Happy Halloween! You're banned from Xbox Live.

Hope the modders on here aint been stupid enough to have their joystiq username the same as their gamertag, and then posting on here their love of modded 360's!
I think more than anything the people on here that do purchase legit games are pissed because they are spending hard earned cash on games, that people are d/loading and playing for free in mins!
Yeh i suppose some modders will try live to see if they can get away with it, but the VAST majority will play their pirated games offline.
The amount of recent single player games and addons on disc that is also on dlc, ie gta4 bogt, means they are still getting these games FIRST and before anyone else, THAT is what pisses me off, as videos of plot/storylines appear on youtube etc, as major spoilers.
And you will hear modders rubbish a game after 20 mins of play, that you may be contemplating dropping £40/$60 on.
I know piracy will NEVER be stopped 100%, but surely the next gen wave of consoles will need to look at making it even more difficult to mod in the first place!

I think it's hilarious how worked up people get over World of Goo's "pay whatever you want deal", calling piracy on people paying only a cent. Yet as soon as Microsoft mass-locks known mod consoles that hold hundreds of pirated games, everyone gets all pissy and wonders why they can't go on Live any more.

Here come the 'I was banned and I never modded my Xbox" folks.

Whoever pirated and got the boot got what they deserved. You stole a game and were stupid enough to play it online. You stole a game. No excuses.

I'm sure piracy will never stop, modding has quite the community. I don't get it, they could probably make it in Game Programming so why console Modding?

I did pirate in high school. It actually taught me a LOT about computers, security, and how to generally do geeky things. Pirating is actually incredibly educational if you actually read into it and learn the principles at work. Same with a lot of criminal things, actually. I know a lot of drug-types that are fantastic at chemistry, and I always sucked at it. There are upsides to piracy, but the application of such things and use of said knowledge is dependent on where you go with such information.

I do buy all my games now, and in retrospect, the games I did play that I did pirate were somehow 'cheaper' for it. I never felt nearly as accomplished for beating a pirated game as one I legitimately bought and beat.

I don't entirely see the point in this ban other than perhaps to disuade soon to be pirates.

Its not going to discourage the already pirating people out there. They'll merely buy a second hand console and use it for online games. MS won't see any of that money, unless of course they'll buy a new console which imo, would be unlikely.

They will still pirate games and use them offline. MS will also lose cash on XBL and XBLA which I know many pirates use.

The thing is, MS always use November as their ban month. Its been the same for years. There are exceptions but these happen rarely and normally through silly scene/p2p releases ( french Halo ODST springs to mind).

Basically, the way lots of pirates see it is if MS just hand out bans once per year. They're quite happy to shell out £60 on a second hand console, play pirated games online for 12 months, recieve a bad and then repeat the process.

I guess MS just have to be seen to be doing something.

Seems a lot of people here are pirate-bashing. Well I say bravo to those who can download the games. I don't blame people with the crazy £45 price-tag for a videogame over here, I would too if I could, unfortunately I bought a PS3.

Piracy is one step towards being more practical with your money. Don't talk to me about morals, the companies won't really suffer from your choice alone, and that £45 can feed you for weeks if you know what to buy.

This is why I don't do anything nice for my Xbox; I'll get banned.

I just wanted to take a second to shout out a big "Thank You" to all the lemmings who were banned in the most recent wave. You guys help keep the minority safe. Every time a release drops early and the chatter about playing early starts, I try to encourage it as much as possible. The more of you fools playing games pre-release, the safer those of us with at least half a brain are. No matter how many times I see scores of these idiots banned, they are back right away and still haven't learned to wait until the release date of a game has arrived and verify your copy with a retail version!

...getting more detailed than that would be a waste of time.....but lemmings, please keep coming back.

*facepalm*

Not necessarily everyone who pirates a game would have bought it in the first place. With this companies build statistics that assume 1 download = 1 lost sale @ full RRP. And with this I think these companies use piracy as an excuse.

These labels and publishers take most of the cut from a sale if I'm right. I know that's the situation with the greedy music labels.

That's fine, still not banned folks. Running strong ;)

http://bit.ly/1bsjDO

I SURVIVED banwave '09

LOL! This is hilarious!
JH
http://www.electroniccigarettesinc.com

Vince, that is completely incorrect.

This is great.

http://www.pureskyshop.com