Bans Impacting the Used Console Market

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Microsoft recently redesigned the display structure of its Gamer Card -- the digital "ID Card" that functions as proof of identity in the gaming world and, more important, serves as the repository for statistics and information that are important elements of who you are as a gamer. The redesign served two purposes -- to remove the Zone entry for public display, and change the color of the card.

The card consists of a collection of information about the individual gamer that functions as their formal introduction on Microsoft's Live Networks, in posts to the official forums on XBox,com, and with growing frequency in gaming environments outside of the Live Service.

A versatile and much-used tool, the device appears on the official Gamer Page that is accessed whenever a gamer is looked up on the Live service, on a gamers Friend Page, and is used by third-party sites and services that copy it from the official XBox web site by looking up the Gamer Tag (name) of a gamer and reproducing the associated data.

Prior to the recent revision the Gamer Card contained specific collection of information about a gamer, from which a number of conclusions could be drawn. First and foremost it presents a gamers identity in the form of their 'Nym (pseudonym) -- also called the Gamer Tag -- which is the nickname that is chosen by the gamer when they create their Live account, and the name by which they will be known to others online. The Gamer Tag is, in essence, the virtual identity of the gamer, and as such is a carefully guarded and protected resource.

In addition to the Gamer Tag, the Card sports an icon-like picture that is chosen by the gamer to represent themselves, and on the right side of the card (prior to its revision) is four lines of important information: the "Rep" (a 5-star rating of their online play that depicts how well they play with others), their Gamer Score (the total number of Achievement Points that they have unlocked from all of the games that they have played), their Zone (a declaration of the type of gamer that they are), and their Country of origin.

Along the bottom edge of the card are five small icons that represent the last five games that the gamer has played, and when the Gamer Card is displayed on the official forums, the Forum Community User Level is displayed in the bottom left corner, while icons that represent the gamers' forum participation level are also displayed. The User Level is a number that indicates their level, or a letter that indicates their status -- for example forum Moderators would have an 'M' displayed, while members of the XBox Product Team would have an 'X' in place of a number.

Gamers who prefer Sony's PlayStation 3 have something similar to the Gamer Card, called their PSN ID, while Wii fans have an ID Number (called a Friend Code) associated with their console that serves much the same purpose in identification, though lacks the other information that is provided on the PSN ID and XBox Live Gamer Card, like Gamer Score or Trophy Count, and the like.

When a gamer plays in the online side of a game on Live or the PlayStation Network, they first must log into the respective service with their Gamer Tag or PSN ID, to both identify themselves to the network, and to ensure that any Achievements or Trophies that they unlock in that gaming session are applied to the correct account. If they do something bad, or break the rules then, their identity has been established, and the respective service or the company whose game server the player is on at the time of their rules violation knows their identity, and thus who to punish.

The consequences for violating the posted and established rules -- or for behaving in an unacceptable manner -- can vary from a brief suspension from the service for a few hours, days, weeks, or even months -- to what is called a PermaBan, wherein the Gamer Tag / ID is permanently banned from using the service. The latter sort of punishment can be devastating for a serious, competitive gamer, because it essentially means that they have lost all of the progress that they have made in their gaming identity -- their Gamer Score and Achievements are now worthless because they cannot use the ID, and therefore nobody will ever see them.

The only option that they have is to delete the ID and start over, creating a new Gamer Card, and of course paying for a new subscription, because any time that they had left on their old card is deleted with it -- none of the services will transfer subscription time from a banned ID to a new one. That may sound like very harsh punishment, and make no mistake, the loss of one's identity can be a traumatic experience because so few people online recognize a gamer for who they are in real life, so the loss of that Gamer Tag can be the gaming equivalent of a court-ordered execution.

The permanent ban of a Gamer Tag is not, however, the most severe of punishments that can be handed out. When a gamer does something particularly egregious, or breaks one of the cardinal rules of the service -- for example tampering with the physical hardware of your console, repeatedly getting caught cheating, repeatedly posting obscene content to your Gamer Tag or PSN profiles, or violating any of a handful of posted major infractions (such as sending nude photos over the network) -- the infraction will not just result in your Gamer Tag or PSN ID being permanently banned, they can (and often do) result in your console being permanently banned from the service!

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Ultimate Punishment?

Whether you have an XBox 360, a PC, or a PlayStation 3, your gaming device has a set of numbers associated with it that identify it to the network. Numbers that you cannot change, and that are used by the service to keep track of the physical device you are using, both for purposes of approving access and for the application of Digital Rights Management (DRM) Licensing -- basically the license scheme that is used to register games and approve access to them.

For both the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3, these numbers include a serial number that is hard-coded into the device itself, and also the MAC ID for the network interface. For a Windows PC, depending upon the motherboard or CPU installed, it can also include a serial number, but more often than not it uses the MAC Address Number of the PC's Ethernet as the ID, combined with a soft-coded ID number that is assigned to the PC by the service.

When the gamer perpetrates an act that is severe enough to warrant a console ban, those numbers are added to the list of systems that are not allowed to connect to the service. The result of this is very easy to understand -- when the gamer turns on their console or PC, loads their game, and attempts to log into the service in order to play online, their console exchanges its ID in the process. The service notes that the ID number is banned, and refuses to permit the gamer to connect.

In practical terms, that means that they not only can no longer obtain game patches, purchase new games and DLC from the service, and play online games that are offered by the service, but they also may be unable to access the online servers for individual games -- like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, and the Halo games -- because those services utilize the core services provided by the Sony and Microsoft to authenticate and establish ID.

If your console gets banned it is useless for anything other than single-player games, so you may as well cut its Ethernet cable. With online gaming rapidly becoming the primary use for consoles among gamers, that punishment is severe and meaningful! The only option that a gamer has once their console has been banned is to replace it with a new one, and to register a new Gamer Tag / ID and purchase a new subscription -- and that is precisely what most gamers who find themselves in this situation do --- leaving a serious issue in their wake: what to do with the banned console?

It should not surprise you to learn that many of the gamers who get their console banned feel no compunctions whatsoever in selling the banned console, either online via sites like eBay, or to their local game store. Prior to the mass-bannings that began in 2008 and continued into 2010 this was not a serious issue, but when Microsoft and then Sony began to ban large numbers of consoles for cheating, tampering, and rules violations, it became a headache for both retail dealers like GameStop and EB, and for gamers who chose to save money by purchasing a used console.

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Massive Console Bans

In November of 2008 Microsoft executed a mass-banning of consoles that had been flagged by their Policy Enforcement Team (PET) as having been modded and were playing illegal, pirated copies of games. In an official statement on his blog, Larry Hyrb (AKA Major Nelson), Microsoft's Director of Programming for Xbox Live and sometimes spokesman said:

"In our our continued effort to keep gameplay safe and secure for our community of more than 14 million members, Microsoft has taken action against a small percentage of Xbox 360 consoles that have been illegally modified in order to play pirated games.

"You should know that modifying your Xbox 360 console is also a violation of the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void your warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE. The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive, both from manufacturers and the local companies that support them. We will continue to employ and bolster anti-piracy security measures to counter piracy in the gaming industry and improve security in the Xbox LIVE community."

Less than one year later, in October of 2009, Microsoft again dragged out the ban-hammer, executing another mass-banning of consoles that had been flagged by their Policy Enforcement Team (PET) as having been modded and were playing illegal, pirated copies of games. In an almost identical post on his official blog Hyrb again addressed the issue, saying:

"As you may have read online, we’ve been actively banning consoles from Xbox LIVE that have been modified to play pirated games. Our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community remains a top priority.

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal, and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs, violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE.

"The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them. This would also be a good time to remind you that the warranty on an Xbox 360 console is not transferrable (sic) and if you purchase a used console that has been previously banned, you will not be able to connect to Xbox LIVE."

While no official numbers were ever published, based on public comments made by Microsoft staff the estimates for the 2008 mass-banning was close to 600,000 consoles just in North America -- when the rest of the world was factored in a reasonable estimate puts that number closer to 1-million.

While mass-bannings were previously an XBox thing, PS3 gamers discovered in September of last year that Sony is capable of deploying console permabans under the right conditions -- and in this case the right conditions related to consoles which use PSJailbreak, a hacked utility that supposedly allowed owners to have their PS3 modded in an "undetectable" way using a combination of the mod chip and a USB thumb drive, but the Jailbreak mod was only one of several dozen mods that was targeted by Sony.

The PlayStation Network Service rolled out a mass-banning in the Fall of 2010 that disabled an estimated 350,000 PS3's worldwide, making the console ineligible for use online. That number is relatively small compared to the number of PS3's that have been permanently banned from connecting to the servers for specific games, such as the Call of Duty servers.

Consequences of the Ban-Hammer

The numbers for the 2009 ban is estimated at 1.4 million worldwide for a total of around 2.4 million banned XBox 360 consoles. A number of smaller bannings took place between Halloween 2009 and December 2010 that add a conservatively estimated 400,000 consoles to the total worldwide, which suggests that close to 3 million XBox 360 consoles with banned ID's exist, with a significant number on the used console market.

The PlayStation 3 has a much smaller number of banned consoles on the used console market, but the number is large enough so that it too is a problem for gamers and retailers who trade in used gaming kit.

The consequences of a banned console are well-defined though not well-known by the gaming community. In the case of Microsoft's XBox 360, based upon the complaints made on public chat boards on the web, a banned console experiences the following issues:

* Banned from the Live Network -- No more game updates, XBLA games, marketplace content, Netflix/Sky access, or music access. All online capabilities are now disabled PERMANENTLY.

* Hard Drive installs are now disabled on the banned console. Any disk-based games will no longer play off of the hard drive.

* Windows Media Center functionality is disabled.

The results are similar for the PlayStation 3, including the loss of online connectivity, blocked access to online game servers, and permanent suspension from access to the game update service and PSN Store, however users with banned PS3's report being able to play games from the hard disc drive with no problems.

Both consoles still allow the owner to play legal store-bought games on disc, but none of the Achievements or Trophies earned on a banned console will be applied to the Gamer Tag / PSN ID even if it is not a banned one. Attempts to move the saved Tag/ID to an unbanned console in order to update the file on the respective service results in a corrupted Tag/ID and failure to transfer the Achievements or Trophies.

The only option the gamer has in the case of a banned console is to replace the console and possibly the Gamer Tag / ID if it was also subject to a ban.

Caveat Emptor

Retail outlets that deal in used gaming hardware and accept trade-ins used to check to verify that the hardware worked before boxing it up and putting it on the shelf, but since the mass-bannings stores like GameStop and EB in North America, and GameStation in the UK now connect the consoles to the Internet and test them to verify that they have not been banned, leaving eBay and Craigslist as the primary destination for banned console sales, which suggests to the logical gamer that those would not be good places to shop for a used console.

Ironically the consoles found on the two larger online services are not the ones that Microsoft and Sony primarily go after -- modded consoles -- but rather belong to the much larger group of cheaters, abusive gamers, and soft-modders.

"Most owners of modded consoles do not take them online," claims Mark W., of Yarmouthport, Massachusetts. Mark is a professional modder -- he owns and operates a small business out of the garage at his home, where he has a stock of different mod chips and where, for a price, he will sell a chop to a gamer installed, and show them how to use it.

"The idea behind a modded console is being able to play burned games. Why spend $60 on a game you may only play once or twice when you can download that same game off of the 'net, burn it to DVD and then play it on your modded XBox or PS3?" he asks.

"Most serious modders have two consoles -- one to play games online with, and their modded console to play burned or copied games. They never take the modded console onto the Live or PSN services because of the risk of detection," he says. "Besides that is not the point to it; the games you are going to want to play online are not the games you will be downloading off the net and burning or just copying to the hard drive on your modded console to play, they are the ones you will own legit copies of.

"When you see someone get nailed for taking a modded console onto the service it either happened by accident or it was a teenager. Serious modders know better."

A visit to GameStop and a chat with the clerk (who talked with me on the record on the condition that they not be identified) seemed to support those claims, as the GameStop clerk explained that they hardly ever see actual modded consoles. When a console comes in and turns out to be banned it always has the seal intact on it, and the owner is almost invariably a teenager, according to the clerk.

"We check them before we accept them as trade-ins," he says. "We don't buy banned consoles, and we do not accept them as trade-ins either," he emphatically declared.

When I asked him how big a problem banned consoles were, I was surprised to learn that it was not so much a big problem as a consistent one. The clerk explained that they see three or four a month, but suggests that the issue itself is the driving force there.

"Normally people do not sell their consoles -- even when they are getting a new one, they are more likely to pass their old one on to a relative or friend or keep it as a back-up because, honestly, we give such a low trade-in value on them -- typically around $40 for a white 360 and that has to include the controllers -- that it is insulting to most gamers."

He went on to suggest that the banning is what motivates the sale of the old console, as the gamer is picking up a new one to replace their now useless system.

"It is harder though to detect if the console has been banned by a game as opposed to a service," he admitted. "We have accepted a few PS3's in the past few months that it turned out were banned from the Black Ops servers, and one that was banned from Halo -- we had to replace those for the customers, but we just cannot check them at that level, it would take too long," he admits.