Microsoft Begins Banning Halo 4 Pirates

Apparently the pirates have struck the world of Halo 4. According to a post on Eurogamer, copies of the game have been leaked onto torrent sites over the weekend, playable only on modded or hacked Xbox 360 consoles, of course. But Microsoft won’t let this stand, throwing down the banhammer on anyone they’ve discovered to be playing the game prior to its early November release. Violators were sent notices informing them of their bans from the service, as you can see in the image below:

Microsoft issued a statement regarding the bans as well:

“We are aware of isolated cases in which Halo 4 content has been propped on the web and are working closely with our security teams and law enforcement to address the situation immediately.

Consumers should be aware that piracy is illegal and we take vigorous action against illegal activity related to our products and services. Playing pirated copies of games, such as Halo 4, is a violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use and will result in enforcement action, such as account and console ban.”

Obviously if you’ve been banned for doing this, you had to know it might happen. I can only assume that these are players who connected to Xbox LIVE to play Halo 4…and since the game hasn’t come out yet, they also had to realize that someone would notice what was happening and shut them down.

Oh, you dummies.

Via Eurogamer