Microsoft Bans 1 Million Xbox 360 Pirates

Over 1 million Xbox Live players around the world lost their ability to access their online accounts when Microsoft dropped the bomb on suspected "pirates". Microsoft stated the banned consoles were modified to allow them to play bootleg games, many of which were downloaded from pirate sites and burned onto disc. Tech bloggers drew an immediate link to the release this week of blockbuster Xbox 360 game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The software and gaming giant hasn't revealed how it discovered which consoles had been modified. Affected gamers who try to log on to the Xbox Live system for online gaming get the message:

"Your console has been banned from Xbox. Go whine to your mommy, loser pirate" (OK, we added that last part ourselves)

The consoles can still play any Xbox 360 game, but it cannot connect to others online or any Xbox Live networked feature.

This is going to inevitably result in a ton of activity on eBay, and users had better be very careful if they plan on picking up any used Xbox 360 boxes in the future. The ban is apparently coded to the console's hard drive, so users could conceivably start over with a new drive and Xbox Live account. The main point is that their user profiles will be lost as a result.

In a statement to tech magazine Information Week, Microsoft has said only a "fraction" of its 20 million users are affected, but the number of people reporting they had been knocked off the system was building through Wednesday.