Xbox 360 Hack Brings Confusion

I don't want to play against cheaters on Xbox Live. Win or lose on your own merits. I don't care if people modify their boxes, it does belong to them, but they can't expect to be able to use it in a public forum.

Personally all this ****'s me off! Fine rip a game you just want to play offline if thats what your into (is buying second hand off ebay for £15 really too much for you?). But when you want to go online and play against others I think you should just buy the game. People inevitably ruin it for the legitimate players who just want to have fun on Live. I hate peoples obsession in screwing things up. Why do all these idiots think finding a way to run under maps in Gears of War is fun? Its not. Your just pricks. Play the game already.

Im all for modding but strickly for homebrew applications and not for piracy the same people who buy pirate games moan about the cost of retail game prices, but its them who are cauasing higher prices on games, nut i completely agree modding should be allowed to allow home development, infact though is there really an excuse for it on the xbox 360 with XNA microsoft have been quite willing to allow home development. As for live cheaters they should be banned i personally hope that microsoft do ban modders off live, ideally we would see softy, sony and ninty, all providing home developmet software and get rid of the reason for mod chips in the first place, as we all know the main reason is for piracy and that is wrong and ruins it for us all.

Most of the cheating I've seen on LIVE! has nothing to do with any modifications.

It has to do with what is called 'Glitching', taking advantage of errors/oversights in the game to do things that shouldn't be possible. For example, the aforementioned running below the map on Gears of War, and certain phenomena which allow you to shoot people while remaing relatively invulnerable in Rainbow 6 Vegas. Most of the people who do this crap/think its cool, are under 18. I wish there was an option to only play with older people, both so I wouldn't have to put up with this crap, and to keep their high pitched voices out of my ear. Some old friends of mine are in an informal Rainbow 6 clan which I refuse to join since I caught one of the members glitching. It wasn't so much that HE was glitching, it was more that when I caught him and called him on it, some of the senior members were like, 'so what, it was just a friendly match...'. I don't care to be associated with anyone who even cares to know how to do such things, much less puts them into practice.

I too get naffed off by cheating of this type on Live but the only thing I can see happening next is for MS too ask players to report anyone seen using such cheating in games. Next stop, kick them off Live or suspend their account, once enough evidence is gathered.

I think these hackers are unsung geniuses with what they do technically, with their main reason being to play import games, old forgotten arcade roms and such. However, when you get those who use their advantage to cheat online at games, it's quite annoying, I feel like switching off to play on my own and have done so many times.

I do agree some kind of dev kit for the public with XNA, would stop or cut down such activity, as well a having these consoles be multi region out of the box. MS should stop fighting modding gamers and try to meet them half way, better the devil you know as they say.

Negotiation is the key, MS.

So you've seen examples of people using mods to cheat (on the 360)? Or are you talking about glitchers? And yes I make a point of submitting negative player reviews/complaints when I encounter glitchers.

I don't think much of this article. It doesn't appear that the author is very well informed at all. Looks rather more like hes parroting the party line.

Game piracy does not equal cheating. Its wrong for its own reasons, no need to spread false information.

BTW, see if these links work

http://forzamotorsport.net/forzamotorsportnet/handlers/forza2handler.ashx?ID=46119&mode=7
http://forzamotorsport.net/forzamotorsportnet/handlers/forza2handler.ashx?ID=46105&mode=7
http://forzamotorsport.net/forzamotorsportnet/handlers/forza2handler.ashx?ID=46082&mode=7

I couldn't agree with you more. How does modding your 360 allow you to cheat in games? The game code still needs to be signed (i.e. unmodified to boot) so how the heck are people cheating? I'll tell you how - they aren't. The issue is that M$ can't ban boxes for playing backups. Many countries around the world have legislation that allows for the legal back of your games, Australia being one of them. So M$ has had to find a new way to stop the *real* issue for them, which is piracy.

Now I'm in no way saying that it's cool to pirate, as I do believe in supporting this industry wholeheartedly, however M$ should have taken a different approach. Why the heck are they banning BOXES? Why not ban the actual LIVE account? In the case of a modded box, you can always flash the firmware back to it's original state & it becomes completely stock again, but its now still banned regardless?

So what are modders doing now? Getting their boxes banned from LIVE, then taking them into EB or Gamestop to trade in on a new elite! Modder gets home, attaches his old LIVE account to the new box and he's away again! WITH all of the ill-gotten gamerscore to go with it. How is that teaching a modder a lesson? They now have a fresh new box (most likely needed since the old one was about to 3red light anyway) and some poor sap is about to buy a banned live box. Maybe not so bad if they purchased from EB or GS but what about Ebay?

Bottom line, M$ should have killed LIVE accounts. Make them loose their gamer score. Then they can go out and buy a new account and if the box is still modded, ban it again till the original firmware is back and copies can't be booted.They should be able to ad that to the EUA with little hassle - must play with originals on LIVE. But I'm guess this was a less profitable solution. But really, the current method is just insane and is asking for a world of hurt from so many directions.

Oh I don't really agree about the killing of LIVE accounts. I've already heard that there have been false positives. MS' response? You're screwed. They should at least accept the box back for inspection. Seal intact or absent evidence of modding? Re-instatement. AFAIK, they have not offered this option.

My seal is broken. Bought it used and it desperately needed a cleaning (scorch marks on faraday cage next to heat sink). Plus I had a DVD drive issue (fails to eject when no disc is inserted). Cleaned, lubed, and problem diagnosed and workaround found. But no modifications to either the hard or firmware.

As to the question of backups...its a legitimate issue.

In my opinion, an ideal solution would be for damaged optical media to be replaceable for a nominal fee...say around 5 bucks for games, less for DVDs or CDs. A system of this sort is long overdue.

I'd be VERY skeptical about these so-called 'false' detections. You'll find those are just modders staging very convincing arguments. MSFT didn't just run auto-bans. And they didn't make decisions to ban accounts on a simplistic basis. The test was rigorous (to detect copied media through certain vulnerable games - i.e. unstealthed burns). Once a system was flagged as being a probable modded box (remember that the firmware itself is thus far undetectable) MSFT manually assessed each account and had a look at what that particular user had been playing i.e. the console's diet. Got a million titles from Japan, USA & Europe? Play Gears of War 3 days before it was in shops? Ever boot the 360 Kiosk disk? If there was more evidence to prove that the box had indeed been modified, then ban hammer was brought down. At which point, it would have been fine to nail the LIVE account and not the box. Having said that, it's ignorant of MSFT to not thoroughly investigate those cases that claim foul by performing hardware inspections. Even then though, there are people out there that specialise in replacing the seal inside 360's so what are MSFT to do?

I think part of the popularity of the X360 is also the piracy. Some people are just hipocrites. They dont care which console it is, as long as it has piracy on it.

Oh I'm sure at least some of the people crying foul are modders looking for sympathy.

But I don't thinnk any system is error proof. Somewhere in the system some clerk transposes a number somewhere, or something. To put something like that in place and refuse any appeal seems draconian. I know MS screwed me over on something that should have been a no brainer. When I purchased my original Xbox, I bought the 2 year extended warranty and they only gave me a 1 year warranty. Just past the end of the first year, I developed a DVD drive fault and had to fix it on my own, when I should have been under warranty. There was a process by which I might have been able to prove my side of the story but they made it very difficult. Thank goodness for my neighborhood modders, they pointed me in the right direction and I ended up with a superior DVD drive from the one I was originally issued. I would have had to pay about the same amount if I had sent it off, and they probably would have sent me back the same crappy model of drive I started with.

What has this go to do with playing cheaters? This JUST LETS YOU PLAY BACKUP GAMES. There is no way of running modified code using this DVD firmware hack. So of course people expect to be able to play on Live using it.

i want to knwo if it really works because somepeople say that the guy who makes it works for m$ and everyone is going to be banned with modifeied boxes...
it that true?? and does this fw really works??