You've all seen the story in Business Week about an Unreal Tournament modder who made a character for UT3 on the PS3 that looks just a bit like Master Chief. 

MasterChiefs.jpg

Earlier today, Susan over at Game|Life asked what our lawyers thought, so I asked one of the dozens--if not hundreds--of Xbox lawyers (jk) what he thought about it. 

Turns out, he thought it was A-OK.  In fact, DonkyXote did his own blog post (a blogging lawyer?!) on the story, saying:

...Many people are surprised Microsoft is "allowing" this.

Actually it's nothing more than the Game Content Usage Rules (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/developer/rules.htm) in action. When these were developed, people all thought they were focused on machinima. The truth is that while they do address machinima they also allow for a lot of other things. Mods like this are one of them. The developers aren't selling the mod, they're not monetizing Microsoft's IP, they're just creating something to share their love of the Master Chief on a new platform. It's a great thing for us and a great thing for the gaming community. ... (read more)