Xbox One owners tricked into bricking console by 4chan troll

4chan strikes again! After pulling the waterproof iPhone prank a few months ago, a user on the controversial online forum has managed to con Xbox One owners into thinking they could make the console backwards compatibile.

What the set of instructions instead did was sending the $499 console into a bootloop state, which pretty much turns the One into an expensive paperweight with fancy boot animation. The prank (if one can use such a lenient term) involves just six steps, but reportedly leaves the console permanently damaged. It involves opening the Developer Console menu of the unit and changing some settings before rebooting, again and again. The thread where the material is found has since been taken down.

The cloud could bring backwards compatibility to the Xbox One

Microsoft is yet to answer fans who managed to fall prey to this 4chan troll. So there’s no way to know if any of the users affected will get a replacement or repair under warranty. 4chan exploited the Xbox One’s ability to turn into a developer kit, a feature included to bring independent game developers into the fold. However, only Microsoft-approved developers have access to the system as of now and entering any unauthorised ID will brick the console.

Despite Microsoft not releasing an official statement, there has been some effort from the Xbox team to stem the spread of the prank. Veteran Xbox team member Larry Hryb tweeted “To be clear there is no way to make your Xbox One backwards compatible & performing steps to attempt this could make your console inoperable”. So if you are still considering mucking around in the Developer Console to enable backwards compatibility, don’t.