A majority of Xbox players were affected by a “major outage” with the gaming platform’s servers last night (July 2).
The problem has now been fixed, and Xbox players should be able to once again access the servers and log in to their Xbox Live accounts.
The issue was first reported yesterday afternoon, with players unable to access the Xbox Network, play online, access Xbox Game Pass or make purchases from the Xbox digital store.
The official Xbox Support social media account soon shared a message that confirmed the team were “aware that some users have been disconnected from Xbox Live.”
“We’re investigating,” they added, with the status page confirming players “may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won’t be available.”
We are aware that some users have been disconnected from Xbox Live. We’re investigating! Please follow here and on our status page for updates. https://t.co/kQKp1MgssY
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) July 2, 2024
Xbox later said their engineers were working on a fix, but it was taking “longer than expected”.
Six hours after acknowledging the issue, Xbox confirmed the “major outage” had been fixed. “Users should no longer be encountering issues signing in to Xbox Live and services. Thank you for your patience, game on,” they wrote.
Users should no longer be encountering issues signing in to Xbox Live and services. Thank you for your patience, game on! https://t.co/jw7EOmyyoL
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) July 3, 2024
No reason has been given for the outage, despite a number of fans asking for one. Others want time added to their Game Pass subscriptions to make up for the outage.
Y’all should give everyone a free month of gamepass for this.
— CantGuardBook (@CGBBURNER) July 3, 2024
Players have also been sharing advice on how to play games offline, but it requires users to have made their Xbox their home console while connected to the internet, before they can activate offline mode to play games from their library.
In other news, Rockstar has received backlash for locking a much-requested GTA Online quality-of-life feature behind a paywall.