Gaming Has modding ever been live-friendly?

[rootnik]

I've been out of the xbox scene for about 6 years now. I remember that even back then you couldn't play on live if your console was modded, but I see people acting shocked that they are getting banned these days. Has it ever been safe (for live play) for an extended period?

 

[shadowwolf1579]

I recently flashed my 360 with the 1.61 ixtreme firmware about a week ago, I have been on live and playing my games for exactly the same amount of time since before it was modded. But I have yet to play any burned copies, still haven't gotten any discs to burn

 

[Dermy]

For the past few years it has been fairly safe to go on live with a modded 360. As long as you didn't play games early or didn't play discs where the data was bad on them, you had a pretty good chance of surviving. They had no way of directly detecting the 360 was modded (or at least we think), unlike the original xbox. Now they've stepped it up a notch and are changing something that is getting the people who played it safe banned.

 

[rootnik]

Thanks for the reply Red, that explains why people are being caught off guard by all of this.

 

[deathfisaro]

Yeah it was pretty safe to play on Live with modded console, you could even use like 2 year old iXtreme firmware and still not get banned for a couple years.

But this year wave 3 hit, wave 4 hit, and banhammer hit. I won't be "surprised" if I get banned but I would question why they weren't mass-banning people for the last 2-3 years.

My conspiracy (oh wow this word has the word "piracy" in it, just don't mind the pronunciation) theory is that MS has trained pirates to play on Live and pay for Gold.
Now with significantly increased number of games that REQUIRE Live Gold to get all achievements, some pirates, after getting banned, would start buying games.