Xbox Says 20-Hour Outage Wrongly Blocked Disc Games as Licensing Checks Stoke Digital Ownership Fears
Updated
Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 30
Xbox Says 20-Hour Outage Wrongly Blocked Disc Games as Licensing Checks Stoke Digital Ownership Fears
3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Jul 30
Summary
Scott Van Vliet said Monday’s roughly 20-hour Xbox outage was “unacceptable” because players should not have been locked out of games on physical discs.
A licensing failure incorrectly checked whether users were entitled to play, even though disc-based entitlement checks are supposed to let those games work without that barrier.
Xbox said an update is coming to prevent a repeat, after the outage exposed how even physical media can depend on online verification systems.
The incident landed days after a PlayStation Network outage and amid industry moves toward code-based releases and disc phaseouts, sharpening concerns over digital ownership and game preservation.