Jerry Johnson: “Xbox Live Is A Secure System”
Written by Connor Beaton, published 25th August 2010
We also used the opportunity to ask about the leak of Halo: Reach which occurred earlier this week, almost a month ahead of the game’s release date. Notably, the source of the leak was Microsoft themselves, as hacker circumvented their security system and downloaded the game directly from the official Xbox Live marketplace. Here’s an excerpt from the interview, which will be published in full this week, regarding the leak:
There was a news piece earlier this week about the leak of Halo: Reach and there were a large number of Xbox Live bans regarding people playing the game online. Do you think Xbox Live bans actually help combat piracy?
One of the things we pride ourselves on Live is that it’s a secure system that tries to protect the community from griefing and cheating and those sorts of things, so we don’t make any public comments related to any of the banning or anything like that, but one thing I will say related to anything you read about security on the system: we take it very seriously and part of the value you pay in a Gold subscription is knowing you actually have some security. There’s a value related to what you created with your profile and your achievements, and if everybody could just go out and do things to gain as many achievements as possible, or school the Gamerscore system or cheat in games, it would completely de-value what everybody respects in Live.
This leak of Halo: Reach actually originated from the Marketplace as I understand. Will you be taking any protective measures against things like this happening?
We don’t talk at all about any of our security measures.
One of the things we pride ourselves on Live is that it’s a secure system that tries to protect the community from griefing and cheating and those sorts of things, so we don’t make any public comments related to any of the banning or anything like that, but one thing I will say related to anything you read about security on the system: we take it very seriously and part of the value you pay in a Gold subscription is knowing you actually have some security. There’s a value related to what you created with your profile and your achievements, and if everybody could just go out and do things to gain as many achievements as possible, or school the Gamerscore system or cheat in games, it would completely de-value what everybody respects in Live.
This leak of Halo: Reach actually originated from the Marketplace as I understand. Will you be taking any protective measures against things like this happening?
We don’t talk at all about any of our security measures.
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