Jeff can no longer play his two Xbox 360s online because Microsoft has banned him with no explanation. When he calls customer service, he says he’s accused of modding his consoles, which he insists he hasn’t.
Yet he’s guilty until proven innocent, and Microsoft isn’t willing to hear him out. He writes:
My console and my fiance’s console were caught up in the Mass Banning going on by Microsoft in their latest Pirate Witch Hunt. My fiance is a chef, and plays games like Viva Pinata, Arcade Games, and can’t figure out how to remove the battery pack, much less tear apart her system to “mod” anything.
I have purchased (2) Xbox 360 consoles (one for each of us), 68 games, several hundred dollars worth of Live content and DLC, another several hundred on disks that were scratched by faulty first gen consoles, a faulty 20 gig drive that Microsoft refused to warranty, and extra controllers / etc. All together I have dropped over $5200 supporting Microsoft, which I don’t have a problem with … what I DO take issue with is that yesterday we downloaded some content for the game Left 4 Dead and played it a bit, this morning I turned on my console and when I tried to log in, it stated my console was banned. What? The only “mod” I have ever done to my Xbox 360 was replace the crapped out 20 gig drive with an official 120 gig drive I purchased at Best Buy (I know, don’t hate on me for buying at Best Buy…) and that was almost 5 months ago. Of course I had a RRoD, but that was over a year ago (whic was another horror story all together).
Of course I tried to figure out what happened, but the outsourced “support” team refused to give me ANY information other than their investigations were very though. At one point a man who called himself “Charles” told me that it was my problem and I should learn to follow the rules, then hung up on me. I checked the Xbox Live Forums and while I am sure that some of the people posting in the Account Suspension and Player Feedback forum have probably done something to their consoles, I find if hard to believe that ALL of the people posting in there have modded their systems or whatever it is Microsoft has been flagging for.
One forum post shows exactly the type of sub-par support I experienced: A supposed Microsoft Support Rep named “StormShadow425″ belittles a concerned customer and at one point tells him “But this is what you get back for tampering the console.”
Here is the thread if you are interested in seeing what type of support you can expect from Microsoft now.
As it will take several weeks for Microsoft to check my system / account / whatever black magic they do to determine if they made a mistake, I have pretty much written off any more Xbox Live and online gaming on my Xbox for a month at least, if ever. My fiance never actually played on Live, we would either System Link via Wireless to play Left 4 Dead with each other, of if a friend came over and we wanted to play 4-way split screen, or she would just play her little games, so not a big deal there. Our accounts were going to revert to Silver in February I think so not a big deal anyway. I think I am more angry with the spectacular terrible support Microsoft has, and the way they treat their customers… especially right before the Holiday season when people are looking to spend on gifts? I was considering picking up an Arcade bundle for my nephew, but I think I have pretty much crossed that off the list, ha ha! He will have to settle for a Nintendo DSi or possibly a PS3 now that they are cheaper.
Has anyone been banned by Xbox Live for accused modding and managed to get the ban lifted? Other than buying new consoles and starting new Xbox Live accounts, there must be some way for Jeff to get out of this mess.
(Photo: jim699)
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I feel Microsoft was completely in the right with this update, and honestly feel it is a little late. Part of the TOS of xbox live is that you do not tamper with the console in anyway. Yeah I know nobody reads that, they just hit “Agree” and that;s why legally they have the right, you agreed to wave your rights.
XBOX Live is maintained by MS, if they want to keep modified systems off their service so be it. One reason many people are overlooking is a modified system has the potential to modify gamesaves, account info, etc. Thus a Modded system could technically be a cheater.
In addition a modded system could play Illegal copies of games both XBLA and Retail versions. Do you think they will allow that to happen. Sure they can make it an offline only XBOX, does that “Brick” the system? No it doesn’t, it only removes the online capabilities that by using a Modded Console violates in the first place. Be happy its not a Wii, they have been Bricked for much less violations.
And in conclusion BE VERY happy you got the time you did in with the system, your lucky they didn’t do this much sooner. For those who say if it is after the warranty you have the right to take it apart and mod it, sure you do. But the second you break the seal and crack it open, you don’t just void a warranty, you take responsibility for any failures that might occur afterward.
My special needs grandson found great joy in being on line with his XBox 360 where he was active so much so that for two years he only wanted point cards, games and anything to support his interest. Gifts for his birthdays and holidays, money he earned for mowed lawns and chores all invested in his game.
One fateful Saturday night he attempted to log on and found that his “file was corrupt”. He was devastated but I encourged him to call the help line believing the problem could be remedied. After ten days of a microsoft and XBox crash course, filing forms and endless two hour wait phone calls I was finally informed my grandson’s account wa now an “F2″ and nobody could give any information to me or anyone else about that account. Special questions had been asked two years earlier to an autistic kid who just wanted to play so he made up answers he never wrote down. Explaning his problem and my involvement made no difference. Now he is not able to retrive his prized “profile” and I cannot bear the thought of one more marathon phone call with no results. Can anyone help me fight my grandsons exile status with Microsoft?
@halcyondays: So is spending $5200 on tickets to sporting events, or clothes, or skydiving, or whatever you happen to be into.
People spend their money in dumb ways that happen to be fun for them. Shockingly, not every dollar earned is used for long-term investments, paying bills, or helping the needy.
@halcyondays: i think you meant to say
“Spndng $5200 n vd gms s rmrkbl wst f mny.”
@halcyondays:
Really? I guess you haven’t considered this too deeply.
All people spend some money on entertainment in one form or another. What forms of entertainment should they choose?
Certain particularly inexpensive options are friendly card games or network television. TV watched online can be inexpensive as well. Most people are going to pay for their internet access and cable whether they use it much or not, so using it is certainly preferable. But very few people are going to be happy never doing anything fun other than watching tv or surfing the web.
Night at the movies? For 2 people, $20 for tickets, maybe $10 for snacks, for about 3 hours of entertainment.
Eating dinner out? Anywhere from $20-$100 for a couple of hours.
1 good video game? $40-$60 for a new release (less for older or used games), for anywhere from 20-100 hours of entertainment per person, depending on the game and genre.
Now, entertainment values of different media will vary from person to person, but in terms of dollars per hour, it is difficult to do much better than a good video game.
@halcyondays: $5200 is nothing. I’ve probably spent close to that on JUST World of Warcraft in the last 5 years, with multiple accounts.
@halcyondays: Video games are a hobby, and a pretty inexpensive hobby actually. Talk to someone who does woodworking, restores cars, or one of 100 other common hobbies that cost more.
@halcyondays: We thank you for your Judgement, sir.
@halcyondays: Trolling the internets is a remarkable waste of time. Repying to trolls is a remarkable waste of time.
@halcyondays: You probably spend as much on frivolous entertainment as well – just not on video games.
@bigd7387: Actually, “Intellectual property” doesn’t exist. Thats a common term encompassing several quite separate areas of the law (copyrights, patents, trademarks) which don’t even interact with each other.
I’ve also yet to see any court agreement which has ever ruled on the validity of these clickwrap agreements, so can you point me to them?
@bigd7387: It voids your warranty at worst, but cannot be used as justification for banning your Live account. Besides, Microsoft wouldn’t have any f’ing way of knowing that you put a case fan in your console in the first place, so that the guy in the link did is coincidental at best, but not a symptom of the problem.
@chocobo:
Points well made. But Damn, it’s still $5200 for video games.
@akuma_x: They also stop you from installing games to the hard drive and using your saves on unbanned systems. It is getting a little too draconian.
@Blueskylaw: thats really not that much. i have spent more than that total for all my systems and games, that goes back to the atari 2600 and i own all three current gen systems. it adds up over the years.
@Blueskylaw: Sigh. When I think of how far $5,200 will get me at shady Tijuana bars… The booze. The powders. The adorable, winsome sheep with their come-hither looks…
@Fishy007: Lol @ Shaftoe. I don’t work there.
It only costs 30 bucks a year to keep your console under warranty. If you are an Xbox 360 user, you know the chance of it dying is pretty good. I don’t see why any 360 user would not want to warranty their console.
If mine died and was out of warranty, I’d gladly pay MS to fix it as then it won’t ever be banned. MS has been banning modded consoles for years. This isn’t anything new.
Did the OP seriously expect his console to work on LIVE after he had someone add a fan to it? I don’t know that the cost was to add a fan locally, but I bet it was more than 30 bucks.
@semanticantics:
Unless the fan is added in a REALLY stupid way, there’s no possible way for MS to tell there’s a fan in the box without it physically in their hands, or being told about it.
@Colonel Jack O’Neill: Exactly what I was thinking.
@pahncrd: If they let you use saves from a banned console on an unbanned one, that would defeat the whole purpose of the banning
@temporaryerror: As long as he’s honest about it in the description, I don’t see the harm. At least he’d be able to recoup a BIT of his money for the system.
I have seen a lot of banned X-boxes going up on ebay lately, though. I wouldn’t expect to get more than $50 max for it.
@Dyscord: The 360 will still work after it’s been modded. Games will still play just fine. The Console will also still work just fine. Microsoft’s stance is just that. Mod the box to your heart’s content!
Just don’t expect to be able to connect it to Xbox Live.
@Dyscord: I didn’t miss it, you missed it. Think about what you just said. “The Xbox had third party hardware in it.” How does Microsoft know that? By snooping around inside your hardware that it doesn’t own.
I understand the desire to make sure people aren’t using mods to give them an advantage in the game. I get that. But Microsoft’s way of dealing with it betrays their controlling nature and lack of boundaries. Surely there are ways to catch cheaters without forcing everyone to give up the rights to private property.
@HazyCloud:
I didn’t know about the $30 a year to keep my console under warranty.
While that seems like a solution that probably works, it’s simply too much for me to deal with. $50 Live Fee + $30 Insurance for the console and there’s STILL a possibility that MS will ban you. Add that to the initial cost of the unit and for 4 years of gaming you pay about $640-ish.
It might be a lure if you’re heavily into Xbox only titles, but with the PS3 it’s $300 for the console and let’s say $100 for 1 repair over a 4 year period. The Xbox just isn’t worth the hassle anymore. I feel like a persecuted criminal when all I did was get my console fixed.
@Cyberxion101: Try to match the Address info EXACTLY with what appears on your credit card statement. My pal had a similar issue. Use all caps if necessary.
@dwasifar: Well how else would they know this stuff if they weren’t keeping tabs on your machine somehow? You own the console, but you use it to access THEIR system. If your system doesn’t seem normal, they have a right to refuse access to their service.
How else would you suggest they do this? They want the OP to send the system in to double check, he doesn’t seem to want to do that since “It might take weeks”. What more should they do?
@dwasifar: @dwasifar: You can’t believe that people are taking Microsoft’s side? Really, as a Xbox live subscriber, I support the banning of modded consoles. If someone with a modded console has the ability to ruin my gaming experience by cheating, then they should be banned. Now I do hope that Microsoft has it’s act together, and that banning bar has a reasonable threshold certainty to doubt. I am not going to blame the op and say his consoles should have been banned. BUT I am going to remain skeptical of both him and Microsoft. I also won’t be buying any used Xbox hard drives or Xbox’s.
@Dyscord: Dude, that’s assuming that Microsoft didn’t fuck up. And given that their own firmware updates have bricked consoles in the past, I’m not willing to dismiss the possibility that their verification process might be faulty.
Now you, you seem to be going out of your way to dismiss that possibility, and I’m not quite sure why. It’s not exactly unprecedented for Microsoft to fuck up. I mean shit, you have to have at least heard of the whole RRoD problem, right?
And you’re assuming that Microsoft ever asked him to send his system in in the first place. There’s nothing to suggest that this possibility was ever raised as an option for the OP, and reading the support forums doesn’t suggest that anyone else was given that option either. So you’re judging him for not having done something that no accounts suggest he was ever given the option of doing, and I have to wonder why.
In fact, something about your posts just doesn’t add up to me. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might question whether or not you work for Microsoft. If I were a conspiracy theorist, that is.
@ktetch: I’ve seen many courts uphold EULAs.
[www.playnoevil.com]
@Dyscord: I don’t see what the problem in that case is personally, but I’m glad microsoft bans the cheaters anyway. I’m not defending them whatsoever.
However when you tell people these consoles were banned “to protect the gaming experience” and all you’re doing is banning a huge swath of people playing backups, there’s a disjunct. They’re protecting their profits, not the community – which is FINE, but just be honest about it. It’s like they’re so embarrassed that their security measures have been defeated again and again on what was supposedly an “unhackable” console, they don’t want to admit they have to keep banning pirates.
In any case, what sucks most is people like the OP, who just wanted the thing fixed, didn’t know better and got banned by M$, all because the damn console is so failure-prone people were actually preemptively fixing the huge design flaws.
@Dyscord: Well, when modded consoles are capable of getting around the banhammer (Can’t find a single unmodded X360 for sale where I live; can’t find a single console that’s been banned either) what does it do but hurt the legit users caught in the crossfire?
@lpranal: I think MS sees this as a “Better safe than sorry” type thing. Look at it this way. If it was just because people were playing backups then why would they only ban you from Xbox live? That doesn’t stop anyone from playing backups.
If they cared only about backups, they would probably do the firmware update thing that Sony does with the PSP.
Is it a little harsh? Yeah, it is. No question. But to many people, Live is superior to the other matchmaking services. Given that they sink money into it, they want it to stay that way.
@parad0x360:
They also ban for replacing the HDD with a bigger size.
@coopjust:
And you wouldn’t be banned because it’s a legit copy and doesn’t send MS the information that a flashed drive does.
@semanticantics:
That’s what they’re claiming, but the modding community is also claiming the firmware itself is not detectable – bad game rips are.
In any case, it’s information that could not hurt his appeal.
@Quatre707: Try pyrotechnic, now there is one expensive hobby!
But you area right, video games are rather inexpensive for a hobby, but like it was said before, if you add up the cost from your first console to now it could be a staggering amount of money. I practice with my pyro hobby and also have multiple consoles(I’m from the intellivision and atari 2600 era), and still tend to play those old bricks for the nostalgic felling.
Want to do some math? I have been collecting the consoles since atari 2600 onward, so guess how much money has been dumped on that little hobby?
@AirIntake:
Yes there is. If the new fan uses even slightly different voltage, the motherboard is completely willing and able to report that. “Upgrading” the fan CAN get the banhammer, it IS a mod.
@Zenatrul: They would ban you if you replaced it with a smaller size, too. The size is hardly the reason why they don’t want unauthorized drives hooked up.
@MikeGrenade: Live on original xbox = clusterfuck of haxx0rz.
@nstonep:
Yes, they could. A fan the size you’d fit in an xbox would draw about 0.5 watts. If you hook it up directly to the power supply, it’s such a low figure there’s no reasonable way to detect that vs. just plain differences between parts. And, besides, there has to be some tolerance on that because you can charge your controllers through the XBOX, never mind power peripherals.
But if you hook it up to, say, something more critical like the DVD drive power, I suppose the current draw would be more noticeable. But, of course, that’s stupid.
@rickhamilton620: I know that. But it was posted to show microsoft’s terrible service. I was just making a point as to why they would say “You should have let us fix it”
@MikeGrenade @skwish: The original Xbox was hack-able (e.g. Halo 1 & 2).
Those who figured out how to pirate/mod items on the Xbox back then had obtained the ‘digital signature’ the system used…and that signature could be re-implemented onto copied game discs, thus giving them the appearance of retail code (and crazy Warthog-firing Shotguns, etc).
That IS NOT the case with the 360, the digital signature hasn’t been forged (yet), or Microsoft is using some other form of code authentication (not sure which). – This is why everything is now done via DVD Firmware tampering, it’s a work-around by that community. And, in a way, shows that MS learned from their security issues last time around…
In any event, no, Microsoft is not doing this to stop cheaters; It’s a false-flag comment on their part. They’re doing it to stop the pirates that still like to play on Live… Nothing more.
@AirIntake: Yeah the saves did – hence why they banned all 3rd party memory cards. People were editing them to get achievements they didn’t actually get.
In my eyes this whole think reaks of bad security on MS’s part. Saves should be encrypted, hard drives should have been encrypted.
Everyone knows you can use 3rd party hardware on a PS3? I learned how to install a 3rd party HDD on Sony’s PS3 blog!
@Dyscord: I realized that as I scrolled the page and was like “crap!” I guess I was just tired of people blaming him just because the link was awkwardly placed in the OP’s email. Time for me to eat crow I guess! :p
@rioja951>Back to basics boys! Fuel, accelerants / oxidizers and fire…: Not just DSL… Cable IP addresses are typically dynamic as well, but on a longer timeframe.
and just FYI, I have never modded my system, but I was caught in the ban as well because “it appears we have too many systems connected.” I live in a house with 4 other people. We’re all gamers. Every bedroom has a 360, as well as the living room and “computer” room. Yes.. we have 7 360′s in my house. And apparently that is suspicious to MS.