Two weeks ago, over a half million Xbox 360 consoles were banned from the Xbox Live service in the latest battle by Microsoft against illegally modded systems. Representing only a small percentage of the millions of legal consoles, a modded system has been altered to give a player an advantage over other xbox live players – a violation of Xbox Live’s terms of service. While Microsoft won’t release the methods used to identify these “illegal” machines, nor how many where caught up in this most recent sweep, a banned console can still play video games, but can’t use the Xbox Live service for multiplayer gaming or to download marketplace content. Now Microsoft faces a possible class-action lawsuit resulting from the numerous, yet undisclosed, bans. Though bans were apparently timed to coincide with the November 10th release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the planned lawsuit claims that the timing was nothing more than money making ploy.

“All consumers should know that piracy is illegal, and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs, violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live,” Microsoft said in a statement last week.

Most law-abiding gamers have little sympathy for these cheaters and thieves. It’s sad that someone has to mod their console to be able to win at a game. And software pirates do nothing but force the honest gamers to pay, through price increases, so they can get the games for free. Microsoft should prevail should this lawsuit actually make it into a courtroom. Now it they could just find a way to disallow players using modded controllers.