banning

Whitten: Xbox Live banning ‘a cat and mouse game’

November 20th, 2009 at 11:00pm Under Xbox 360

Speaking to VentureBeat, Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten discussed the recent round of Xbox Live bans. According to Whitten, banning users from Xbox Live is “a cat and mouse game.” Said Whitten, “These were people that were pirating software.” He added that Microsoft looks at banning users “from a safety and anti-cheating perspective” and that the company looks out for its partners. Responding to the widely reported story that Microsoft banned over a million Xbox Live users, Whitten said that the figure is inaccurate. “I cannot explain to you why people would think it was a million people,” said Whitten, then adding quite succinctly, “It wasn’t a million people.”

Whitten went on to state his belief that Microsoft does “a really good job” of monitoring the activity on Xbox Live, specifically in terms of piracy and online harassment. He concluded that the company is “committed to making [Xbox Live] better and better.”

The interview also covers the recent integration of Facebook on Xbox, the effect Modern Warfare 2 had on Live activity (hint: a big one) and whether or not we’ll be playing Facebook games on our consoles anytime soon. Don’t expect a straight answer on that last one though, as the closes Whitten gets is, “In the future, they will move much closer together.”

Whitten: Xbox Live banning ‘a cat and mouse game’ originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tags: ban, banning, business, facebook, marc-whitten, xbox-live

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Firm considers class action over Xbox Live bannings

November 19th, 2009 at 03:01pm Under Xbox 360

Boutique law firm AbingtonIP is “investigating” what it considers the “convenient” recent Xbox Live bannings. The firm posits that the “tens of thousands” of banned Xbox Live subscribers who used modded consoles deserve recompense due to the timing of the action. The firm believes that said timing — i.e., after Halo 3: ODST and shortly before Modern Warfare 2’s releases — was executed to net Microsoft as much money as possible out of potential Xbox Live subscribers before banning the modded devices. The class action lawsuit would attempt to obtain a refund for the prorated sums left on the banned Xbox Live subscriptions.

According to Joystiq legal columnist Mark Methenitis’ analysis: “To me, this certainly sounds a lot like a cash grab directed at a company with deep pockets, but perhaps there are more facts than they are letting on.” He explains that a user savvy enough to have a modded console would also know not to connect it to Live without “serious risk.” Methenitis concludes, “If, in fact, Microsoft is inducing people to buy a service only to terminate them, then there’s certainly a deceptive business practice concern. But this seems far more cut and dry than that.”

[Thanks, C. Carl Carlston]

Firm considers class action over Xbox Live bannings originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tags: abingtonip, banned, banning, class-action, law, lawsuit, mark-methenitis, xbl, xbox-live, xbox-live-bannings

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Cheat at Monster Hunter 3, get banned until 9999 AD

August 31st, 2009 at 01:15pm Under Wii / Nintendo

Even long after Bruce Willis has saved the universe, identified cheaters will still be unable to play Monster Hunter 3. At least that’s the case for one Japanese player, who tried to connect online and was given a dismissive prompt (in Japanese; machine translation here), indicating that he’d been banned until December 12, 9999.

The message cited “modded data” as the cause for the banning, and while we can’t confirm that there was any questionable data on the system, we will say that if you’re looking to hunt monsters (possibly around early 2010), you may want to avoid the uber hax!!1! option. We’d hate for you to have to go on living a lootless life for the next couple thousand years.

[Via Kotaku]

Cheat at Monster Hunter 3, get banned until 9999 AD originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.