Despite earlier complaints about the lack of transparency and concerns about whether or not the banned party is actually guilty or not from some of the online players, Microsoft has reported banning users that were discovered to have “illegitimately accessed Xbox Live Marketplace downloadable content”.

A Microsoft spokesperson further stated on the Xbox forums that “our investigation reveals that this access was intentional and not accidental.”

Therefore it constituted “a blatant violation of the Terms of Use for the service. We will not divulge additional information regarding individual suspensions for these offenses..

Please know that we are being very careful regarding these suspensions, and have clear evidence regarding each account issued a permanent suspension from the service. We apologized for any frustration or confusion resulting from our inability to share individual details, and thank you all for your cooperation in this matter.”

Some of those who were banned or were previously banned reported that the ban sentence lasts until December 31, 9999. And unless someone is willing to somehow wait until January 1st, 10,000, that’s an obvious permanent ban.

Some in the online gaming community have raised eyebrows at the mysterious unwillingness of Microsoft regarding the information.

This camp argues that Microsoft should at least give some explanation as to why the individual was banned (to the individual only of course) and not simply because of vague reasons such as “illegitimately accessing the Xbox Live Marketplace”.

They further argue that there could have been mistakes and that there could be better services regarding the bans since people pay for the golden membership on Xbox Live.

However, the other camp argues that Microsoft is unable to reveal more information fearing that the information could lead to more exploiting of the flaws in the system by more users and that the assurances from Microsoft that they have “clear evidence” is enough.