Over the weekend, Xbox has been in the middle of a huge controversy as server outages have sparked, once again, the debate about how their DRM works.
With the current DRM technology in place, checking and verifying you’ve actually bought the game you want to play or subscribed a service at every access, it’s not just a matter of not being able to play online – Xbox games don’t work even if they’re offline, single-player experiences, during these outages.
For three days, users have been “unable to purchase & launch games or start Cloud Gaming sessions” on Microsoft’s consoles, suspiciously mere hours after the Fortnite streaming deal was announced.
This has led the community to spark a debate about how the DRM currently works on Xbox consoles, as summarized on ResetEra. Washington Post reporter Gene Park noted that “it’s crazy how I can’t play games I bought and own because they can’t get their s**t together. Imagine not being able to read a book because the publishers house in England is on fire.”
Creator Parris Lilly also noted that “the Xbox outages have made it clear that something needs to change with their DRM policy, games that are downloaded to my console should have a window to be offline and playable without checking in.”
At the time being, Microsoft hasn’t offered any comment about the outages, or about what it plans to do with them in the future, at least to allow single-player games to work despite online issues.
Six hours ago, the Xbox Support Twitter account shared outages were apparently over in Europe, too, and that was their final comment. The emergency seems to now be over, but the debate about DRM and offline games is not, and it’s not even an Xbox exclusive – a few weeks ago, something similar happened to Gran Turismo 7 on PlayStation.
Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.
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