Playing the Pirated Halo: Reach Beta May Get You a Perma-Ban

Halo Reach Beta Release

A few days ago the beta release of Halo Reach was released on PC. Forming part of the upcoming ‘Master Chief Collection’, as you might expect there was a lot of anticipation over the beta, but in terms of being able to try it out, very few codes were given. Most estimated suggest less than a thousand codes.

That hasn’t, however, stopped the beta game appearing in a pirated form. In a report via WindowsCentral, however, if you play the pirated version, beware! You may be risking having your entire Xbox account banned.

Ban Hammer!

343 Industries, the team currently developing the game has warned all users that they are aware of the significant level in which the pirated version has been accessed. They also dropped a pretty big hint that, unless you were smart enough to play it with your PC offline, they may have a pretty good idea what your Xbox account (or Windows Store) name might be.

“If you download or play this illegal copy, we have the right to ban all associated accounts and remove you from all current or future… programs.” – 343 Industies.

What Do We Think?

At this point, you have to judge whether this is just a threat or if it can genuinely be backed up with action. Considering that they have specifically mentioned both the Xbox and Windows Store (namely, accounts that you may potentially share between console and PC) a ban could result in some very dramatic action. Namely, you potentially losing access to any games or programs you may have purchased via them.

It may just be an empty threat to try and scare off anyone else wanting to play this pirated version. For me, however, I don’t think I’d like to risk it. This sounds just a bit too vicious to be a bluff.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!