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I have a friend who use to own an Xbox 360, and had purchased Gears of War through the Xbox Store.

Using his account, I have downloaded the game to a USB drive. However, when I sign out of his account, and sign back in to my own account, I can not launch the game.

I can still see the downloaded game on the USB drive. I can also run the game from my friends account.

Is there any way to legitimately play the game from my own account, given that my friend will need his account for his Xbox One?

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    You can use it by buying it. Anything else, while not quite piracy, is still not allowed.
    – Frank
    Oct 27, 2015 at 1:12
  • @Timelord64 Asking to use someone else's content, while not illegal, can still be considered piracy. We should not be supporting users attempting to do so.
    – Frank
    Oct 27, 2015 at 1:37
  • I did make a change to the answer about being able to use the friends account. I do think that might be against the terms of use
    – user106385
    Oct 27, 2015 at 1:45
  • @Timelord64 Between our meta policy about not helping users get their pirated games working, and our rulings about helping enforce EULAs and TOS, I'd very much say this isn't something we can support. One, this is about accessing data that they didn't pay for. In the most technical sense, that's piracy. Two, EULAs and their attendant TOS state your account is for you, and you alone. No sharing allowed.
    – Frank
    Oct 27, 2015 at 3:13
  • I think were going to have to agree to disagree, @Frank. As I have said previously, Microsoft allow the access as I have stipulated in my answer. It was their own pages that informed me that I could, in the first place. It seems odd that a company would deliberetly add a feature that lets you pirate their content, no? I think this is an obvious case of grey, but it is entirely possible that OP is ignorant of the fact (which is why I included the requirement of legitimacy in the question)
    – user106385
    Oct 27, 2015 at 3:58

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When you purchase games over Xbox Live, you are purchasing the rights to play the game. As such, you will need to be logged in to the account used to purchase the game, in order to play it. It is worth considering that you can be logged into an Xbox 360 and an Xbox One on the same account, at the same time. While you could simply use your friends account permanently, there is great risk of the account being blocked, as account sharing is likely against the terms and conditions of making the account.

This is a security measure to ensure what you are asking simply does not happen. At the end of the day, game companies are there to make money. If you could simply log in to an account that had access to download the game, and download it onto a console for everybody to play, they would be losing a lot of money. Especially when you consider that, at one point, the game in question was offered free to all Xbox Gold users.

IIRC an exception to this rule occurs with the "first download" console. The first console the game gets downloaded to, in the past, would allow for other accounts to play the game. I can not confirm if this still works, or if it does, if there are specific titles this supports. However, given that you have reported downloading the game onto your console, it is clear that this would not apply to your case, either way.

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  • [ahem]... one slight variation: If he leaves the other account signed in, he can access it on any other account on the same xbox. I have done this with a few of my own accounts (I have a few silver accounts - I'm a bit of an "achievement whore") and if I leave my main account logged in (the account that I originally purchased the content with) I can access it with any other account.
    – Ben
    Oct 27, 2015 at 2:51
  • I think I understand what your saying, @Ben. I had suggested a similar solution. I believe deliberately doing so moves a bit too close to piracy, which there are raised issues concerning, as it is. If both are your own accounts, theres no problem. But if one is a friends, I am almost positive this is against the terms of service, which constitutes piracy.
    – user106385
    Oct 27, 2015 at 3:11
  • On another note, is this the original console you downloaded the games too? I believe this might be what I was recalling by the "first console" rule.
    – user106385
    Oct 27, 2015 at 3:11

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