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Gears of War Xbox One leakers have their consoles bricked, Xbox Live accounts suspended permanently

Microsoft did not take this morning's leaks kindly and have exacted a mighty vengeance on those that violated their NDAs.

Ozzie Mejia

May 14, 2015 3:05 PM

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Microsoft did not take this morning's Gears of War leak very well. When a surprise of that magnitude is spilled, perpetrators should expect to feel some wrath. And wrath they did feel, as Microsoft has reportedly flipped a kill switch on the leakers' Xbox One machines, as well as suspended the offenders' Xbox Live accounts.

"Recently, multiple leaks were perpetrated by several GBTN community members," reads a letter from third-party teesting service VMC, sent to Polygon earlier today. "In one case, a member who was participating in that test shared a screenshot on Snapchat with their friend, who wasn't part of the project, but tricked his friend by saying he didn't believe him when he said they were working on the same project. Upon reception of the screenshot, the friend who received the Snapchat leaked it online, betraying his friend as well as his NDA with VMC Games. While the tester who first took the screenshot didn't think he was doing anything bad, he was still going against the NDA, and was part of the cause why the information got leaked. Because of this, both members were permanently removed from the community and addressed to our legal department, as per the terms of the NDA.

"Now, new wording is about to reach the community regarding this particular event. The nature of the leak having had occurred through Xbox One, actually also went against the Microsoft EULA, which is agreed upon when creating an Xbox LIVE account, or any other type of Microsoft account. This being said, as per that agreement with the testers in fault, Microsoft also permanently disabled their Xbox LIVE accounts (as well as other suspected accounts present on their Xbox One kits) and temporarily blocked all of their Xbox One privileges - meaning that for a period of time which Microsoft decides on depending on the severity of the offense, their Xbox One is entirely unusable."

To sum up, the offenders have had their Xbox Ones temporarily bricked and all associated accounts have been permanently suspended. The idea that there's a kill switch on a console at all is eyebrow-raising in itself, effectively rendering a consumer-purchased product completely unusable. That may be concerning to a number of Xbox One users. However, few will likely weep for the leakers. After all, companies take non-disclosure agreements very seriously and if these penalties were detailed in the contracts signed, Microsoft appears to be within their rights to take this action.

With such severe action being taken, it is also reasonable to conclude that there was indeed something to these leaks. Look for more details to come in a more official capacity soon.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?