Madden 10 (360) released early


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No I know what it means, but I think talking about stealth checks etc is pushing it :p

Not that I mind, I want to talk about this stuff :p But sadly NW mods won't allow it.

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Yeah honestly, I am with DM, I really was just poking fun at the fact it might not have been from Gamestop. :laugh:

I could care less what people do.

It is interesting what Kushan has posted though, and I honestly begin to wonder if it was not intentionally released by MS or whomever strictly as a means just to detect modded consoles with time-stamps. I always have felt it was just a matter of time someone do something like that. I would think a major release like this only makes sense to do it with as you know some people can just not wait to the street release date and play it early.

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Yeah honestly, I am with DM, I really was just poking fun at the fact it might not have been from Gamestop. :laugh:

I could care less what people do.

It is interesting what Kushan has posted though, and I honestly begin to wonder if it was not intentionally released by MS or whomever strictly as a means just to detect modded consoles with time-stamps. I always have felt it was just a matter of time someone do something like that. I would think a major release like this only makes sense to do it with as you know some people can just not wait to the street release date and play it early.

I'm pretty sure that if Microsoft did officially do that, it would be somewhat illegal. However, that doesn't mean they don't do it, they just don't necessarily tell anyone =P.

Last year, just before there was a ban wave, quite a few games started leaking ridiculously early straight onto P2P networks. Nearly all of these games, from Saints Row 2, to Fracture, to Call of Duty, did NOT match up with versions that were leaked a few days/weeks later (that came from...different places). Then, November hit and quite a few people got banned. After November, the group releasing those games suddenly disappeared. That's a hell of a coincidence if you ask me.

Of course, I do believe that an employee at a disc pressing plant or something was sacked and prosecuted at the same time, could be related, might not be, but still the lesson is clear. Piracy or not, as with most things, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. And if you're a pirate, beware, big Microsoft is watching you :ninjapirate: .

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I'm pretty sure that if Microsoft did officially do that, it would be somewhat illegal. However, that doesn't mean they don't do it, they just don't necessarily tell anyone =P.

Last year, just before there was a ban wave, quite a few games started leaking ridiculously early straight onto P2P networks. Nearly all of these games, from Saints Row 2, to Fracture, to Call of Duty, did NOT match up with versions that were leaked a few days/weeks later (that came from...different places). Then, November hit and quite a few people got banned. After November, the group releasing those games suddenly disappeared. That's a hell of a coincidence if you ask me.

Of course, I do believe that an employee at a disc pressing plant or something was sacked and prosecuted at the same time, could be related, might not be, but still the lesson is clear. Piracy or not, as with most things, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. And if you're a pirate, beware, big Microsoft is watching you :ninjapirate: .

Someone I know very well *cough* played all of those games and others like Mirror's Edge, Fable 2, Gears 2 etc and wasn't banned.

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Someone I know very well *cough* played all of those games and others like Mirror's Edge, Fable 2, Gears 2 etc and wasn't banned.

My speculation is however the MS servers catch you, the switch/trigger isn't running 24/7. Therefore you could get away with running a bad copy for a few hours, but if you put 100+ hours into a bad copy of COD chances are you'll be flagged.

Then it's just a case of waiting for your death whenever MS drop the ban hammer.

It would be much more efficient if a bad copy banned instantly, but as I said above however MS tracks it must be done at time intervals.

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Yes but this person plays online a lot so there was plenty of opportunity to ban him if it is detectable.

Also, you can be banned from XBL at any time. However they do a wide sweep of bans usually every November, or at least have done since November 2007 iirc. I think Halo 3's beta was the first wide scale ban and they followed it up with another when it launched later in the year. It's not running 24/7 liked you said, but it is more frequent than just once a year.

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Without knowing exactly what it is they scan for, its hard to pinpoint the real causes of the bans, but one thing I do know is that the scans run 24/7, all year long.

Who knows what they do with the data, its widely believed that they "flag" people all year long, then have a massive ban wave once in a while. Most of the pirates believe that the current hacks are undetectable, but people still get banned so its hard to say what it really is.

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Well no, there hasn't been a ban wave since1.4, but according to the release notes, not a lot has actually changed since 1.4 (Aside from a few bits and pieces not relating to "stealth checks"). This is probably about as far as we can discuss it without mods getting a little bit tetchy =P

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But if the banning service is running 24/7 then surely someone must have been caught out since 1.6 was released.

Where are you getting your info from though? It isn't X-S is it? Because the amount of BS they talk over there is unbelievable.

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But if the banning service is running 24/7 then surely someone must have been caught out since 1.6 was released.

Where are you getting your info from though? It isn't X-S is it? Because the amount of BS they talk over there is unbelievable.

Well that's just it, what I said was the checks run 24/7 however the bans come but once a year. The last ban wave was November, FW 1.5 was released in December and 1.6 was May or something. So until the next ban wave hits, nobody will know if those firmwares are "vulnerable" and even then, nobody will really know what they're vulnerable to unless something suddenly changes.

Pretty much every time something changes, like when Live goes down or a new dash update is released, the guys behind the firmware run a bunch of checks. God knows how they do it, but they're able to monitor the commands Live sends to the DVD drive of the 360. Thats how they know it runs 24/7.

It's possible that it isn't a simple case of "flag and ban" for MS, maybe they have to collect a lot of data to work out who's been a bad boy or not and once a year, they run a bunch of checks on that data. I don't know, like I said nobody does but one thing people do know is that Microsoft DOES ban people, so there must be some way of detecting it.

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Yeah I understand what you're saying and agree, but I've read about plenty of people who are banned throughout the year, not only in November.

I've still not heard of anyone on 1.6 that's been banned, but the next 2 months will be very interesting.

Edit: I also love how the OP hasn't revisited this topic since he posted it :rofl: Maybe we should start talking about M2010 :p

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Yeah I understand what you're saying and agree, but I've read about plenty of people who are banned throughout the year, not only in November.

I've still not heard of anyone on 1.6 that's been banned, but the next 2 months will be very interesting.

Halo ODST, mark it on your calendar and prepare for

you_made_MrT_Cry.gif

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Why do you think I'm buying it :shifty: :laugh:

Nah it's really cause I want the preorder codes

I'm saying expect a ban hammer to drop just before the 360's next massive game which will cause an internet uproar of tears.

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Nah, I reckon it'll drop around November. Possibly during the launch week of MW2. Boycott or not, that'll sting hard enough to make quite a lot of people rush out and buy a new system =D

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You're both wrong, it'll happen when the dash update releases (the one including twitter) etc :p

Nah it's prob gonna be a mixture of all 3.

@AB, don't worry I know what you were getting at, you're talking to me remember, NW resident halo fan :p

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Nah, I reckon it'll drop around November. Possibly during the launch week of MW2. Boycott or not, that'll sting hard enough to make quite a lot of people rush out and buy a new system =D

Yup this business practice of only banning consoles works well in MS' favour, more console sales and revenue :laugh:

I do think it really would make sense to ban live accounts also if MS wanted to tackle piracy more seriously. Banning a Live account would pretty much make a large % of the pirates think twice and be uber paranoid. However that would probably cause an uproar with pre-paid gold subscriptions... still T&C are T&C, MS would be covered fine.

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People would just flash one console and keep one for retail even more than they do now, if MS ever decided to ban XBL accounts.

You'd still need to play on the modded console with your gamertag. People care about achievements, most pirates probably pirate 90% of their games collection, they'd hardly get any achievements if they didn't use their main gamertag on their modded console.

Plus people would get shot down like flies on forums saying they'd completed GoW3 and in their XBL sig it was nowhere to be found :p

(I assume whatever 'logs' get created on your 360 about playback of a disc tie to your local saved profile info and upload to MS, so it doesn't matter if you play a game offline, if it's under your profile it's logged for sending next time your profile goes online).

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NAh, you gotta think like a business. If you ban someone's live account, there's nothing keeping them tied to your console any more. They could just as easily replace it with a PS3.

But, by only banning the console and not the account, people will feel the need to keep their gamerscore and achievements and such and be more likely to just buy a new console.

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NAh, you gotta think like a business. If you ban someone's live account, there's nothing keeping them tied to your console any more. They could just as easily replace it with a PS3.

But, by only banning the console and not the account, people will feel the need to keep their gamerscore and achievements and such and be more likely to just buy a new console.

I know I'm just saying the ideal situation to curve piracy would be console bans. It'll be interesting to see how Sony handle it when the PS3 gets hacked, PSN accounts are free so Sony aren't losing any money banning one. In fact over on the gamestrailers forums there's already people immature fanboys crying about their PSN accounts getting banned for abuse on Home and other things (there was some lawsuit posted in the Sony section a week or two back I think over a banned PSN account).

I guess the question is how large of a % of the 360 install base do you think pirate, and how much of an affect would it have on MS to ban accounts for piracy as well as console? Because if those people really care about their gamerscore, you can bet a good % of them are going to turn legit if MS threatens to axe their account, no?

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I'll see if I can get this closed before the usual topic ensues...:(

Why would you close this topic? Sigh. Some people.

THE GAME WAS RELEASED in STORES early! What's your beef with that?

Uh. Yeah. This is what my friend of a friend of a guy who knows a guy sent me...

Who said anything about P2P? I said the game was released in stores. You can take your pirate hat and eye patch elsewhere.

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