When the Resident Evil 5 demo hit in Japan on December 5th last week, enterprising gamers quickly realized that the demo could be downloaded in US and Europe simply by signing on to Xbox Live with a Japanese gamertag. The demo not only ran perfectly on US and European systems, it was also fully localized meaning that US players saw English text, heard English voices and saw the Resident Evil 5 logo rather than the Biohazard 5 logo. Resident Evil is known as Biohazard in Japan.
About a day after the demo's release, Xbox Live started doing an IP check before the download could be initiated, preventing anyone outside Japan from downloading a new copy of the demo, even if they used a Japanese gamertag. The demo could still be played however, with all features available, including online co-op play. Because of its small size (less than 480MB) the demo was also easy to copy from system to system.
Then, sometime in the last 24 hours, players with the demo noticed two things. The first was annoying, but understandable. Non-Japanese Gamertags were immediately logged out of Xbox Live when booting up the demo. This prevented anyone outside Japan from playing online. The second issue however has started to raise concern.
After logging in to Xbox Live with a non-Japanese Gamertag and attempting to start the Resident Evil 5 demo, Xbox Live actively corrupts the demo code rendering it completely unplayable - even in offline mode.
