Xbox Live ban locks out all games in Xbox One library

Microsoft has officially stated that if your Xbox Live account is flagged or banned, the company has the power and the right to revoke your ability to play any games you may have bought on the Live store or from a physical outlet.

Currently if you act like an idiot on Xbox Live, you can get banned on a per-game, per-server, and per-user basis. If you chip or modify your Xbox 360 in any way and Microsoft catches wind of it, your console will continue to function but will be banned from using any Xbox Live multi-player services, including adding on to your gamerscore.

Tweets from company representatives have now also confirmed that if you’re banned from Xbox Live, you also lose the rights to play games you’ve bought online and have linked to the Xbox Live market. Its not clear at the moment if this applies to both the PC desktop and console Live Marketplace, but its a possibility given that Microsoft will need to re-work its terms and conditions that you have to accept when signing up once the Xbox One has launched.

Xbox One will block games sold digitally through Live if you're banned

Microsoft will revoke games sold digitally and added through Xbox Live if you’re banned

In addition, this only applies to games that have licences tied to your Xbox Live account. Games out now like DiRT2, for example, don’t need to be authenticated with Live servers for single-player gameplay, but are later linked into your profile when you play online. Microsoft’s current Terms of Use doesn’t discriminate between desktop or console devices.

This is especially concerning because all games bought for the Xbox One get attached to your Live account and can’t be transferred to others without paying fees directly to Microsoft or through a system the company will set up to facilitate used game sales. The Xbox One, in addition, cannot function without an Internet connection and Windows Live services.

At E3, Microsoft community manager Larry Hyrb (aka Major Nelson) did say that Xbox One gamers will be able to access their games, but he didn’t get into any great detail. Keep in mind that Microsoft’s Terms of use are not set in stone. They change every so often and the company really doesn’t have any obligation to keep up its end of the bargain if you’re banned from the service. While Larry’s comments are somewhat reassuring, the console still hasn’t launched so we don’t know what the exact terms are.

If you’re banned and your games get nuked as well, it essentially becomes a giant, shiny paperweight. But hey, if you wanted to bring one into South Africa early, it’d be a paperweight anyway because we’re not supported yet.

Xbox One account hacks won’t be protected against

In addition, the onus is still on you, the user, to make sure your account is securely protected. With the new sensors in Kinect 2.0 it’s going to be a lot harder for someone to hack into the account unless done on a desktop. Microsoft will keep personally identifiable information for authentication purposes and will presumably use data gathered by Kinect to make sure that it’s you signing into your profile.

That may mean that shared profiles will no longer work and you will have to have each individual friend or family member that’s listed in your group of ten family members for game sharing subscribe separately for Xbox Live. With the current price at R399 for a year’s subscription, that’s R1,596 for a family of four. Pricey.