Microsoft Banning Halo: ODST Pirates
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: microsoft, banning, halo, odst, pirates | Themes: Digital Entertainment
Microsoft is cracking down on Halo downloaders.
Earlier this week, we learned that a copy of Halo: ODST had leaked onto the internet. While downloading the DVD-sized image of the yet-to-be-released Halo game won't do most Xbox 360 gamers any good, those with modified consoles made to play backups would be able to burn a copy and even get online.
This, obviously, does not impress Microsoft. Xbox Live Director of Policy and Enforcement Stephen Toulouse wrote on his Twitter page, "Hrm. I spy with my little eye some *illegitimate* ODST players. No early play for you. Commencing permabans."
Toulouse later tweeted, "to be clear, legitimate players (those who bought it early, reviewers, etc) are safe from my team's banhammer."
Microsoft has apparently found a way to differentiate between those who bought a legitimate copy early (from a retailer who did not adhere to street date) and those who downloaded a copy of the game illegally. Naturally, Microsoft would not share its anti-piracy methods, but did want to reassure gamers that those with legit copies of the game could continue to play away.
"I can be clear however that this applies to illegitimate copies only, the ban covers the Xbox Live account and could possibly include their console depending on the results of our investigations (which are ongoing). We do this from time to time with titles to combat piracy," he wrote to Kotaku. "If a user happens to purchase a legit copy of Halo 3: ODST early, then our problem is not with the user but the retailer who broke the street date. Those individuals will not be punished."
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Perhaps it was purposely leaked to get the ban hammer struck on everyone who pirates it.. Perhaps it has a special identity key or something..
"Microsoft has apparently found a way to differentiate between those who bought a legitimate copy early (from a retailer who did not adhere to street date) and those who downloaded a copy of the game illegally"
The only way they could possibly do this is through un-checked, un-verified images, meaning only those pirates dumb enough not to open up abgx and run the ISO/DVD though it are going to get banned. I really don't care about Halo at all being a PC gamer but they haven't found a way aside from the method they were already using; relying on the carelessness of the pirate.
Ban their consoles.
Oh, and to clarify since not everyone knows what a verified image is: there is no difference whatsoever between a checked and verified/fixed image and a legitimate copy, software wise. The only way to tell would be to actually see the physical disc being used. 360 pirates that don't check their images get banned all the time, this is nothing new. He's just sensationalizing thing in his Twitter by making note of something MS has been doing all along, regardless of which game.
Why am I not surprised? And won't the offending parties just find some way around being banned?
Those who illegally download -and- play online should be punished. I only do one of the above.
"I spy with my little eye" Someone's been playing TF2
Woah, wait, what? Does this mean ban the console from XBox Live, or ban people from their XBox? The latter seems not-to legal to me.
Why wouldn't Microsoft ban any modded XBox they detected? Sounds like unauthorized network access to me, and they have a right to defend said network from "attack".
I'd assume (new games at least) have a UID attached to them that is somehow associated with the profile (through achievements, perhaps).
Woah, wait, what? Does this mean ban the console from XBox Live, or ban people from their XBox? The latter seems not-to legal to me. Why wouldn't Microsoft ban any modded XBox they detected? Sounds like unauthorized network access to me, and they have a right to defend said network from "attack".
Ban the console from Live - they'd have to purchase a new console, not just a new gamertag, if they want to play on Live again. And people who have modded Xboxes might have bought it used. The firmware hacks to play game backups (which also lends itself to piracy) are undetectable to the user.
Well it is an iso of the French version of the game, maybe assuming that France doesn't leak games early works well though.. it is a rather small country anyways. plus I saw the iso but haven't burned it and if I got banned from live well I only have silver anyway and my xbox is one that tends to get the RROD problem so it'd probably be a blessing to go out and buy another one. I don't think Microsoft really understands that I don't really care what they do to the console's ability to connect to their paid services.
Time for more "Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live" episodes!
bla bla bla garbage
hmm, interesting.
My guess for how to tell which copies are legal and which are pirated, if there is a way the xbox can be told to a) do a self check (without the player knowing it) and b) be told to check the game files.
But it is interesting to know that they can tell the difference.
Until I get an article about hundreds of pirates being banned, this may as well be a smoke screen to discourage people who can but haven't pirated it yet.
Also, what are they permabanning? Just the game? The hacked Xbox 360? Access to Xbox Live? Microsoft could bring the hammer on anyone assuming they can actually detect it.
hate twitter
And the smart pirates live to play ODST another day BY NOT CONNECTING TO XBOX LIVE
Multiplayer on pirated copies is the best. ^_^
Don't have a modded 360 myself, but I've played a handful of online games via pirated versions.
For the Xbox 360 anyways, there's private networks you can connect to instead of of the official LIVE and play your games... many have,
Microsoft don't really need any 'clever' copy detection for this. The game was only leaked in France and in French. Not from France , guess what , you have to be playing a copy and are ban-able. It's not really rocket-science is it.
Additional , in response to dingumf , playing offline won't protect you from the 'ban hammer' as the console saves your play date internally and uplinks it (with your saves) at your next login for statistical reasons (you could tweak your console time/date though).
As for the suggestion of anamaniac , playing on private servers is problematic at best , the console has 2 levels of 'security to stop online play. The live service hasn't been hacked so that it can be duplicated yet and to play multiplay 'lan-play' they have set a maximum ping between clients to stop tunneling apps like Kai and XBC working over anything but very short distances
"Microsoft don't really need any 'clever' copy detection for this. The game was only leaked in France and in French. Not from France , guess what , you have to be playing a copy and are ban-able. It's not really rocket-science is it."
Yes, because there is no such thing as international air travel.
/still playing.
//french class finally coming in handy!
Its Simple, if you play a game that hasnt been released yet and your logged into a live account your going to get banned. Even if you have a Silver live account your status and you game information gets updated to you live page. If ODST shows up on there and ODST isnt out yet your busted.
So if your retarded enough to play ODST while connected to the net then you get what you deserve.
simple, the web leak is french iso and the review ones are English. i feel like M$ leaked it themselves because even if it region why would all of Europe have a french copy?
Wow I got -1 for saying that I don't care if they ban my own personal equipment or not. Whoever did that -1 is very SMART ! oh yeah like he owns some sort of investment in my computer hardware.
Anyways let's make some sense here. I found out that the iso was not leaked by microsoft and the person who sent it out is getting flamed everywhere on the internet over it. Also it is a broken iso and the repack makes it able to be burned and played. Microsoft checks for the part that does not match the CRC and then bans people.
Anyway, it's just another Halo game. How many of these does one possibly need. Halo3 is good enough, just don't play this one. If it is that important to you halo fanboys just buy the game. I buy every game that I play for a considerable amount of time.
Chances are they'll do their normal ban method and ban the console not the XBL account which means people will just go buy a used xbox or an arcade xbox and continue doing what they're doing.
But like rooket, I buy any games that I'd buy normally. Any games that are ever downloaded would never have been bought by me if i couldn't download them.
Will I get banned if I played Halo ODST offline on my flashed console then later go online without the game, just the hard disk on my non- flashed other console?
Alright, so on sept 23 a forced live update cameout, being someone with a flashed xbox I dl and have played odst but offline of course. Now thinking I was safe but I was still hesitent on getting caught so I didn't update thinking maybe the odst leak is connected, got on major nelsons site to see what the update was for. He seemed less detailed then ever, only saying it's partly in preperation for the Twitter facebook update, I started reading the comments. Pple who updated that day when they first were disconnected from live and asked to update and updated had an immediate issue connecting to live, it's fine now but I saw it as very odd as that isn't a normal update occurence but then I saw a very odd comment from a fellow xbl user saying his odst save file had dissapeared. That's when it had hit me my theory could actually be correct. I said fuck it and went ahead and updated but not before I was prepared, my xbox connects through a wireless adapter so I got on my pc and started up my packet sniffer. For those of u who don't know what a packet sniffer is it picks up that packets(data encrypted and sent over a wireless frequencey) that have been sent to and from your wireless router, also I have a connectivity kit to link my xbox HD to my pc. Started the update. While it ws updateing I got onto my xbox HD and tried copying and pasting my game saves, I cld succesfully then I tried to copy my odst saves of 10mb. I got an error saying "cannot copy file, file in use my another program" ah hah! After figuring that I decryted my packets reveiling that there was a packet for 10mb sent from my xbox to my router. So just a kawinkydink? I think not. So to all of you out there playing the French version don't update your box, I wld highly reccomend backing up ur save and deleting the one on you HD. I've searched the Internet about this update in connection to the odst link and have found nothing, please pass on the word!