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My friend just got his 360 banned, presumably for downloading Rayman Legends.
- Thread starter MR BLACKMAGIK
- Start date
I'm only tempted due to the sporadic nature of this whole situation. I'd rather have Microsoft issue a statement, explain their future policy and such, then penalties are rolled out to everyone involved.
Instead everyone is kept in the dark. No one knows what is actually going on, random penalties and consequences. Feels like any other corporation or company would at least be somewhat predictable in this scenario, no one has a clue what Microsoft's people thinking or doing right now.
They don't have Xbox marketplaces. If you lived in Oman or Bosnia and made a native account, you almost certainly wouldn't have stumbled upon these freebies by accident.
he probably means theres no marketplace for these countries
im not sure why hes repeating that everytime though because it was still easy as fuck to download the games.
just a simple bing search. not exactly an exploit.
All someone would've had to have done is typed in a game into the bing bar and they would've found it. That's why I'm fairly positive that this glitch was found by someone in their home region (Oman or Bosnia)
H_Prestige
Banned
So what? That would imply that simply opening up the marketplace app with a non-marketplace supporting regional account is a bannable offense.
they did it back then with fable 2 i think. not sure though but im sure they have the tools to do that.
They let people keep Fable II, but they did revoke the license for the Halo 4 Crimson Map Pack earlier this year.
AzureSkies
Member
A few people did get accidentally banned for a bug with the Map Pack too, and those bans were reversed.
I'm not well versed in the mechanics of this particular aspect, how would one do that?
Son of Cervantes
Member
Never the DEA, Heisenberg. Never that.
Zoe
Member
The vast majority of games on the service simply errored out. Someone did the work to find the ones that could be exploited.
Or people were fishing for exploits as they're wont to do.
It's a fairly safe assumption that they're doing IP checks.
Yep, that's the reasonable response I'd expect for this, considering it was a mistake on their end, but some people on here don't agree with that though.
I believe that the guy shared it between two separate consoles though, which got him the ban. Even though there is nothing specifically written against that either, but I wouldn't have tried that for anyone because you never know.
Anything put out there about this is always good - if there was a fair, clear warning about this from the start, no one one here or at other legitimate sites like CAG would have thought twice about doing this.
His ban message was one of the few I've ever seen from the XBL Enforcement Team that actually highlighted a specific line and added specific text outlining the DLC sharing.
Stories like yours are exactly why I don't want to just sit and accept this, I want to have something done about this. Except that they never answered my forum inquiry days ago and I have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to get a call-back from MS Support on the phone.
Yup, that's the proof that they are certainly capable of reversing bans and revoking licenses for their mistakes - which is smarter to do because it actually gives people a chance to properly buy the game or DLC.
Barsoomian
Member
People talking about Fable and Halo map packs having licenses revoked should remember those are first party MS studios. I don't know if MS can revoke licenses case by case, or if they had their own programmers do a title update or server side hotfix to manage it for their own game only.
hearsaybear
Member
Wasn't the halo map pack thing a title update for the game itself? I remember people still had the maps, they just couldn't use them online.
Can someone give more details on how this exploit worked? Was it like the Netflix code generator or the create silver accounts and click the dashboard ad to get a free month gold code trick?
I've seen a handful of people say they also took part in this recent gold trick while reading up on this ordeal, I wonder if its related to the bans.
I submitted a request for comment, haven't heard anything back. Wrote an op-ed on it that's been published online, and have a similar one primed for my paper this week. But that's it. I saw that one N4G article and nothing else. Surely they know about this. Probably don't want to piss off big brother ahead of the Xbone launch. They want their goodies.
According to bl4ck silv4, who has been in contact with various support Microsoft has recently started cracking down on digital content use. even if say you're Canadian and purchase a digital game from the US at full price with American currency you'll be banned. You can not leave your digital region period.
Microsoft is claiming region free but what they didn't say is that it only applies to physical software.
Wow, that's crazy.
What the fuck? That's crazy.
AllBusinessJr
Member
Welcome to your digital tomb, idiot customers. - Xbox One (pre-180)
I'm not sure I trust the veracity, or knowledge, of the average MS support person. But even if that was the case, why not make some type of announcement for that? Seems so weird to just immediately flip a switch one day and say, "nope, we're banning anyone that purchases anything outside their region -- legitimate or not."
Eanan
Member
Damn all those folk who bought cheap games on demand from the Hungarian marketplace better watch out now then!
hearsaybear
Member
This does not bode well for an all digital future. Not saying what people did was moral or not fraud, but revoking your rights to legitimate purchases like this sure doesn't give me a lot of hope for the xbox one.
Genesis Knight
Member
Looks like tons of people are being banned for this now. Link in the Oman thread.
We've been talking about that for some time now.
Genesis Knight
Member
Oh, I thought that was recent activity.
Son of Cervantes
Member
Thought they'd started banning again...we haven't heard about any new bans related to this for about a day now, have we?
I'm not sure you can necessarily count that - the relevant team may simply not work weekends. It's possible that it's died down, though.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
You should mention that he brought it up on this podcast: http://www.1milliongamerscore.com/2013/09/gamerscore-popcast-106.html
At around 33 minutes. He explains how he has several accounts/xbox and describes his experience with support.
There have been bannings going all week, for different things. I wouldn't necessarily say we're out of the woods, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were done.
Ya I thought I had it linked but my iPod didn't update my post.
the rules changed when the beta dashboard was first starting to be tested back in July. Its rumored that the new dashboard update has hooks that let them track digital content easier.
My guess is that the recent market place pricing errors forced Microsoft to roll out this new enforcement rule before it was ready. That would explain the randomness in type of ban received.
I don't recall Microsoft ever notifying me of a tos/coc update that I had to agree to though. Does anyone else? Not sure if that's legal practice or not.
That was interesting, I hope he gets his account back.
Thomasnoki
Neo Member
It is a standard reply from enforcement team. I got 2nd reply from MS. They just said my console been banned because it is against the Code of Conduct to create and account with a different region or change your region to a region you are not located in.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
What's weird is that he has 400k gamerscore and is basically on a podcast with the guy who has 900k gamerscore, so of all the people to actually ignore and not bother with, it's him. Apparently he has some form of direct access to people at MS though, so maybe he'll get his stuff sorted out.
Special treatment for notable people, permanent bans for everyone else.
Also, rrod was ignored by media for a year, so this will go unnoticed.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
Well fuck, I purchased Guilty Gear via my US account when Arc botched the launch on XBLA because I really wanted to play the game and there was no certainty it would be released in my region.
We don't know.
That is what is so shitty about this situation.
The silence is bullshit and does nothing to "protect the Live service and its members" as Microsoft claims.
As a genuine, 100%-legitimate "multiregional" person -- I was born in the US, my permanent address and credit card billing address are there, but I reside now in Japan and speak and read both English and Japanese well enough to play games in both languages -- this is appalling and discriminatory. It is not the least bit unreasonable to expect and demand the right to play games in any language that you can read, regardless of where you happen to be physically present at any moment.
I also think a ban for circumventing regional prices is bullshit (which Microsoft have added to their ToS in the July update).
Microsoft, Apple etc. surely like to go to Asia for cheap labour and that is called globalisation.
If that is their new policy, then this is no way to go about it!
Turn off region switching for the console and make it a process you have to apply to go through. (with proper warning messages)
Console banning is no way an acceptable way to deal with this issue*
(if this is an issue or not, is another discussion)
Turn off region switching for the console and make it a process you have to apply to go through. (with proper warning messages)
Console banning is no way an acceptable way to deal with this issue*
(if this is an issue or not, is another discussion)
It's been shown In The past if you're a known personality or have a large online following you'll get special priority treatment. Microsoft likes to keep anything that could be negative on the down low.
I think it was silv4 that mentioned that some of the people that got in on the Oman/rayman thing are people Microsoft uses or has used with advertising Xbox. Guarantee nothing happens to them.
Lots of money in regional pricing, just ask the Canadian telecoms. Person A could live a mile away from person B in the province over and pay 3 times the price on services.
exactly this, I signed up for a US PS+ account and bought a Vita because I wanted to play Chrono Cross & Legend of Mana (as well as get FF7, 8 & 9 for 50% of what it cost in NZ/Australia)
In the next 3-5 years I can see regional digital pricing disappearing as more and more people are just going to avoid being gauged by unfair pricing practices.