: We asked another 343 employee at RTX about this, and they said the exact
: opposite: 343 does not endorse the use of any modded content and using any
: modded content, including putting it on your fileshare or even playing
: it on XBL, would be grounds for banning. The only possible acceptable way
: to use modded content, we were told, is if you do it 100% offline.

: This was someone pretty high-up in the studio, so it sounds like they don't
: have a cohesive message on this. I'm not even sure the folks at 343 would
: be making these decisions about banning, anyway, since it's all tied up in
: the XBL TOS. It's probably another division entirely that does the
: bannings.

Chances are, Frankie and this other 343i'er were thinking of "mods" in different contexts. Frankie was probably thinking strictly in the terms of modded playable user content (ie map and game variants, but not screenshots). The other person was probably thinking of "mods" in general. IE, modding the game files or executable themselves, for any reason.

User content is pretty constrained as far as what you can do with a clean retail console. However, the sky's the limit with modded consoles (allowing you to play/use modded read-only files).

At the end of the day, what Frankie said was unofficial. What that other person said was just restating what is basically the official response for questions about mods. What people usually do when something is out of their domain. Unless this "high up" person was someone on par with Frankie (eg, operations, a public face, decision maker, etc), chances are this was out of their domain which is why they went with the typical response about modding.