Microsoft has yet again gone head to head with modders, this time from the Halo community. The news of a free-to-play online multiplayer PC game, called 'Halo Online' is at the source of the recent tussle between modders and Microsoft. The fact that Halo Online is exclusive only to Russia went down like a lead balloon with many gamers. Microsoft have no plans to release the game to any other regions, so modders decided to do it themselves. Halo Online, like many games was leaked and it inevitably found it's way into the modding community which allowed modders to take matters into their own hands and remove the region lock, allowing the rest of the world to get access to and play Halo Online. Modders soon got to work reversing Halo Online, and developing a tool to launch the game without geo-restrictions named ‘ElDorito' which was in development via Github, that is of course until Microsoft filed a DMCA notice to which Github quickly complied. This doesn't necessarily mean the ElDorito project will cease though according to one of the modding team. “In terms of DMCA/C&D mitigation, we have made redundant git backups on private and public git servers." Explains Woovie. "This is to ensure we will always have one working copy. These are being synchronized so that data is always the same,†Continues Woovie, a member of the modding team behind Eldorito. “Further DMCAs may happen potentially, it’s not really known at the moment. Our backups will always exist though and we will continue until we’re happy.†It would seem for now at least that Microsoft's attempt to stop the distribution of Halo Online without Geo-restriction are futile. The modders believe they are doing the Halo community a service by giving them what they want without the BS. A sentiment we are sure that many Halo fans would certainly agree with. Source: TorrentFreak
