Forza 3 bannings!

Hello all!

Playing Forza 3 early? Looks like it will mean this - http://i38.tinypic.com/nmc8sp.jpg

Try to not play the game early!

 

wow,wonder how many people went online

 

Seems weird that its an account ban. I have played on my offline xbox, but using my live profile/hard drive and have achievement points logged on my gamerscore and they even show up on xbox.com but I have not gotten any email. But I only did however go on live with games that are out and on my xbox I only play released games on.

Thanks for the heads up guesswho, anyone got anymore information on this?

 

people SHOULD know better.

 

A one week banning.

http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=143933

 

A friend of mine has been suspended indefinitely.Happened last night.220,000 gamerscore and 4 yrs of his life gone.

 

its a rolling ban once the week is up it will ban untill 9999

 

Its not sure that you will get banned, 4-5 person on my friend list was playing halodst when its leak and they are still not banned

 

that's because this is specifically related to forza, not odst.

 

wow. Can't people wait? I have never been banned. Of course I don't take those chances. Playing any game early is stupid in my opinion.

 

So wait you think they will start doing ban waves on accounts?

 

Agreed.

 

I read up on this on another site (maybe Ars Technica?), and the authors interviewed the head security enforcer person at MS Live. That person said that this ban applies ONLY to people who are playing burned copies of the game that leaked early. He went on to say that if somebody happened to get a legit retail version of the game because a vendor broke the street date, that the person would NOT be banned. This puzzled me since I couldn't figure out how the hell MS would be able to tell the difference.

Then I read up on wave 4. My theory is that they leaked a wave 3 version of the game (and who knows how many other games...) online, but the legit retail version is actually wave 4. In other words, a super simple way to 100% identify the modders.

I've read other posts wondering about Brutal Legend and other games that seem like they should be wave 4, but were released online as wave 3. I'd be extremely careful with any game being newly released online in the immediate future which is not wave 4, as they all should be now.

Just my .02

 

I understand where you are coming from. But wouldn't it be an illegal action on Microsoft to "leak" a copy to someone fully knowing they had piracy intentions? Sounds like they would be shooting themselves in the foot. All just to ban some people...

 

You're right about that. I imagine that MS didn't directly leak the game to the intarwebs themselves, but rather created their first batch of the game as wave 3. The wave 3 version then gets into the hands of the 'leaker mole', whoever/where-ever that person is in the chain, and the 'leaker mole' does the dirty work.

That's how these scene groups work... getting people on the inside, at the very beginning of the distribution chain, to rip the games (or whatever else) for them.

Sort of like a counter-intelligence operation by the CIA or KGB.

 

I don't see what that would be any different than, say, law enforcement setting up an undercover sting op to catch street corner drug dealers. Contrary to popular belief, it's not illegal to "bait the hook".

Got to remember, we don't have the right to use LIVE, we have the privilege. So MS isn't violating any of our rights by doing what ever is in their power to catch modders. We all agreed to their ToS, so they're covered.

 

You said a key word that is Law enforcement... M$ is not law enforcement. I know they publish and develop this product so yeah it is possible for them to do that but i think a waste of time. I have no interest in this game and if you go on live before a release date and or unverified in abgx then you get what is comming to you. Sometimes patience can be a virtue..........But it is kind of funny how all of a sudden the ban hammer is coming and xbl is getting rid of third part mem cards and stuff too........ Then again it is xmas time and what better way to boost console sales right around this time of year.

 

Right, but that's why I also mentioned rights vs. privileges. Laws enforce the public's rights. LIVE is not public. It belongs to MS. It's their personal property. Granted, there's still a few laws MS must abide by, but using whatever reasonable means available to catch modders is well within their rights to protect their property.

 

if you cannot wait a a couple weeks for a game to be released, you might have a problem.

 

Well, there is a simple test to my theory. When we get an actual, legit, verified rip of Forza 3, if it is wave 3, I am wrong. Microsoft used some other way, as yet unknown to us, to do this mini ban-wave. One possibility is that is was a review copy, or a bad rip, or something else like that. This would be a huge escalation of MS ban policy, as they have never had near-instant bans due to those issues before.

If the legit retail is in fact wave 4, then I am correct, and no matter the semantics of how it happened, it did. MS somehow got a wave 3 version of the game out on web distribution pre-release and used that info to identify modders. I'd prefer this option, as it would mean that MS has not necessarily made major strides in immediate ID and banning of people playing bad rips/review copies.