Microsoft has announced that anyone found to have played the early release, pirated edition of Halo 4, will be given a lifetime Xbox Live ban. Some that have already played the game soon found themselves in receipt of an email from Microsoft that charged them with “prerelease title play.”

Eurogamer has a full screengrab of one of the official emails received by one of the ‘naughty' few that had to play Halo 4 before it was released.

The official Microsoft statement at the time of writing is as follows:

“We are aware of isolated cases in which Halo 4 content has been propped on the web and are working closely with our security teams and law enforcement to address the situation immediately.”

“Consumers should be aware that piracy is illegal and we take vigorous action against illegal activity related to our products and services. Playing pirated copies of games, such as Halo 4, is a violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use and will result in enforcement action, such as account and console bans.”

Pre-release builds of Halo 4 began appearing over the weekend on popular torrent sites, which when downloaded could be played on hacked Xbox 360 consoles.

KitGuru Says: Maybe I'm missing something here, but if you're playing on a hacked Xbox 360 console, with a pre-release game, how are you trackable by Microsoft unless you're online? And if you are, why? Is it really worth the bragging rights of showing as playing Halo 4, if it means you can't go online again ever with that console?

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