Be Excellent To Each Other

OK. I don't know if this has been discussed here before, or, if any one here has been affected by it.

Last week Microsoft decided to sniff some 360s and ban people from live, among other losses of privelidges should it be deciphered they were using chipped/hacked/modded Xbox 360s.

This includes -

* Cannot go on Xbox Live
* Cannot install games to the HDD
* Cannot use Windows Media Centre extender
* Cannot be used to get achievements from backups without corrupting your profile

Which IMO is fair enough really. I mean, I do download the odd game but I would certainly take my punishment if I was ever caught.

To some, however, it's so insulting that the phone number for Stephen Toulouse the director of Policy and Enforcement for Xbox Live was posted into an IRC channel and Stephen has since recieved death threats by phone to both himself and his wife, along with his dog/s.

Full info and IRC log can be found here, but it's another sad day for our fucked up society

http://burn360.net/xbox360/pirates-pass ... -toulouse/

Did they do it with cookies?

They're just insisting on their rights to steal games and call people faggots, I don't see anything wrong with them fighting back. You wouldn't say it was wrong if it were black lesbians doing it, would you?

Downloading a game isn't stealing it.

From what I've read, only accounts are being banned, so people can create new gamertags and keep pirating as much as they like.
As long as you know what you're doing, it seems possible to stay under the radar.
I did read about some people issuing chargebacks for the ms points they'd bought as they could no longer use them. I wonder how that'll work out?

I posted it in bits and bobs earlier.

old argument, it is not paying for it either..

my brother in law has dozens of pirated games and he's not subtle about it. But since he's never plugged a network cable into his xbox, i'm sure he's not bothered by this.

Awww, the poor dear -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/techn ... 002915.stm

Best bit in the entire writeuporz.

Hard to feel sorry for him..

Indeed Kovacs, especially when he comes out with comedy gold like this.



Well with all that money you saved you can simply buy another console innit.



Infact I retract my earlier statement. That takes the cake. Sulky wulky poo poos I think I will buy an inferior console with no piracy at all instead of getting another 360 because I was caught with my hand in the cookie jar.

can't he just make a new gamertag? The filthy fucking pirate

It's the box that's banned. I don't think you can reverse it either if it's banned the serial number.

well then, he's screwed. Dirty fucking pirate.

Nah, they're just banning the Live accounts, which seems almost pointless.

it amuses me that someone would pirate games but still pay for xbox live gold.

Dirty silly pirate

if xbox's are that easy to pirate, maybe i'll buy one someday, if only to play FIFA and brutal legend

'wah wah wah, I can't download someone else's games that I haven't paid for and play them online11!!'

Try buying them, then? Nah, too obvious.

But they're £50 each Cavey! And he must have them all! He couldn't possibly buy just the ones he really wants preowned!

Heh, absolutely Doc, my sentiments precisely.

I know I'm an old twat of the highest order, but I mean fuck me - I'm still enjoying Need for Speed Shift on my PS3 that I bought a good 6 weeks ago (now at Level 50 meh!) This game cost me £30 to buy from Blockbuster. It's all about having dozens of the latest games at once that most haven't a hope in hell of doing justice to in that timescale, if at all - it's just being greedy IMO.

Xbox games ≥ Pokeymans.

remember when microsoft launched the genuine advantage tool for xp? Same deal essentially, except that didn't assume guilt and gave you the chance to repent

I don't know what to do. Feel spacetime ripping apart.

Help.

Er... eh?

I agreed with all of that.

See! I'm not so bad when you get to know me; a bit like a grumpy old spaniel.

And thus, did the End Times come, as was foretold.

My next post is about what I'm doing in 2012...

I did used to like you, then you started bullying me and - well, you know the rest.

They do ban consoles as well, but I can't remember what for. I think these ban waves are just the accounts though.

Aw, come on man.

I can be a twat but my bark is about 1000% worse than my toothless bite. I'm the biggest softarse you'll ever meet - it's just 'forum syndrome' stuff.

Anyway, sorry if I offended you that time.

I'm only jesting. We're all friends again now.

Yay.

Been a while since our 'Raz' met any real 16 year-olds, it seems. Screaming to their parents at that age? They'd deserve a lot worse than to be banned from funsquare online.

I'm sure I wasn't that much of a tit at age 25 either.

I'll pretty much hack anything I can and while I'm no great player of pirated software, I'll still do it to see what things are like or to circumvent crippling DRM on a PC game, this being a platform where you can buy something and not be able to play it without using a NOCD patch or a pirated version. FM2009, I'm looking at you.

The 360 though, is blinding value for money, even to a teenager, surely? There are so many good games under a tenner you might never realistically need to spend more on anything. I think on this platform at least we are absolutely spoiled, it's not like we're talking about the PSP here.

Also the 360 is the console which has most sincerely addressed the issue of homebrew with XNA - there is a cost, but you can get your reward when you make a game good enough to cover your costs and people like it. Indie games does the same job as my Nintendo homebrew channel only better. So there's another reason to hack removed as far as I'm concerned. In fact, when you consider who is making the 360, relatively fair and bargainous platform that it is, it's a bloody miracle we paying customers have it so good.

Suddenly, a freak rip in the fabric of time and space opened. And out walked Gaywood and Perkies from 2001. Gaywood was carrying a stack of Kodak CD-Rs with handscrawled labels, stacked so high they wobbled around alarmingly with the slightest breeze. Some couldn't help but fall from the stack, and Perkies was collecting them off the ground. 'Crazy Taxi' said one. '18 Wheeler self booter' said another. 'Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2' said a third.

Even more suddenly, another, freakier rip in the fabric of time and space opened, and 2001 Gaywood and 2001 Perkies walked into it, back to their own time. An obscure rule of Time Theory states they wouldn't have been aware of their trip, nor have seen us for those brief moments. And all was normal again.

Now there's an article that needs an ability to leave comments under it. I wonder if he was expecting sympathy?

Indeed. Apparently there is a way to tell without letting it happen by setting up on the net for a warranty repair. If you are told your console has failed warranty checks and it's still within warranty you're in for a banning the next time you sign into live.

See, this is the one thing I am happy about with 99% of hacked PC games. There is no online play at all .

Recently on a forum I stop by every once in a while someone posted the news that Razor1911 or whatever the fuck they're called had released MW2 on PC. Everyone rushes off to 'spend' close to 5gb in bandwidth for a game that will last them four fucking hours in single player with no online play

It's just that mentality Cavey old boy, the "everything should be free" one. And some people are so bad with it that they actually not only dare to cop the bollockache when they are punished but, au contraire (as Del Boy used to say) actually phone some dude from Microsoft and threaten to fucking kill him

It's almost like these kids think that by paying the measly £120 or so for a 360 (which I admit is a fucking excellent price point, that's why so many people have them) they automatically obtain some sort of a license to steal (the name's Bond, Games Bond).

Utterly obsurd.

Preowned? Pwned, more like.

You say that, but to a games publisher there can't be much difference between piracy & buying preowned games. It's still a "lost sale" & it's a more convincing argument about lost sales since they were obviously quite happy to wait & buy the game, just not at a silly price.

Yes but a preowned game should have been bought once..

Aye, but when I pirate music or films it's either a rarity that I couldn't get any other way, something I want to try out (usually techno or house & if I like it I'll usually buy on vinyl to play with) or something I'd never dream of buying but fancied listening to at the time (throwaway pop).

So I've got no intention of parting with any money, except in the rarity example (stuff I try out would just get forgotten if I had no way to sample it).

When I buy pre-owned I want the stuff & am paying for it, but I don't want to pay crap prices. Hence it's a lost sale.

Heck yeah. I can't believe that idiot even got published. Stupid fucking baby.

Fair do's Wullie, but that's basically just buying secondhand stuff which no-one takes issue with? There is no actual 'lost sale' when buying a secondhand car, house, game or whatever, since the sale was already made when the item was new and the manufacturer/builder/software developer took their profit at that time. (You could even argue that selling a game secondhand is still beneficial to the original provider, since this creates an increased likelihood of the seller wanting to buy a new one in its place - if I sell my 2 year old car, I'm going to want another one).

I'm obviously not thinking of you here Wullie, but to listen to some previous musings on the whole issue of privacy, from certain quarters (not in this thread obv.), you'd think that nicking someone's work off the internet was a virtue to be proud of? Indeed, apparently an essential activity to ensure the success of a given games console!

If it was my work that was being downloaded and copied in this way, I'd be less than impressed too.

When a game is traded in at a shop, (or even sold via amazon or ebay) then the vast majority of the time it is to be used to buy more games.

When a 2nd hand game is bought from a shop that also props up the games industry, if only the chain stores (which allows the margins on 1st hand titles be so slim).

So 2nd hand sales pump huge volumes of money into the game industry and can't be considered lost sales at all. I just traded some games for borderlands. The 2nd hand purchases of that software will effectively buy borderlands and prop up specialised game stores.

I'd never actually thought of it like that Dr. Lave.

I'm a fan of your work and would like to subsribe to your newsletter!

I pirate everything I can usually. Since before those halcyon Dreamcast CDR days. And I don't pirate 360 games and haven't even looked into chipping it even though my Xbox XBMC lives still as my parents digicam pics on TV device.

There's a point here somewhere.