Microsoft Ban Users Using Xbox Emulators

Microsoft is currently back in the process of imposing a ban on players using Xbox emulators. This further fuels the anger among the players because two years ago Xbox boss Phil Spencer had praised emulators.

Microsoft gives mixed signals

It’s been a back-and-forth between Microsoft and the gamer community for the past few months. Despite the previously announced sympathy for emulators for old games, Microsoft does not want to have such on the Xbox.

“My hope is that we as an industry will work on legal emulators that, with modern hardware, will make it possible to use any older executable file so that you can play any game,” said Xbox boss Phil Spencer two years ago and is now leading the blocking of such emulators. He has not yet commented on this change of heart.

At first, Microsoft simply deleted emulators from the Xbox store, to which some developers reacted and “cheated their way back”. There are basically two modes for the emulators: the developer mode and the sales or retail mode that end users use. Microsoft then had the user accounts of its players on the Kieker.

Xbox consoles with an emulator in normal retail mode will now be banned. Windows Central reports that affected Xbox players have received a 15-day ban from logging into their accounts simply for using emulators in retail mode on their console. These are not isolated cases.

Back to developer mode

However, Microsoft still allows emulators to be uploaded and used when the Xbox console is switched to developer mode. However, this option is not available in all Microsoft Xbox markets and is not free.

However, at the moment it looks like this is the only way to play with emulators on Xbox hardware.

A Microsoft spokesman had already spoken to the online magazine Kotaku in May. At the time, Microsoft had started blocking emulators for retro games, but then took no action: “We are continually evolving our mechanisms for reviewing and enforcing content distributed through the Store to ensure compliance with our Microsoft Store -Ensure policies. Per 10.13.10, products that emulate a gaming system or platform are not allowed on any device family.”

Since then, the developers of such emulators have been trying to find a way around the ban and it was quiet for some time.