Xbox Modders Fight Back

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Microsoft is no stranger to the inside of a court room in its 34-year history, and another is potentially coming what with Law firm Abington Law having announced that they are investigating a Class Action Lawsuit against the software giant, representing people who have been unfairly banned by the Xbox Live service.

Abington admits in the second paragraph of its brief that hacking your Xbox is against Xbox Live’s terms of service, yet, their issue with Microsoft is the timing of these bans. Abington is alleging that Microsoft waited until Halo 3: ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were out to ban the users from the online service, hooking them into purchasing the games then kicking them off the online network.

The law firm alleges that sales of the two games (including Modern Warfare 2 and its record breaking sales) would be considerably less if, allegedly, Microsoft hadn’t pulled this bait and switch trick to lure modders into buying the games. As reported earlier here on TFTS, the only way to‘unban’ yourself from Xbox Live is to buy a new console.Further, Abington says that Microsoft’s goal in banning modded consoles is combating piracy, and they have banned users who modded their Xbox for other reasons, although it was stingy on what these other reasons might be. The law firm simply listed, “Altering your Xbox functionality not related to Xbox Live or piracy”.

On top of that, they also insist that by using Xbox Live bans to punish these pirates, they sometimes target ‘innocent’ users of the service. One wonders how ‘innocent’ these users are when even the law firm admits in its own brief that, modding your Xbox is against the terms of service.

Game developers have recently favored the consoles over the PC because off the added difficulty of pirating games on the console, but if Microsoft finds itself unable to enforce its term of service the way it wants, that could change.