Over five hundred thousand (500,000) Xbox 360 players was banned by Microsoft from Xbox live service last month in a big crackdown on illegal modification of the consoles by the manufacture Microsoft. The ban will affect a lots of Xbox 360 consoles around the world that have are alleged to have been modified the game in a way that violate XboX Live terms of service. Microsoft can not say exactly how many people the ban we be affected, but a small portion of the millions of Xbox 360 player around the world we be affected it long run. Microsoft said that the banned consoles can still play games, but cannot connect to the Xbox live service for multiplayer gaming software update and content download.

War against Xbox 360 piracy

The ban coincide with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is expected to be the biggest gaming event of the year. One of the  call of Duty player that was affected by the ban, confessed to be a software pirate called “Raz,” told the BBC about his disappointment of the ban. “My name’s Raz, I’m 25 years old, I’m a massive Xbox gamer. I play every day after work and all day on the weekends. The Xbox for me is just about playing online, that’s why I love it well.

It was a big day when, the latest game we’ve been waiting months and months for. We’ve played the whole series and this one’s come out, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. All loading up, everything’s going well, I was happy. It came on to the start screen of Call of Duty and I thought, ‘Do you know what, let me quickly sign in online’. I sign in online and next thing I see, ‘Your console has been banned from Xbox’.

I was pretty distraught at the time, I can’t remember exactly what it said but I saw the words ‘banned’ and I was gutted, completely gutted. At first I was in shock, I mean it’s always at the back of your head using pirate games you know there’s that possibility but you haven’t heard about it, there’s been no warnings and you haven’t heard it happen to anyone in the last two years.

I wasn’t expecting it. I was just like, ‘OK, what do I do now? Is this just a joke?’ So I thought, ‘Let me restart the Xbox’. I restarted, signed in again, same message. I did that three times, same message. I love it, I love playing Xbox live. I play with my mates all the time. It’s just a good laugh, we all sit there chatting, playing games. Now I don’t know what to do. To be honest, I’ve contemplated whether to move to Playstation 3 or buy another Xbox. I wouldn’t do it again but I really don’t know if I’m going to get the Xbox again now.”

In a release by the company, it stress that piracy is illegal  and that modifying of Xbox 360 console to play pirated CD and disc violate the Xbox live terms of use, which void the warranty and result in a ban from Xbox 360 live.

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