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[kingfey]

Xbox downtime leaves some users unable to boot games | VGC

Microsoft’s servers experienced a “major outage” which took 12 hours to…

www.videogameschronicle.com

Some Xbox users were left unable to purchase or launch games for 12 hours on Friday and Saturday, after Microsoft’s servers experienced a major outage.

The server issues were first acknowledged by Microsoft’s support team at 1:46pm PT / 9:46pm BST on Friday, when it said it was aware that some users were unable to “purchase games, launch games or start Cloud Gaming sessions.”

Microsoft appeared to fix the purchasing issues within a few hours, but it wasn’t until nearly 12 hours later that all affected users were once again able to launch their purchased games or start cloud gaming sessions.

At the time of publishing this story, Xbox Support has acknowledged that some users are still unable to access media streaming apps such as Netflix and Disney+.

The downtime again highlights the potential problems of online DRM, and how such systems can sometimes lock users out of software they’ve purchased.

YouTuber and developer at Night Dive Studios ModernVintageGamer criticised the downtime, calling online DRM “cancer”.

Journalist Ben Turpin added: “This is why Microsoft needs to get off their high horse and actually remove DRM. I’m sure this violates consumer rights.





“What if Xbox Live is down for a week due to a major hack? Then no one can play their own digital games. I have so much respect for Microsoft, but DRM sucks.”

The downtime again highlights the issue of preservation in the games industry, and the challenges developers face keeping their games playable in the future, should crucial services such as Xbox Live ever disappear.

Journalist Brittany Vincent argued in a VGC column that the games industry needs to increase its efforts for preserving video games, before more titles are lost to time.

Edit.

 

[kingfey]

Console gaming at this point, are no different than cloud gaming.

Why should a console, which primary objective is to play games offline, need consistent internet to play your games?
Its 2022. this is unacceptable. No consoles should force us to treat our devices, like cloud gaming.

 

[Banjo64]

Wonder what time this started? I was playing my Xbox last night from 8pm to 12am UK time with no issues.

 

[Chukhopops]

Wonder what time this started? I was playing my Xbox last night from 8pm to 12am UK time with no issues.

That was during the downtime but if you set your console as home Xbox it would work fine (except for cloud saves which would fail sync).

 

[kingfey]

Wonder what time this started? I was playing my Xbox last night from 8pm to 12am UK time with no issues.

It would be 10pm for you in the UK, when this started, according to Toms tweet. Its been going 9 hour, since he posted that tweet.

 

[DavidGzz]

I'm guessing it didn't apply to your "home" Xbox. So just secondary units.

 

[Beechos]

No downtime here in the u.s. on the east coast either. I think this sort of stuff only affects people sharing their xbox live/psn accounts. If you are the "home" console you can still play your digital games. Maybe that xbox family plan thing would solve this issue in the future.

 

[Duchess]

Did this affect players with physical copies of the games..?

 

[Mr Moose]

Purchases, cloud and games that need online stuff I can understand, but other games should work? That second tweet looks like it might be an online game from the wording on the image.

 

[Smiggs]

I would have thought that Microsoft had learned from the Xbox One reveal fiasco that people do NOT want always online as a requirement to play games they legally own. It's definitely sad they've been sliding towards that in the background to some capacity.

Hopefully enough people speak up and MS listens to the players!

 

[anthony2690]

Did this affect players with physical copies of the games..?

No, it only effected those that don't have their consoles set to home with digital games.

 

[kingfey]

I'm guessing it didn't apply to your "home" Xbox. So just secondary units.

Only non home xbox for playing games. But everything else, affected all xbox.
Some users couldnt buy games.

 

[anthony2690]

I would have thought that Microsoft had learned from the Xbox One reveal fiasco that people do NOT want always online as a requirement to play games they legally own. It's definitely sad they've been sliding towards that in the background to some capacity.

Hopefully enough people speak up and MS listens to the players!

If people have their consoles set to home, they are unaffected by this.

Also retail games worked fine..


That being said I was happily playing halo infinite and completed all my challenges during this outage. (So I was completely unaffected anyway)

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

Only non home xbox for playing games. But everything else, affected all xbox.
Some users couldnt buy games.

Wait, your having issues right now at this very moment at your place of living somewhere on this planet on your very own Xbox.

 

[Smiggs]

If people have their consoles set to home, they are unaffected by this.

Also retail games worked fine..


That being said I was happily playing halo infinite and completed all my challenges during this outage. (So I was completely unaffected anyway)

You're right, it only affecting secondary consoles does change the situation quite a bit. Still sucks for those affected, but is kind of a trade off for having secondary consoles. I think the Switch has similar restrictions for secondary consoles, and I assume the PS5 does, as well.

 

[Vognerful]

nOT COOL AT ALL

 

[kingfey]

Wait, your having issues right now at this very moment at your place of living somewhere on this planet on your very own Xbox.

only the entertainment section for now. everything else is sorted out.

Xbox Support

support.xbox.com

 

[Heisenberg007]

Gamepass and xCloud games not working kind of make sense, but why did physical games stop working during the outage?

 

[Kacho]

This happened to me a few years back. Couldn’t play RE2R for hours when I had the day off. Pissed me off like crazy. They really need to come up with a better system so people don’t get locked out of their games. With all the data these companies take from us, they should know if we’re at our homes on our personal network.

 

[kingfey]

Gamepass and xCloud games not working kind of make sense, but why did physical games stop working during the outage?

DRM. You cant play games on xbox without internet connection, if its not home set.

 

[Heisenberg007]

DRM. You cant play games on xbox without internet connection, if its not home set.

Even physical copies of offline games that don't require an online connection, e.g., Ori?

P.S. Welcome back!!

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Just set your console to be your home console = games work offline.

Every. Single. Time. This. Comes. Up.

If they didn't do this, everyone could copy games to an external drive and play everything for free.

 

[kingfey]

Even physical copies of offline games that don't require an online connection, e.g., Ori?

P.S. Welcome back!!

I dont know if they changed that, but if a game downloads content from online, it wont work without home setting. Drm license issues prevents that.

Glad to be back. Had a nice 1 month vacation.

 

[kingfey]

Just set your console to be your home console = games work offline.

Your average joe has no clue about that, even me included when I bought the console.
Most people take it as granted, and dont do that step.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Hopefully this inspires Microsoft into looking at what options they can offer in this kind of event.

You should be able to play games.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Your average joe has no clue about that, even me included when I bought the console.
Most people take it as granted, and dont do that step.

It does seem silly to not make it something they offer as part of the first sign in to a new console, and it clearly generates bad press for them so it would be better all around if they sign posted it more.

 

[kingfey]

It does seem silly to not make it something they offer as part of the first sign in to a new console, and it clearly generates bad press for them so it would be better all around if they sign posted it more.

MS is special type of stupid. They like to make the easiest thing, very hard to access it.
Your suggestion would have helped them stop alot of negative reception about xbox.

Sadly, MS will still do MS stuff.

 

[The Shepard]

I went to play a gamepass game on my phone last night and it kept saying I wasn't subbed and I guess this is why.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

I would have thought that Microsoft had learned from the Xbox One reveal fiasco that people do NOT want always online as a requirement to play games they legally own. It's definitely sad they've been sliding towards that in the background to some capacity.

Hopefully enough people speak up and MS listens to the players!

Yeah it's inexcusable and needs to change.

 

[Yoboman]

It's a bit of a non issue as you just need to change a setting

But having a setting that stops you playing offline should be gotten rid of

 

[Allandor]

People should really try to understand how the "home console" setting works and how to go offline if xbox live has problems. Than any game (that doesn't rely on an active online connection) should work well.
Normally it is not a problem that xbox live is offline, but when parts of services are not reachable. Than the OS still behaves a bit strange. They should really try to fix that and if one service is not available, they should just check inside of the OS if that connection is really needed for the game. Currently it just seems like it through an internal error and that error always leads to such a message.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

Ohhh, it’s not set to home console. Is this not the default setting out of the box?

 

[kingfey]

Ohhh, it’s not set to home console. Is this not the default setting out of the box?

Not a default. You have to actively go to the settings and set it.

 

[Kacho]

Hopefully this inspires Microsoft into looking at what options they can offer in this kind of event.

You should be able to play games.

Yep. Something needs to change as more people return to the Xbox ecosystem. This reoccurring problem could drive people away.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

Not a default. You have to actively go to the settings and set it.

Stupid, it should be the other way around. Default home and if you wanna change it then go to settings. There’s gotta be a reason right, not just an oversight.

 

[eastcoastkody]

the one old man thought i won't give up, is that sticking a cart in a console and playing games was better. Discs being useless, installing and online DRM are all bogus.

The first time i got a PS3 and had to sit and wait for hours while Guns of the Patriot installed before i could play it....its been all downhill from there

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

Stupid, it should be the other way around. Default home and if you wanna change it then go to settings. There’s gotta be a reason right, not just an oversight.

It does default to home, but only if it's the first account to log in to the system and saves the sign-in credentials.
It can't default to home in other cases, because just logging into an xbox doesn't have to mean it's your xbox.

 

[jaysius]

This impacted people that GAMEPASS SHARE and GAME SHARE, and own multiple Xboxs.

I wonder if the PS5 would behave the exact same way for NON-HOME PS5's?

 

[Codes 208]

Mine was set to home and it still happened. Ended up reinstalling halo infinite (yaaay 100gb~ downloads….) thinking that was the issue. Which of course didnt work.

Ended up leaving my xbox off for around 6 hours, came back to it around midnight and then it finally worked.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[kyliethicc]

Fucking GT7

 

[kingfey]

Fucking GT7

Multiple gt7 with tons of games, and you get this fiasco.

 

[Memorabilia]

This did not affect my “home” Xbox Series S.

This did affect my Xbox Series X which is not currently my “home” console. I was, however, able to play physical disc games just fine.

Despite being a minimal announce for me personally, this is a problem that shouldn’t exist. Hopefully enough people will bitch n moan about this to get it changed.

 

[ZywyPL]

Why should a console, which primary objective is to play games offline, need consistent internet to play your games?

Does this still hold truth tho? With people spending most time og games like Fortnite, CoD, Fifa, GTA Online etc. I honestly don't think that's the case, at least for the majority. A smartphone without acces to the internet stll makes calls and sends SMS, bht many will see it as useless. Same for PC. Like it or not, we have entered an always connected era some time ago.

 

[adamsapple]

I guess either I'm the lucky one, or it's because my Xbox is already set to Home, I haven't had any issues since yesterday.

That being said, if I'm not mistaken, all Xbox's are set to Home by default unless changed specifically via account sharing, so this outage won't effect anyone who isn't sharing.

 

[nkarafo]

Why should a console, which primary objective is to play games offline, need consistent internet to play your games?

Control.

 

[Valedix]

this is what people wanted

 

[Bo_Hazem]

The nastiest DRM out there. There are cases of game-by-game DRM, but this is a whole system DRM!

 

[Spyxos]

This year i had no internet for 4-5 weeks so i could play only 1 disc game on my Xbox. All my gamepass games where not usable.

 

[kingfey]

Does this still hold truth tho? With people spending most time og games like Fortnite, CoD, Fifa, GTA Online etc. I honestly don't think that's the case, at least for the majority. A smartphone without acces to the internet stll makes calls and sends SMS, bht many will see it as useless. Same for PC. Like it or not, we have entered an always connected era some time ago.

I play SP from time to time. I dont need an internet to play those games, when I am at home.

I had 3 days no xbox, simply because my xbox was not home console, and I had internet outage during those 3 days. Imagine, if people have no internet for 1 week, and not set as home console. You will end up with useless console.