A mandatory update for Xbox Live was pushed out to Xbox 360 owners on Wednesday the 19th, with the formal reasons released as the return of the ‘Boot to Disc’ option and some minor Gamercard design changes.
But it appears that the download seemed to take longer than needed for two small changes, and various forum posters have claimed that their pirated copies of both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 have stopped working since the update, which may also slow down anyone hacking the game online – however in the space of just a couple of days it appears that various forums are already reporting ways to get around the update (Hence why I’m not linking to them). Interestingly back ups of Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2 were the only games seemingly affected, suggesting they were the particular targets for this anti-piracy update.
Meanwhile the Playstation 3 platform is being affected by a recent system hack which means all games on the platform are subject to hacking at the moment – in addition to the connection problems already affecting Black Ops for PS3 owners. Still, at least Treyarch aren’t shutting the PS3 servers down – yet.
Obviously I’m behind the times with all the methods to hack consoles but I thought using a modded Xbox online was a big no-no and sure to result in Microsoft bricking the machine?
I’d heard that some PS3 games were open to hacking too, but thought/hoped XBL was free of all that for the above mentioned reason.
Microsoft have certainly always tried to remove modded consoles and games hacking systems for their own benefit – but by the same token, there will always be groups of hackers looking for a way around it, and people then seeking to get hold of games or boost their ranks by whatever means they can…
The fact that Microsoft has a fairly tight control on XBL means it’s somewhat less of a problem than on other platforms, but I don’t think anyone has found a way that effectively removes software, or music and film, piracy as yet