Xbox Live update hurts online roster sharing
by Kyle Orland 
{ May 16th 2007 at 10:15PM }
Innocent bystanders get hurt in every war. In Microsoft's war on online cheating, those victims are sports game fans that make and share customized rosters online.5WG did some digging and found that the latest Microsoft dashboard update stealthily disables hundreds of customized rosters that are shared on unofficial sites like 360gamesaves. Apparently, the new update checks all save files against a list of banned system IDs extracted from sharing sites. Files from banned systems will not work on other systems.
Why does Microsoft care whose save files you use on your machine? We can only assume the move is an effort to stop players from getting Achievements without earning them by using downloaded save files. This is somewhat understandable -- Achievements are good for both bragging rights and real freebies, and it's important to keep that playing field level.
The side effect, though, is the destruction of a small but vibrant community of players using these game saves to extend the value of their sports games. As 5WG points out, "there's no cheat here: just a group of people giving back to the community for little or no compensation."
Hopefully Microsoft will come up with a solution that protects their Achievement system and allows for a healthy roster trading community at the same time.
[Via ArsTechnica]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
kingofwale @ May 16th 2007 10:17PM
DRM breaks something? Wow, it never happened before!!
Ian Von Porter @ May 16th 2007 10:33PM
So, you're paying $50 a year to have your traded rosters deleted? Sign me up.
GJM @ May 16th 2007 10:41PM
Ian Von Porter, you are a horrible disease that apparently cannot be gotten rid of.
OTAM @ May 16th 2007 10:52PM
Basically,a Microsoft employee downloaded every single gamesave and roster off the 360 Game Save website and got the IDs from the save. Then,they made a blacklist with all these IDs in them and put it in the Spring Update,so when you update your console any saves found with those console IDs become automatically corrupted.
As of right now,the game saving community has a program that wipes any IDs from a save so that Microsoft can't do this again. Then,you use this soon to be release method that will have your console resign the saves with your console ID.
All this shit over achievement whores.
Rod Munch @ May 16th 2007 11:10PM
As far as I'm concerned cheating is getting anything from a game you didn't do yourself. If you want to extend the life of your game, why not play it some more and earn these things yourself? I fully support MS in this. Of course that may just be because they've compensated me rather nicely after not screwing up the repairs on my 360 and taking months to sort it out.
kingofwale @ May 16th 2007 11:17PM
>Of course that may just be because they've compensated me rather nicely after not screwing up the repairs on my 360 and taking months to sort it out.
so... let me get the straight. you're backing Microsoft's crackdown (no pun intended) on user generated content because they fixed/paid for your broken xbox which shouldn't even break in the first place??
As far as I'm concern. how is swapping user generated content considered cheating? What's next? No user created maps for games?
For this, I'm backing Sony and their more open approach. Why can't Microsoft just give them a choice? keep the content and not get any point for this game. Don't just go and disable them. Geez.
TK00 @ May 16th 2007 11:19PM
@5 - What are talking about? This is about rosters for sports games like Madden.
BTW, You fully support MS because they fixed the broken 360 they sold you? Mmmmmkay
Xbox MAN FTW @ May 16th 2007 11:43PM
Its funny how MS thought they could stop something, then hours later there new protection is defeated, typical DRM scenario. Make it, then they break it.
OTAM @ May 17th 2007 12:06AM
Rod Munch,nobody is "cheating". Not everyone wants to sit there dicking around with games for hours to get past a certain part or GOD FORBID unlock all wrestlers in a WWE game. I wish I had a gamesave available for Guitar Hero 2 because I wanted all the songs available with Quick Play OUT OF THE BOX. I was PISSED when I found out I had to play the whole solo thing just to get songs opened to play with my friends. Achievements are just a byproduct of game saving and people need to deal with it because the cat and mouse game of fixing,bypassing,fixing, will go on until one side quits.
Rod Oracheski @ May 17th 2007 12:58AM
"Rod Munch,nobody is "cheating"."
Really? Kind of funny that about 90% of the saves on the site, and 99% of the non-sports ones, are saves right after an Achievement was unlocked.
The site was maybe - MAYBE - for people to trade rosters at one point. The vast majority of its use now is for cheating.
This wouldn't be an issue if companies would actually update rosters competently and have them up as DLC routinely. Free, of course, or a very small fee.
"Not everyone wants to sit there dicking around with games for hours to get past a certain part or GOD FORBID unlock all wrestlers in a WWE game. I wish I had a gamesave available for Guitar Hero 2 because I wanted all the songs available with Quick Play OUT OF THE BOX. I was PISSED when I found out I had to play the whole solo thing just to get songs opened to play with my friends."
Yeah, how dare they think you should PLAY the game?
Crackeddown @ May 17th 2007 5:25AM
You cannot give someone content and take it away at the same time. The "extra" content of achievements is fun, but this is taking it to seriously. There are plenty of legitimate uses for saved games, ie rosters in sports games.
The community will always come ahead though, and it looks like they will be able to wipe the console id. As the 360 will someday fall to homebrew, so will Microsoft fail in stopping this.
That's just how it works.
felixlighter @ May 17th 2007 8:35AM
Unfortunately, the gamerscore has no meaning for a couple reasons. Gamesaves definitely attributed to the problem but so do games that take a couple hours and 0 effort to get 1000/1000 achievement points. I like unlocking achievements. They give me something to strive for and they extend the life of my games but the score itself is meaningless. Only you care about your own gamerscore. So just strive for individual achievements for fun and ignore the points.
Klip @ May 17th 2007 1:27PM
#10 Rod -
"This wouldn't be an issue if companies would actually update rosters competently and have them up as DLC routinely. Free, of course, or a very small fee."
You obviously aren't familiar with sports games.
A number of games do not, and cannot have complete rosters. Example: NCAA Football. Because the players are in college, EA Sports cannot use the players' real names. Only their numbers, appearance and attributes. So the NCAA gaming community inputs all of the players names (manually, 110+ teams), saves the new roster with the names and freely shares with the rest of the community - making NCAA Football a much better experience.
Same scenario with MLB games and minor league baseball players.
So how is the latest crackdown by MS a good thing?