Should be ok to play i presumed if you recieved yours early thousands more will have.

Erm, if it's a legit copy, then you should be good, I reckon.

If you don't play online it shouldn't matter. If you are concerned you can just wait a few days before going online.

didnt microsoft say something about playing this game before street date?
mm maybe just dont play online with it yet?

Don't play it yet. Why? Because it hasn't released in the US and I am jealous.

You're allowed to play the game as long as it isn't pirated. If you bought it legitimately you are ok.

You won't get banned for playing it online. The only people getting banned are the people who downloaded and played the pirated french release that was leaked about 2 weeks ago. The other pirated releases that came in the last week are fine to play online as they are properly stealthed.

Of course a genuine copy is fine to play too.

There has been some mix up with this as of late. MS have gone on record in the past saying they DO NOT BAN FOR PLAYING GAMES BEFORE RELEASE DATE.

They were only referring to the french p2p rip - loads of people have been banned for playing that.

MS bans based on locale and where they know they have not yet shipped retail discs.  You can listen to this by going to Major Nelson's site and downloading one of his podcasts from a month or two ago.

Also, in the session is a funny story where someone was playing a ripped game and streaming the video over the web.  One of the MS Live guys found out about it and banned him while he was playing.  Hilarious.

Can't you call Microsoft customer services or something and ask them about this?

...you...lucky...bastard...