Addressing the hidden question...

[Kornman00]

about Bungie's independence.

Does this leave MS with more power and chance to thwat modders and other people who modify the game for pleasure\cheating\machinima? What do you think, will we see more action from MS, enforcing its new laws against these acts? If so, do you think MS and maybe even a select few at Bungie itself saw this event as a chance to fully enforce what is done with the game and its assets (by including explicit powers to MS to do so in the agreement, leaving Bungie out of any say)?

[Rob Oplawar]

I really don't know the first thing about the politics of these things, but if I had to guess I'd say this would leave Bungie ever so slightly more legal control over their games, so it really depends on what Bungie wants to do. Then again, I fully expect Bungie to do everything in their power to prevent their *360* games from being modded, which leaves MS in charge of the PC ports, so I don't expect very much modder-friendliness at all.

It's a real shame, too, cause there could have been some really :awesome: stuff for Halo 3 PC.

[Pooky]

I really don't know the first thing about the politics of these things, but if I had to guess I'd say this would leave Bungie ever so slightly more legal control over their games, so it really depends on what Bungie wants to do. Then again, I fully expect Bungie to do everything in their power to prevent their *360* games from being modded, which leaves MS in charge of the PC ports, so I don't expect very much modder-friendliness at all.

It's a real shame, too, cause there could have been some really :awesome: stuff for Halo 3 PC.

You know, modding wouldn't even have become such a problem on Xbox live if Bungie and MS had supported it instead of squelching it. Just like Forge and being able to save your changes made in it for custom games, they could have had supported software for PC that lets you make mods or completely new maps and transfer them to your Xbox to play on Live. And for the problem of using modding to grief, all they'd need to do is have the service run a check to make sure all players are using the exact same map files.

[Phopojijo]

about Bungie's independence.

Does this leave MS with more power and chance to thwat modders and other people who modify the game for pleasure\cheating\machinima? What do you think, will we see more action from MS, enforcing its new laws against these acts? If so, do you think MS and maybe even a select few at Bungie itself saw this event as a chance to fully enforce what is done with the game and its assets (by including explicit powers to MS to do so in the agreement, leaving Bungie out of any say)?I kind-of doubt it. Microsoft actually seems to be pretty lenient with their intellectual properties with the exception of the Halo RTS which is kinda bullhonky but hey everyone makes mistakes.

If it were Nintendo I'd be nervous but its Microsoft. I mean, they're not as open as Sony is (albeit Sony's the most anal retentive but at least they have a pattern: be douches, be douchebags attempting to fix their original douchery, then apologize for both shows of douchetality by doing more than they should have done in the first place to please their customers... assuming people still care by that point.)

But yea -- should be okay.

[Patrickssj6]

http://i22.tinypic.com/x1f094.png

^awtp

[Rob Oplawar]

all they'd need to do is have the service run a check to make sure all players are using the exact same map files.
Naw, security is never as easy as it sounds. The only way I can think of for that service to run would be to use some sort of checksum, and you could conceivably mod the game to send the checksum it expects instead of generating it off of the map you're using. No matter what you do security-wise, there is *always* a way around it. The trick is to make it take more effort than it is worth, and in that respect, that service might work for some, but it wouldn't eliminate the problem altogether.

[Pooky]

But Xbox live for Halo 2 didn't have any sort of security check at all, so any old noob could grief. Even a simple checksum would be an improvement over that