Going Beyond the BanHammer

Earlier today Xboxic.com broke a story about a modder who is threatening Microsoft and Bungie with revealing more achievements than the few already released. Go read the full story at: Xboxic

In my opion what the modder is doing is illegal. To put it simply, since there are many young halo players out their reading this, he is taking this code of the Xbox 360 counsel and modifying it. When purchasing a 360 counsel and when signing up for an Xbox Live account, you agree to the terms of service, This means that when you modify the code with out the permission the Microsoft Corporation or Bungie studios, you are breaking the law.

I'm all for modding and hacking, it is a great way to learn how stuff works and how to make them better. Great people like Steve Wozniak (Co-founder of Apple) and Bill Gates (Founder of Microsoft) would not have made the computer industry what it was today, if it wasn't for their hacking and exploiting of technology. But, when making it public, and distributing your hacks and mods in such a matter, is a different story. Making a modded map on you computer and putting into the Bungie File Share is not a good way to be doing this. Or hacking your 360 to give you more gamer score points, more achievements, and an advantage in Online Multiplayer, is well, not cool.

But, making a modded map on your computer and playing on you 360 and NOT messing with the Xbox Live achievements or Multiplayer aspects is a good way to learn how things work. You need to be able to walk the fine line and use common sense. Many people are hobbiest in finding exploits in operating systems, but these people tell the companies what is wrong with there product.

What this modder should of done is find the exploit on Xbox Live and privately told Bungie and Microsoft what should be changed in order to prevent this from happening in the future. If he had done all this, not tricked his 360 into giving him recon, and not making this public, and not acting as though he is god and that he has the “power” he would probably gotten recon and more. Instead, after looking at the screenshots of the post, you can see that his modder was just being a first class dick and acting like he owns the place. He also claims that achievements are not copyrighted material, this is however, not true because, the achievements are copyrighted material. The picture and the text are owned by the company that designed it.

I could run on forever, but I'm gonna make it short and sweet, this guy is going to be very sorry with what he has done. And because he revealed all this secret info about the upcoming Halo 3 ODST title, many fans such as myself are going to be very disappointed. He's going to be sued and he can't win. He's against one of the largest companies in the world that has a team of lawyers that are the best of the best. The most luck this kid has, is not being butt plowed in prison.

Follow this story and see what happens, follow me on Twitter and I will Tweet out any updates that are to come.