The Xbox Live service outage The ones that arrived this weekend have been talked about a lot on the networks. This type of service failure occurs from time to time in the video game sector, and even if it remains rare, it causes some disappointments for gamers. But the most harmful thing is that the console becomes almost unusable.
3 days of problems connecting and playing games on Xbox
The Xbox after-sales service It stopped working for the past few days. The support team spent a large part of the weekend briefing players on the situation and various issues were not resolved quickly.
It all started on Friday 6 May at the end of the day. Xbox Support has reported that people are having issues playing games, purchasing games, or starting cloud gaming sessions. The next day, the teams indicated that they were still working, but improvements were made before the issue was indicated.
But after a few hours, the problems persisted, and finally on Sunday a message appeared indicating that it had been resolved. Finally since just that night everything seems to be back to normal, after about 3 days of crashes and problems. As of this writing, some people may still experience issues based on comments on Discord and our social media.
DRM keeps ruining your offline gaming experience
When a network like that of Xbox Live crashes, it’s easy to understand that online services can’t be accessed. Not being able to access the list of connected friends, and not being able to play multiplayer games seems perfectly normal until the incident is corrected and the network is restored. But the main problem here is that the console becomes pretty much unusable, even offline.
On the nets this weekend, many of you complained about not being able to launch a game you bought, including when the console is offline. Without being able to run a game, the console then becomes an almost useless brick of plastic. How is this possible? The answer can be found on the DRM side, this rights management that verifies that you have actually purchased a game to play.
In all likelihood, this management is done via online services which refuse any access to the games when there is such a problem. And if we recall the rather disastrous launch of the Xbox One, then this is exactly what gamers have been up against. At the time, Microsoft indicated that the console had to connect to the Internet at least every 24 hours, which sparked a wave of protest and forced the manufacturer to Cancel everything right after E3.
What infuriated the players at the time happened this weekend. Here’s what Microsoft promised for the Xbox One that particularly resonates today.
No internet connection is required to play Xbox One games offline – After you set up a system once with a new Xbox One, you can play any game on the disc offline again. There are no 24-hour connection requirements and you can take your Xbox One wherever you want and play your games just like on Xbox 360.
In addition to purchasing a disc from a retailer, you can also download games from Xbox Live on the day they are released. If you choose to download your games, you will be able to play them offline as you do today. Xbox One games will be playable on any Xbox One console – there will be no regional restrictions.
Xbox needs to change DRM policy after Xbox Live outage
If Microsoft had promised that we could play the games we bought offline, that is no longer the case today. The promise faded in 9 years and the launch of the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem.
Washington Post reporter Jane Park shared his opinion over the weekend: “The DRM issue is the biggest problem I have with Xbox. It’s crazy how I can’t play games I bought and owned because they can’t handle them properly. Imagine you can’t read a book because the publishing house in England is on fire.”
So why can’t play offline when a disc is inserted into your console or when you download it? It sounds absolutely amazing, including in 2022 and in the age of everything connected. The problem here is the inability to use a paid service like Xbox Game Passbut to access the purchased games.
While the brand wants to be close to the concerns of its community, this weekend’s Xbox Live outage once again exposed a major issue that Xbox teams need to take a serious look at.
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