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[SmokinGunZ1981]

What I don't get is why the OP hasn't contacted MS yet, unless i've missed a post stating he has?

If I were in this situation i would of at least contacted customer support about the situation not just moan about it on here.

Not agreeing with what MS has done but at least give them a chance to rectify it.

 

[SmokyDave]

Well, there's all those games and accessories you've already bought. Also, your friends may all have that console.

Eh, I guess the second one is a good reason. I'm lucky that my friends are mostly on PC.

 

[Vorg]

What I don't get is why the OP hasn't contacted MS yet, unless i've missed a post stating he has?

If I were in this situation i would of at least contacted customer support about the situation not just moan about it on here.

Not agreeing with what MS has done but at least give them a chance to rectify it.

Someone who works for Microsoft posted here telling him they would take care of it. They haven't yet.

 

[AkimbO_Arcana]

Someone who works for Microsoft posted here telling him they would take care of it. They haven't yet.

Still, I would call customer service over and over and give them a hard time before I

Spoiler

wouldn't

go out and buy a new console. Especially if it's clear that the GAFer working for MS lost interest in the case.

But too late. At this point the OP deserves what he gets imo...

I envy MS, who needs consumer friendly customer service, when you have customers THAT loyal lol...

 

[Hitokage]

I envy MS, who needs consumer friendly customer service, when you have customers THAT loyal lol...

Sounds consistent with their response to account hacking.

 

[Gustav]

Sounds consistent with their response to account hacking.

And their response to the RROD.

 

[jcm]

You realize why they do it though right? For years MS has been fighting off the moding community and people playing burned/leaked copies of games like Halo or Gears. Before MS caught onto modded DVD firmware it was easiest to 'flag' people most likely suspect by who was playing games before they released to retail. Leaked copies of games go online often weeks before retail release. MS just sits back and waits for the hordes of 'hackers' to pop in their copy and sign into Live.. then Bam! Flagged for a ban.

I even think MS went as far as to update the Live ToS a few years ago to say they can terminate consoles/gamertags if they are suspect of violating the ToS, which I think indicates not playing games before release dates. I'll have to see if I can dig it up..

But if the ToS clearly states it, and the OP agreed to the ToS (which he did).. MS has every right to act how they choose. They do it thin out the hackers and modded consoles connected to Live. They do not do it to be assholes and not let people play games early.

edit. In all my years I have never once heard of a console or gamertag being unbanned so the OP was probably SOL from the get go, regardless of GAF connections.

You're late on this, and we've been round and round on it already. MS themselves have said in the past that people who buy and play the game before the street date have nothing to fear. That they have the ability to detect pirated copies, and those are the only ones they will ban.

 

[WAR recon zero]

if you hate money so much please paypal me the rest

 

[I'm an expert]

Wait.. dude bought.. another.. geezus krist. Lol. No words.

 

[DigitalOp]

I'm really disappointed in m$ after reading your story op

Especially your halo games picture, someone that loyal is the one who gets punished, utter bullshit especially since the pirates really don't suffer that much, believe me

Pretty jacked up, I know you love the games but you really shouldn't have bought another Xbox op, why support the company who fucked you over? ? You're telling them it's okay for them to do that to you again


And trust me, they will

 

[AkimbO_Arcana]

I'm really disappointed in m$ after reading your story op

Especially your halo games picture, someone that loyal is the one who gets punished, utter bullshit especially since the pirates really don't suffer that much, believe me

Pretty jacked up, I know you love the games but you really shouldn't have bought another Xbox op, why support the company who fucked you over? ? You're telling them it's okay for them to do that to you again


And trust me, they will

The thing is, it seems the OP didn't even made a call to MS to get this resolved. Probably no one at MS even knows of his case...
...Besides the guy from here working for them, who dropped him.

Still smh...

 

[The Elite]

Well, yeah.

"Man, these guys sure did fuck me over. Guess I'd better chuck 'em a couple more hundred".

Daft.

It would be a tough one for me. I absolutely love the Halo franchise and the only place to play that is on a Microsoft console. But I'd feel like a chump giving them $200 after something like this. I'd really have to think it over. This is absolutely terrible customer service.

 

[I'm an expert]

The thing is, it seems the OP didn't even made a call to MS to get this resolved. Probably no one at MS even knows of his case...
...Besides the guy from here working for them, who dropped him.

Still smh...

It seems this is the case. The op should not have ignored the normal avenues for getting this resolved just because some guy on a forum said he'd take care of it for him. But as this thread documents, the op has mad quite a series of.. unfortunate.. decisions.

 

[NSider]

I get why the OP was banned, but it's inexcusable that he isn't unbanned yet.

I find it amazing that people are still defending Microsoft for this.

 

[Danis]

It seems this is the case. The op should not have ignored the normal avenues for getting this resolved just because some guy on a forum said he'd take care of it for him. But as this thread documents, the op has mad quite a series of.. unfortunate.. decisions.

In defense to the OP, Stinkles it's "some guy" at a forum. He's Franchise Development Director for Halo and works at 343i. If he said he'd get me unbanned, I'd trust him too.

 

[AkimbO_Arcana]

I get why the OP was banned, but it's inexcusable that he isn't unbanned yet.

I find it amazing that people are still defending Microsoft for this.

Why should they unban him, if he doens't even ask them to do so?

 

[I'm an expert]

I get why the OP was banned, but it's inexcusable that he isn't unbanned yet.

I find it amazing that people are still defending Microsoft for this.

Read the thread, then read it again, and then read it again. We've been around in circles. Both sides are perfectly justified in their reasonings. There's a lot of fuck ups on all sides of this.

In defense to the OP, Stinkles it's "some guy" at a forum. He's Franchise Development Director for Halo and works at 343i. If he said he'd get me unbanned, I'd trust him too.

That's fine, but there's no guarantee this dude has any pull with customer service or network admins. And as evidenced by this thread, he certainly has no obligation to follow up on anything.

 

[phosphor112]

I remember when I first posted in this thread.

Some white knight proceeded to come in and throw words around how this will get fixed, etc etc.

Yep. Not fixed.

Just Microsoft doing what it does best.

Found the white knight:

Yeah, everyone should hate Microsoft because one guy managed to get a shady pre-release copy of a game and got banned for trying to play it on Live. And then the franchise director of the game himself promised to unban him personally within moments of the poster complaining on NeoGAF.

Why does it even happen in the first place? If they don't want people online don't turn the fucking online on. It's not the consumers problem.

Microsoft bans people just because they fucking can.

Microsoft bans pirates 99.99% of the time. It would be bad for business to consistently do otherwise.

I didn't even want to respond after that. What a fucking joke.

To OP, I really hope this gets unbanned, because fuck all if it doesn't.

 

[Yagharek]

In defense to the OP, Stinkles it's "some guy" at a forum. He's Franchise Development Director for Halo and works at 343i. If he said he'd get me unbanned, I'd trust him too.

Well next time we know there's reason to doubt him.

 

[gaming_noob]

I'm not defending the ban at all but how can we be certain that the OP bought it (i.e. not stolen it) when he's stated he does not have a receipt?

 

[Yagharek]

I'm not defending the ban at all but how can we be certain that the OP bought it (i.e. not stolen it) when he's stated he does not have a receipt?

He could just have easily posted a scan of a friend's receipt and falsified it that way. At some point you just have to take their word for it, and I would trust the OP before ever trusting Microsoft's customer service track record.

 

[Fudgepuppy]

If I got banned, you would be crying when seeing the pics of my Halo-collection.

C'mon Stinkles, shed some light please.

 

[NSider]

Why should they unban him, if he doens't even ask them to do so?

A Microsoft employee promised to resolve the issue and told him later that he forwarded the issue to the appropriate department.

Read the thread, then read it again, and then read it again. We've been around in circles. Both sides are perfectly justified in their reasonings. There's a lot of fuck ups on all sides of this.

I don't think keeping his account and console banned is justified at all, despite all the excuses I'm reading in this thread.

 

[dallow_bg]

Oh Stinkles..... Where are you?
You just helped someone else last week in another thread.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

Oh Stinkles..... Where are you?
You just helped someone else last week in another thread.

In his defense, he's on vacation.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44461116&postcount=6933

 

[robotnjik]

First, sorry for my english. The same shit happen to me. BUT even weirder situation. I got Halo 4 same time as OP, maybe later, played on my office console. I have gamertag on USB stick. Later I went home and put stick in home console, went on Live, checked what is going on and that's it. Few days later I saw this thread on neogaf and checked my account and everything was fine. Went to friend's house and we played Reach over 8hrs in multiplayer. Everything was fine. At home didn't played nor turn on console at all, I had other things to do.

In morning of 6th November I received email from Live enforcement team that my gamertag is banned. Why? First I twitted to MS support cause they are great guys and nobody replied to me. Great. I searched and found out that they don't TALK AT ALL ABOUT BANS. It's company policy to not talk about that via support or something like that. I called them and they gave me forum address to complain there. I posted my issue. They deleted thread and said that they are sorry and they understand, but ban will stay because of PRE RELEASE GAMEPLAY. I wrote another thread, they deleted and said how this is not place for this kind of talk. I had on my gamertag 1650 msp, dozen XBLA games, lot of DLCs, even fuckin' BF3 server. What kind of pirate invest in online?
After week of useless writings and talks with MS I turned on my home console and wanted to make new gamertag and play some Halo 4 with friends. When console tried to connect to XBL error appear and after testing connection Console Ban message popped up. What? I EVEN DIDN'T PLAYED HALO 4 ON THAT CONSOLE!!! I wrote again and they repeated their stance about not discussing bans.

Now, I play lot of games earlier cause I'm writing reviews from time to time and never had issue with publishers. I don't have any MS PR contacts cause they are not supporting part of Europe where I live, but SE, Activison, THQ and others sending me copies. So, obviously their banning system isn't perfect and they don't want to acknowledge that.

I didn't want to open new thread when this happened to me, but seeing now that this issue can't be solved I wanted to share my story.

 

[I'm an expert]

A Microsoft employee promised to resolve the issue and told him later that he forwarded the issue to the appropriate department.



I don't think keeping his account and console banned is justified at all, despite all the excuses I'm reading in this thread.

That's fine. Do you think the op was justified in trusting some stranger on the internet instead of actually contacting MS's customer service himself?

 

[onlyindreams]

That's fine. Do you think the op was justified in trusting some stranger on the internet instead of actually contacting MS's customer service himself?

Stinkles isn't some stranger on the internet though. http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_O'Connor

 

[dallow_bg]

That's fine. Do you think the op was justified in trusting some stranger on the internet instead of actually contacting MS's customer service himself?

Yes because that "stranger" has a history of getting things escalated and resolved.

 

[I'm an expert]

Stinkles isn't some stranger on the internet though. http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_O'Connor

Lol oh man, I get that. You could have David fuckin Jaffe himself promise you he's going to get you unbanned. The point is you don't know this dude personally, he has no obligation to you other than helping out a fan, but even that most likely goes as far as he'll make a call or give someone a note to pass on and that's it. This guy doesn't work for the people who banned the user. Do you think this guy went down to MS's XBL admins' office himself and pleaded a case for GAF user Skelington and brought this thread as proof? I somehow seriously doubt it.

My point is MS isn't purposely keeping the op banned after all this, they probably have no idea the op even exists. He put his faith into someone who said would do him a favor and they probably fell short. That's all. Op had a responsibility to not put his fate in someone else's hands, unless it was someone actually working on who does or doesn't get banned on XBL. Unless of course op has some sort of correspondence he can post that explicitly states Stinkles went completely out of his way to make sure he'd be unbanned immediately. If that's the case, well then shit he got burned pretty bad.

And in case anyone is joining this thread late or hasn't seen a lot of my posts from way, way back in this thread - I hate MS, have never owned their consoles or played their games, and have zero allegiance to them. I'm strictly talking from the business side of things.

 

[AkimbO_Arcana]

First, sorry for my english. The same shit happen to me. BUT even weirder situation. I got Halo 4 same time as OP, maybe later, played on my office console. I have gamertag on USB stick. Later I went home and put stick in home console, went on Live, checked what is going on and that's it. Few days later I saw this thread on neogaf and checked my account and everything was fine. Went to friend's house and we played Reach over 8hrs in multiplayer. Everything was fine. At home didn't played nor turn on console at all, I had other things to do.

In morning of 6th November I received email from Live enforcement team that my gamertag is banned. Why? First I twitted to MS support cause they are great guys and nobody replied to me. Great. I searched and found out that they don't TALK AT ALL ABOUT BANS. It's company policy to not talk about that via support or something like that. I called them and they gave me forum address to complain there. I posted my issue. They deleted thread and said that they are sorry and they understand, but ban will stay because of PRE RELEASE GAMEPLAY. I wrote another thread, they deleted and said how this is not place for this kind of talk. I had on my gamertag 1650 msp, dozen XBLA games, lot of DLCs, even fuckin' BF3 server. What kind of pirate invest in online?
After week of useless writings and talks with MS I turned on my home console and wanted to make new gamertag and play some Halo 4 with friends. When console tried to connect to XBL error appear and after testing connection Console Ban message popped up. What? I EVEN DIDN'T PLAYED HALO 4 ON THAT CONSOLE!!! I wrote again and they repeated their stance about not discussing bans.

Now, I play lot of games earlier cause I'm writing reviews from time to time and never had issue with publishers. I don't have any MS PR contacts cause they are not supporting part of Europe where I live, but SE, Activison, THQ and others sending me copies. So, obviously their banning system isn't perfect and they don't want to acknowledge that.

I didn't want to open new thread when this happened to me, but seeing now that this issue can't be solved I wanted to share my story.

I said wow...

I have my own history with MS customer support and lost quite a bit of paid content once. But this is mind bending stuff right here...

 

[WickedLaharl]

In his defense, he's on vacation.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44461116&postcount=6933

He just posted this morning. At the very least he should post in this thread and state a possible reason as to why the OP hasn't been unbanned yet.

 

[Yagharek]

First, sorry for my english. The same shit happen to me. BUT even weirder situation. I got Halo 4 same time as OP, maybe later, played on my office console. I have gamertag on USB stick. Later I went home and put stick in home console, went on Live, checked what is going on and that's it. Few days later I saw this thread on neogaf and checked my account and everything was fine. Went to friend's house and we played Reach over 8hrs in multiplayer. Everything was fine. At home didn't played nor turn on console at all, I had other things to do.

In morning of 6th November I received email from Live enforcement team that my gamertag is banned. Why? First I twitted to MS support cause they are great guys and nobody replied to me. Great. I searched and found out that they don't TALK AT ALL ABOUT BANS. It's company policy to not talk about that via support or something like that. I called them and they gave me forum address to complain there. I posted my issue. They deleted thread and said that they are sorry and they understand, but ban will stay because of PRE RELEASE GAMEPLAY. I wrote another thread, they deleted and said how this is not place for this kind of talk. I had on my gamertag 1650 msp, dozen XBLA games, lot of DLCs, even fuckin' BF3 server. What kind of pirate invest in online?
After week of useless writings and talks with MS I turned on my home console and wanted to make new gamertag and play some Halo 4 with friends. When console tried to connect to XBL error appear and after testing connection Console Ban message popped up. What? I EVEN DIDN'T PLAYED HALO 4 ON THAT CONSOLE!!! I wrote again and they repeated their stance about not discussing bans.

Now, I play lot of games earlier cause I'm writing reviews from time to time and never had issue with publishers. I don't have any MS PR contacts cause they are not supporting part of Europe where I live, but SE, Activison, THQ and others sending me copies. So, obviously their banning system isn't perfect and they don't want to acknowledge that.

I didn't want to open new thread when this happened to me, but seeing now that this issue can't be solved I wanted to share my story.

If this happened to me I'd be doing credit card chargebacks on every single penny I'd given to that company. What a racket they've got going on. If they can steal games, accounts and neuter consoles that easily then they need to be raked over the coals in the media for it.

 

[phosphor112]

First, sorry for my english. The same shit happen to me. BUT even weirder situation. I got Halo 4 same time as OP, maybe later, played on my office console. I have gamertag on USB stick. Later I went home and put stick in home console, went on Live, checked what is going on and that's it. Few days later I saw this thread on neogaf and checked my account and everything was fine. Went to friend's house and we played Reach over 8hrs in multiplayer. Everything was fine. At home didn't played nor turn on console at all, I had other things to do.

In morning of 6th November I received email from Live enforcement team that my gamertag is banned. Why? First I twitted to MS support cause they are great guys and nobody replied to me. Great. I searched and found out that they don't TALK AT ALL ABOUT BANS. It's company policy to not talk about that via support or something like that. I called them and they gave me forum address to complain there. I posted my issue. They deleted thread and said that they are sorry and they understand, but ban will stay because of PRE RELEASE GAMEPLAY. I wrote another thread, they deleted and said how this is not place for this kind of talk. I had on my gamertag 1650 msp, dozen XBLA games, lot of DLCs, even fuckin' BF3 server. What kind of pirate invest in online?
After week of useless writings and talks with MS I turned on my home console and wanted to make new gamertag and play some Halo 4 with friends. When console tried to connect to XBL error appear and after testing connection Console Ban message popped up. What? I EVEN DIDN'T PLAYED HALO 4 ON THAT CONSOLE!!! I wrote again and they repeated their stance about not discussing bans.

Now, I play lot of games earlier cause I'm writing reviews from time to time and never had issue with publishers. I don't have any MS PR contacts cause they are not supporting part of Europe where I live, but SE, Activison, THQ and others sending me copies. So, obviously their banning system isn't perfect and they don't want to acknowledge that.

I didn't want to open new thread when this happened to me, but seeing now that this issue can't be solved I wanted to share my story.

This is 100% believable.

 

[Mikor]

Damn, OP, it's a shame that this still hasn't been resolved for you, but it's not entirely unexpected. I've done my fair share of posting in this thread the last go 'round, and I think I've made my stances pretty clear. The arrogance of the Live enforcement team is astounding. Good luck with getting your Gamertag restored.

 

[Baconsammy]

He bought it from a store that was willing to make that sale. Maybe if devs stopped giving pre-order DLC to shithole Gamestop independent stores wouldn't try to make loyal fans in a shitty way?

Seriously, you can't defend Microsoft in this, this isn't a pirated copy it is a legit version that is all that matters here.

It's easy to defend Microsoft on this at this point if he hasn't directly contacted Microsoft Support. If he's just relying on Frankie to do it for him, that's dumb. Call support, explain what happened, they'll unban it. There's been other people in this same situation on other forums that went through this. And if the store he bought it from really did ring it through later, they'll be able to give him a receipt now.

Yes because that "stranger" has a history of getting things escalated and resolved.

I have a feeling the lack of receipt was the sticking point for Frankie. If you can't prove you actually bought it, there's a great chance it's stolen (speaking specifically about items sold weeks+) if you obtained it long in advance of the game's actual release date. The fact that he bought a brand new 360 without ever having called Microsoft support himself is just mind boggling. Sorry to the OP if he did contact support directly and that it just wasn't conveyed, or I misunderstood the situation.

 

[robotnjik]

If this happened to me I'd be doing credit card chargebacks on every single penny I'd given to that company. What a racket they've got going on. If they can steal games, accounts and neuter consoles that easily then they need to be raked over the coals in the media for it.

Now, I wish that I put my CC details and do something as you suggest, but all transactions I did were with prepaid cards. I'd been even FIFA'd last year and MS did nothing to check what happen with my 2200 stolen msp.

 

[clear31]

so if your console is banned, you dont even get access to xbla or games on demand purchases you made???

 

[alr1ght]

so if your console is banned, you dont even get access to xbla or games on demand purchases you made???

I believe you can play the stuff on your HDD, but you can't connect to anything online to re-download.

 

[piteru]

Sorry for the offtopic but after reading all these post I have shit myself with all thr customer service from ms. I'm asking the experts.I had an xbox fat where I created my only gamertag and had bought a ton of stuff from xboxlive. I decided to sell to a friend and bought a slim one. I recovered my gamertag on the new one and transferred my stuff with USB sticks but I didn't transfer the licenses.
So here are my two question
A) can I transfer my licenses now or do I have to be always on xbox live?(I dont have access to the first console)
B) if my friend decides to go pirate-style is there a fucken possibility that I could get banned for owned previously his console??
As for the op, I hope you get unbanned soon mate. That's not the way of treating loyal customers

 

[JaseC]

In his defense, he's on vacation.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=44461116&postcount=6933

No, he hasn't posted in this thread in a month, but he's been actively browsing (and posting on) GAF:


(Three hours ago.)

If he has no news to offer, even if it's just something to the effect of, "I've done what I can", I'd imagine it's not a tall order that he take a minute out of his day to tell the OP as much. The fact he's been actively posting means he's also been knowingly ignoring the OP's PMs.

.

 

[Baconsammy]

Sorry for the offtopic but after reading all these post I have shit myself with all thr customer service from ms. I'm asking the experts.I had an xbox fat where I created my only gamertag and had bought a ton of stuff from xboxlive. I decided to sell to a friend and bought a slim one. I recovered my gamertag on the new one and transferred my stuff with USB sticks but I didn't transfer the licenses.
So here are my two question
A) can I transfer my licenses now or do I have to be always on xbox live?(I dont have access to the first console)
B) if my friend decides to go pirate-style is there a fucken possibility that I could get banned for owned previously his console??
As for the op, I hope you get unbanned soon mate. That's not the way of treating loyal customers

If you sold access to your downloaded games along with your Xbox to your friend, you violated the TOS and they can ban both consoles accessing the games. If not, then all you need to do on the new 360 is transfer licenses and redownload the software. At that point you can play online or offline.

 

[piteru]

What do you mean sold access?I erased everything from the previous console but I didn't do the license transfer. What do I have to do in order not to violate the tos?

 

[Baconsammy]

What do you mean sold access?I erased everything from the previous console but I didn't do the license transfer. What do I have to do in order not to violate the tos?

You did it the right way. On the new 360 just choose the transfer licenses option, then redownload your games. If your games are already on the new 360, it won't actually download the games again but it will download enough to make the game playable online and offline on the new console. I mentioned the TOS part, because it wasnt clear to me if you sold your console and downloaded games to someone else. That's a violation. Especially now if you were trying to play them on a new console while he/she played them on the old one.

 

[piteru]

Thank you very much you are very kind! Just one last question: if I have 2 xboxs,if I play on the first with all the licenses , I can also play offlIne. For my second I have to be connected always on live. Does this violate the tos? Two xboxs my gamertag, no one else with access. Thank you in advance

 

[BruiserBear]

I know, its just I feel bad for the OP in some regards but in some I don't. He willingly bought it without going through the register, and knew it. He knew it was shady then, shady now and got banned. Its unfortunate, but you can't expect MS to bend the rules every time someone appears to be collateral damage, especially when they have zero proof to back up their story.

You are ridiculous.


He has a legitimate copy of the game. At the end of the day that is all that matters. HE DID NOT PIRATE THE GAME.

Street dates are a contract between the retailer and the publisher. The customer is not bound by street dates you numbskull. So it does not matter one little bit if that customer is aware of a street date. It's not his problem. It's really that simple. It's 100% irrelevant that he used the word "shady" in his post on a message board.

 

[Dark Octave]

You are ridiculous.


He has a legitimate copy of the game. At the end of the day that is all that matters. HE DID NOT PIRATE THE GAME.

Street dates are a contract between the retailer and the publisher. The customer is not bound by street dates you numbskull. So it does not matter one little bit if that customer is aware of a street date. It's not his problem. It's really that simple. It's 100% irrelevant that he used the word "shady" in his post on a message board.

I don't think they have a problem with people playing the game early as much as they have a problem with people trying to log onto their network with the game early.

If that's the case, then I can understand why they would ban him. The suspect of piracy could be the issue as well, but either way, I can't feel bad for the guy. Unplug and play for a day. Their network, their rules.

 

[Malvingt2]

this is so sad..

 

[Neuromancer]

I don't think they have a problem with people playing the game early as much as they have a problem with people trying to log onto their network with the game early.

If that's the case, then I can understand why they would ban him. The suspect of piracy could be the issue as well, but either way, I can't feel bad for the guy. Unplug and play for a day. Their network, their rules.

I wonder if he would have gotten banned if he'd played Halo 4 offline, but then came online later with that in his game history.

 

[jcm]

I don't think they have a problem with people playing the game early as much as they have a problem with people trying to log onto their network with the game early.

If that's the case, then I can understand why they would ban him. The suspect of piracy could be the issue as well, but either way, I can't feel bad for the guy. Unplug and play for a day. Their network, their rules.

This is a quote from Stephen Toulouse, when he was Director of Xbox LIVE Policy and Enforcement:

"I can be clear however that this applies to illegitimate copies only, the ban covers the Xbox LIVE account and could possibly include their console depending on the results of our investigations (which are ongoing). We do this from time to time with titles to combat piracy," he wrote to Kotaku. "If a user happens to purchase a legit copy of Halo 3: ODST early, then our problem is not with the user but the retailer who broke the street date. Those individuals will not be punished."

It's not clear when or why MS changed this policy.