There's really no reason for anybody to defend this, like it's not a big deal in the slightest but it's still handled very poorly and should be fixed by Xbox. I understand if you don't want people abusing offline mode for the game sharing method and other ways to take advantage of a 100% DRM free digital game, but there needs to, at the very least, be some sort of countermeasure which recognizes when server issues are occurring to be able to temporarily bypass that check until servers are reachable again. Obviously 0 DRM is preferable but I understand the concern of them not wanting people to steal games by playing just in offline mode. One of the things that Xbox is 100% in the wrong on, and hopefully there's enough outrage over this that they fix it to at least be fully functional during server issues and in offline mode with any owned games. Just because it's not a big deal doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed, like the Playstation CMOS battery issue that Sony fixed