Xbox Banning Users Behind Gears of War Remastered Leak

The Big M has thrown the almighty banhammer at those responsible for leaking beta footage of the Xbox One's upcoming Gears of War remaster.

According to Polygon, third-party testing service VMC sent an email to its employees warning of possible repercussions to any employee who may sprung the the leak. Microsoft then revealed that players who did broadcast footage or post images of the unannounced title will have their Xbox Live privileges banned, as doing so is a clear violation of the non-disclosure agreements those people have to sign.

Originally, it was thought that Microsoft was going to render the offenders' consoles completely unusable, and the thought that MS had that kind of power caused some outrage amongst the gaming community. The company quickly issued a statement that suspension of online privileges does not render the console useless and games can still be played offline. There's no big red button (or ring) of doom that will disable all of the Xbox One consoles folks, everything's going to be OK.

There's been some interesting discussion over this issue since it's become public, but for us it's a clear-cut issue: the people were trusted to test a game without releasing any information, they signed a NDA promising they wouldn't leak such info, and then they went and did it anyway. That, dear readers, is what we call "being stupid" and every punishment that Microsoft sees fits to bestow upon them is well deserved. If they ever get the chance to playtest an upcoming game again — and that's a big if — they'll surely have learned their lesson.

No official announcement has been made regarding the leaked Gears of War remaster, but we'll have any info that drops ready for you as soon as it becomes available.