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[Jose92]

This weekend's Xbox outage put Microsoft's DRM back in the spotlight

Lengthy disruption across the weekend raised the specter of Xbox One's 2013 DRM.

www.windowscentral.com

Across the weekend, many users were slapped with "The owner of this content needs to sign in" messages, as Xbox's servers failed to verify the authenticity of Xbox users' ownership of specific content. On Xbox consoles, you essentially have two login states for your account. One is a "Home" Xbox login, and another is your cloud login. The cloud login is intended to be used on external Xbox consoles, in situations where you might be visiting a friend, for example, so you can team up and play together. Many users also use this feature to share games with a friend, or with a second console within their household.
As someone who library shares with a family member, it's often a consequence that during periods when Xbox Live goes down, I lose access to my games. This is because to verify your license rights to your cloud login, naturally, you need to be able to connect to the cloud.
Theoretically, users who are playing on their account's "home" console shouldn't have had any issues, given that the DRM check-in for licenses on the home console is far more generous. However, many users were sharing reports that they were unable to access ownership of their games even on home consoles. Although, it seems as though at least some of these scenarios were the result of confusion over how different games interact with DRM.

 

[Punished Miku]

Good critique of Xbox for once. They've been killing it on system level features, so this is an area they could definitely still improve on.

Some interesting info in the article about the licenses. They can work offline if you've played the game at least once.

 

[adamsapple]

I cannot relate as I was able to game and download all weekend, but I understand the system is flawed.

Hopefully this outage and backlash is a wake up call for MS to improve it, especially if they're planning to introduce a streaming puck into the equation soon.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Weird poll, this isn't always online DRM lmao

 

[Captain Toad]

Weird poll, this isn't always online DRM lmao

Poor poor child

 

[ParaSeoul]

Who is actually going to defend this? Genuinely curious.

 

[adamsapple]

Who is actually going to defend this? Genuinely curious.

I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who will defend a service outage.

 

[Three]

There was somebody that tried to raise this issue a month ago but you all shot down his thread. A month later people now care because shit finally hit the fan.

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/most-xbox-disc-games-require-online-connection.1632986

 

[ParaSeoul]

I think you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who will defend a service outage.

Service outages happen but they dont make you unable to play offline on the other two,which is the main issue. Also heard some users couldn't use anything on their console during that time.

 

[adamsapple]

Service outages happen but they dont make you unable to play offline on the other two. Also heard some users couldn't use anything on their console during that time.

I'm either lucky or the outage was localized to certain data / distribution centers as I was both playing game pass stuff and also bought stuff over the weekend on the sales without any issue.

 

[ParaSeoul]

There was somebody that tried to raise this issue a month ago but you all shot down his thread. A month later people now care because shit hit the fan finally

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/most-xbox-disc-games-require-online-connection.1632986

Everyone who played this down is awfully silent

 

[TheTony316]

And this is why i'll always prefer physical games.

 

[HeisenbergFX4]

I know its been awhile since Ybarra was with Xbox but him and I talked about this more than once and he said it was something Xbox would never budge off of because of the data they collect.

It was kind of odd how much they know about your gaming habits including types of controllers and even when using those dominator strike packs even if you were playing "offline"

I have always hated this

 

[Kacho]

I'm either lucky or the outage was localized to certain data / distribution centers as I was both playing game pass stuff and also bought stuff over the weekend on the sales without any issue.

I think we’re in the same area. My Xbox worked fine but I couldn’t play games on my PC through the Xbox app. Kept saying I needed to be connected to the internet even though I was.

 

[Zeroing]

Everyone who played this down is awfully silent

I remember that thread! There’s this mentality that if you are critical of something you’re not a fan. Meaning you’re only a fan if you defend or downplay everything.

Hopefully they sort this!

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Everyone who played this down is awfully silent

Wasn't an issue for me. Afaik, DRM check is once a month and all the games I'm currently playing don't need a DRM check. It's far from an "always online DRM" situation.

 

[M16]

Lol at everybody seeming to ignore that there is an offline mode in the settings that allows a your purchased games to work in offline. Whoever wrote that articles didn't do their homework.

 

[DevilMayFlyForAWhiteGuy]

I hope they have some sort of solution, because despite the whole “home Xbox” thing it’s still a pain in the ass. At one point (around 2016) I didn’t have access to internet, so I used my Xbone offline. For some reason this caused my Xbox to be unable to play backwards compatible 360 games. I tried to play Dark Souls 360 and it kept telling me I had to sign in.

Didn’t make any sense because it was a disc version that I had previously installed and my Xbox was the home Xbox it installed to. It’s not like it had a digital license attached to it from my old 360 itself, so there was no license conflict. I was so pissed off. I’m pretty sure it was a thing for a while that you couldn’t play backwards compatible 360 games offline, but they eventually fixed that issue.

 

[NickFire]

I don't know if people were really unable to play on their "home" consoles or not. If the issue only relates to non-"home" consoles than I understand being annoyed, but do not understand making a big deal out of it. There will always be drm to play a game on a secondary console to avoid people sharing one game with 10 people.

 

[The_Mike]

Me and my gf have not noticed this. She's my home console.

I noticed in modern warfare it said one time I needed to be online, but restarting the game solved it.

But that's not the same as an excuse or anything, it's shit when stuff like this happen.

But AFAIK, it's only if you don't have your console as your main console, which then is your entire fault for sharing games.

 

[mckmas8808]

Who is actually going to defend this? Genuinely curious.

Video game media talking heads. I've seen them try.

 

[nominedomine]

Digital will always have some sort of online DRM requirement, specially in the case of sharing your library with someone else. I don't know what people expected here.

 

[Forsythia]

Had no problems myself, but DRM is shit in general. But what is the solution? If there was no DRM people could just get Game Pass for 1 month and download all games. Or simply copy digital games from a friend.

 

[Warablo]

This issue only crops up if you Game Share and it happens on all platforms.

 

[Codes 208]

It was shit when they first attempted it with the one, it’s still shit now. No ifs ands or buts

 

[Bazookaxp]

My home console worked perfectly. This same issue happens on Sony and Nintendo if I don't have internet on the second consoles on every platform.

 

[Hendrick's]

Xbox does not have Always Online DRM. I have never had an issue playing offline. I understand SOME people were affected recently and that this should be corrected however.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Xbox does not have Always Online DRM. I have never had an issue playing offline. I understand SOME people were affected recently and that this should be corrected however.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Still not always online DRM, not even close. Examples of always online DRM: MMORPGs, first couple of months of Diablo 3, GT7.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Still not always online DRM, not even close. Examples of always online DRM: MMORPGs, first couple of months of Diablo 3, GT7.

You have to periodically sign into xbox live to keep playing so its not technically ALWAYS online DRM but basically it is.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

You have to periodically sign into xbox live to keep playing so its not technically ALWAYS online DRM but basically it is.

I think there's a big difference between getting DRM checked once a month and having to be permanently online.

 

[ParaSeoul]

I think there's a big difference between getting DRM checked once a month and having to be permanently online.

Does that make it acceptable then?

 

[Craig of War]

I think the DRM is about making the console unhackable thus it has some consequences when the network has server outage

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Does that make it acceptable then?

Absolutely. Internet is comparable to electricity, everyone has it basically all the time. That's why 99.9% of people don't care.

 

[DenchDeckard]

I'd love to see the people who are defending this. I haven't seen anything so it would help give me a chuckle. MS needs to address this and it could give them even more free brownie points this gen. Its a win win for everyone.

They relax some of the bullshit DRM and they gain more support.

I think this needed to happen, Microsoft have been doing nothing but kill it this gen really, but there's still room for improvement.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Absolutely. Internet is comparable to electricity, everyone has it basically all the time. That's why 99.9% of people don't care.

Missing the point completely.

 

[ParaSeoul]

I'd love to see the people who are defending this.

Scroll through the last few replies.

 

[nush]

Who is actually going to defend this? Genuinely curious.

Well according to the poll results,


The Inventor B Bazookaxp U Unrivaledx88

 

[lh032]

Absolutely. Internet is comparable to electricity, everyone has it basically all the time. That's why 99.9% of people don't care.

Having internet does not mean you have to implement DRM, why people still keep giving stupid argument like this? Leave DRM out of this.

"That's why 99.9% of people don't care."

Oh if this shit gets worse in the future (which Im pretty sure it will), I can assure you the consumers out there will start to care, INCLUDING YOU.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Having internet does not mean you have to implement DRM, why people still keep giving stupid argument like this? Leave DRM out of this.

"That's why 99.9% of people don't care."

Oh if this shit gets worse in the future (which Im pretty sure it will), I can assure you the consumers out there will start to care.

If Xbox switched to actual always online DRM, then yeah a lot more people would care. But there's no reason to believe that it's gonna happen anytime soon.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

I was able to play every last one of my games, so I'm not sure what problems people were having. Yes I tried numerous different games when I heard people having issues, even games I had never played before like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

 

[DenchDeckard]

It's pretty obvious that the majority of people weren't affected, that's why the story wasn't as big but it still gained a lot of traction because some users were affected.

I just hope it makes MS look at their current set up but it's probably too deep rooted to change it to be like the playstation now. Which is a shame.

 

[Zok310]

Sucks that ms went down this route again. Their console literally self brick when the internet is down.
You have got to be a real pos to implement something like this into a video game console.

 

[SLB1904]

Having internet does not mean you have to implement DRM, why people still keep giving stupid argument like this? Leave DRM out of this.

"That's why 99.9% of people don't care."

Oh if this shit gets worse in the future (which Im pretty sure it will), I can assure you the consumers out there will start to care, INCLUDING YOU.

This problem is not even you have Internet or not, its on their servers

 

[PontiusFeeb]

I couldn't play any of the games I bought or anything on Game Pass on Friday and Saturday, and I wasn't happy about it at all. I've been really busy with work and needed just a few hours to unwind. It kind of made me wish I owned a different brand of console.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

FINALLY

 

[DavidGzz]

So, if you own two PS5s you can use the same profile to play them both offline? Seems this affected the secondary Xboxes, not the main Xbox. Still sucks that the network went down, but wouldn't that happen with Playstations as well?

 

[lh032]

This problem is not even you have Internet or not, its on their servers

the problem coming their server or not, DRM should not be implemented for offline games, period.
Thats the point i want to make here....

 

[Panajev2001a]

If Xbox switched to actual always online DRM, then yeah a lot more people would care. But there's no reason to believe that it's gonna happen anytime soon.

Boil the frog…

 

[Panajev2001a]

This weekend's Xbox outage put Microsoft's DRM back in the spotlight

Lengthy disruption across the weekend raised the specter of Xbox One's 2013 DRM.

www.windowscentral.com

Good to see, but it ignores the problems people reported with discs and the online check required which was present in other articles. Then again part of the fanbase cannot wait for a digital only future so it is what it is .