Microsoft punishing those who ‘compromise’ Shadow Complex

You may have heard a while ago that unscrupulous gamers were able to steal a copy of Shadow Complex thanks to a glitch in the XBLA game’s trial version. It was possible to unlock the full game without having to pay for it. The leaderboards of the game have also been subject to unfair fudging, and for these violations, Major Nelson has decreed that violators will be found, tortured, killed and eaten by Aaron Greenberg.

Those who escape the torture/murder/eating punishment will instead suffer the following possible consequences:

• The player will be deleted from the “Shadow Complex” leaderboard
• The Xbox LIVE enforcement team will investigate individual players removed from the leaderboards for potential resetting of the user’s gamerscore. The reset would include all games, not just “Shadow Complex.”
• Those accounts determined by the Xbox enforcement team to have their gamerscore reset will be branded on Xbox LIVE as belonging to a cheater, and this information will be reflected in the gamer profile, both on Xbox.com and in the Xbox Dashboard on the console.

So there you go. If you’ve been engaging in dodgy deals with Shadow Complex, Microsoft is about to do something to you that Orson Scott Card certainly wouldn’t approve of. You’ve been warned.