Have you or someone you know gotten banned from Xbox Live until the year 9999? Do you know why? One parent who’s kid got banned until said year didn’t know why and took it to the official Xbox forums.

The thread went like this:

Parent: Hi, Posted earlier about my son’s suspension and no help. Then i realised did not put his gamertag on the message. i am BlaaaacK v is his gamertag. Would be helpful is someone could enlighten me as to why he was suspended until 31/12/9999 without notification.

Microsoft: Your son was exposing himself on camera in Uno.

So folks, showing your junk on camera certainly isn’t going to help your rank. Hell, it’ll get you banned until the end of time. I only wish I knew how the conversation between this parent and their kid went down after reading this message.

It seems Germany is at it again, this time setting their eyes upon Valve’s extremely popular Counter-Strike series. Legislation was recently passed that now makes it illegal to play Counter-Strike in public.

This has led to the cancelation of Germany’s Convention-X-Treme LAN event which is sure to discourage the mass of German gamers. Furthermore, Destructoid is reporting that World of Warcraft has also been banned from public play.

What’s next, Germany, Halo?

Now here’s a funny story — A World of Warcraft user by the name of KarateChop recently was found to have been blowing through some of the game’s hardest instances without even breaking a sweat, even one-shotting the boss of Ulduar. But how?

Well, as the story goes, KarateChop logged on one day only to find a peculiar item (pictured above) sitting in his mailbox. Low and behold, the item was the Martin Fury, a developer only item that was accidently mailed to KarateChop.

Once Blizzard got wind of this they quickly proceeded to ban the offender’s entire guild; even guildies who weren’t present during Mr. Chop’s escapades. So a word of wisdom, if you find an item in your mailbox that gives you the possibility to take over the World of Warcraft, contact a GM.

Read (WoWInsider)

One of the biggest concerns Nintendo has is with piracy. They’re always pushing to crack down on those selling fake DSes and pirated cartridges. Unfortunately for the company there are much more easily accessed, technological means for accessing games for free. One method was the R4 cartridge, essentially an adapter to allow DS owners to upload files onto a micro SD card. There are some legitimate uses for the technology: one can download home brewed software that turns the DS into an eBook reader by uploading PDF files; putting music or video files on the card also allows you to use the handheld as a portable media player.

Unfortunately any technological item that has both a legitimate and illegitimate use is much more likely to be used for the latter. As you can imagine, Nintendo doesn’t like this device and now they’ve succeeded in doing something about it. The gaming company must have some excellent lobbyists, because the Japanese government has just banned sales of the R4 cartridge.

Australia is at top when it comes to video game censorship. Keeping that trend up, The Age of Melbourne, Australia, reports that Silent Hill: Homecoming, the upcoming entry in the horror franchise, has been refused classification by Australia’s Office of Film and Literature Classification, meaning that the game won’t be available for sale unless it is changed from its current form.

This is the fourth game to be banned this year, including, most recently, Fallout 3, which got banned due to drug use within the game world.

Homecoming is set to head to stores in North America this month, with an European release in November. It may be released in Australia following needed changes.