Here's a Halloween surprise you probably weren't expecting.

Wake up this morning only to find your Xbox Live account has been banned? That's probably because you had a modded console and were playing illegal, pirated copies of games.

"We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs," a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN. "In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE."

 Though Microsoft wouldn't confirm specifically when these bannings took place, a quick look over on its official forums suggest it's been going on over the course of this past week. Plenty of users have created threads on the technical feedback forum reporting of having their Xbox 360 console banned.

 Microsoft also added this is a standing policy and isn't tied to any specific time-frame.

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE," the spokesperson added. "The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them."

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/104/1040853p1.html

I'm safe - opps. Booted up my 360 and ... not banned. I guess my copy of Forza 3 was legit.

The trick is they had a temp ban for anyone who got banned, they complained and singled themselves out...

That's great, nice to see this happening.

Well to be honest the pirates deserve their consoles knocked offline. I wish Nintendo and Sony took similiar actions. Pirates need to learn you can't just go stealing software their is a cost. Developers and publishers are going bankrupt thanks to these pirates and I hope each one of them pays for their transgressions!

Don't be too naive, developers are going bust for excessive budgets due to the extra demand HD gaming puts on a technical front.  Sure they should get money for every game sold but some developers out there are really being irresponsible with their spending.  Of course this doesn't help when you have third party devs going head to head against first party who have none of these serious budget issues or in cases where other third party companies are receiving financial aid from governments making a uneven playing field. 

Nintendo should indeed be taking action too but generally they're so hopeless at security on their consoles I'm not sure if they can even detect pirates.  As far as I'm aware there is no piracy on the PS3 yet so Sony are fine, the old PSP obviously has been hurt by it though.

The pirates know how to stay hidden from Microsoft though so many will never be caught.

Well on the bright side people can't pirate Xbox Gold. So that's money MS will always collect.

@joelcool7

Dude! Are you F'kin serious!? Guys is this grassmatt serious? WTF! Dood! No one has taken the fight to pirates more than SONY! Look they nearly  elIminated the piracy on PS2 and PSP.

oh and WTF IM BANNED FROM LIVE?! WTF!

No not really, im on now! 

Nearly eliminated piracy on the PS2 and PSP?

Come on seriously the PSP was hacked only days after it reached store shelves. I remember hearing of it being able to play illegaly aquired software and movies. I myself know tons of pirates who have tons of stolen software on their PSP's. Not to mention all those movies that are on their PSP's that they never paid a dime for.

I also know tons of people with modded PS2's. I knew a guy with like over 100 pirated PS2 games. I know if I buy a PS2 I can go to my local fleemarket and get it modded for 50$ and can pick up burnt games for about 5$ each. Or of course if I wanted to I could also just burn them myself.

Fact is the PS3 may not be easy to pirate but Sony has far from fought pirates.

I know that in year 2000 piracy cost the industry over 2-billion dollars and last year I heard a report in (The Province) that it could exceed 6-billion dollars. Now if that much money is being stolen by pirates then how can it possibly be left out as a factor for studios demises. Many acredit the loss of PC games to the piracy industry it just isn't profitable to release games on the PC anymore, people just burn copies for themselves. Same goes for Wii/360 now as pirates are increasingly not buying software.

I remember when Acclaim went under at the end of the last generation they acredited a large amount of their losses to piracy. I also know other major publishers like Midway also talked about piracy. Today many believe the lack of support for PC by Activision (Example the inferior PC port of ModernWarfare2) is due to piracy!

Every dollar pirated is another dollar not landing in developers pockets. Another dollar they don't have to survive!