At the time of writing, 83 people had commented on Lewis’s story yesterday about Microsoft biting back. With news that Microsoft had banned over 600,000 people recently for pirating games, I was wondering whether anyone had any arguments for piracy, and whether they thought being banned from Xbox Live (and getting any more Achievements) was just.
Here at TSA we’re obviously strictly anti-piracy and will ban anyone that admits to actually pirating games, so choose your words carefully, but for some their Achievement level loss is actually a harder pill to swallow than just having to go out and drop another £130 on another Xbox just to get back online again, so how do you feel about that?
The story yesterday on the BBC’s Newsbeat was a disgrace, in my opinion, clearly biased towards the gamer, who admits to being a pirate, and seemingly disregarding the fact that pirating games is A Bad Thing. “My name’s Raz, I’m 25 years old, I’m a massive Xbox gamer. I play every day after work and all day on the weekends,” said the chap in question, who says he got his machine ‘chipped’.
“I took it into a shop, there was a guy back there and I asked him and he did it for me. He charged £75 to get it chipped but at the end of the day I said to myself I’ll pay £75 to get it chipped, after two games I’ve paid the money back. I’ve probably saved about £600 and I’ve copied roughly 30 or 40 games. A lot of them I’ve downloaded or I’ve taken off friends that have downloaded themselves.”
“To be honest, I’ve contemplated whether to move to Playstation 3 or buy another Xbox. I wouldn’t do it again but I really don’t know if I’m going to get the Xbox again now.” All this because Microsoft banned his gamertag from Live, and after 30 or 40 games, I’d say the punishment of him having to just splash out on a new console wasn’t nearly harsh enough.
Over to you…