hahaha, good luck. It's over when Big Brother says it's over!
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