The case that broke out over the weekend is a testament to how Xbox should take action on its infamous DRM.
Over the weekend, Xbox fell in the eye of the storm with server issues that reignited the controversy over the operation of the DRM – the online technology that checks and verifies the actual purchase or subscription each time a game is started – implemented by Microsoft. When the servers do not work, it is not only the users’ ability to play online that is limited: as users complain, in fact, on Xbox the games do not even work offline if the servers go down, which is a big problem for those gamers interested exclusively, or mainly, in solo experiences.
The case on Xbox –
The emergency seems to have now disappeared, but the controversy does not seem to diminish, on the contrary they trigger what seems to have become an indispensable reflection – and which is anything but linked to the Xbox alone (a similar case had occurred with Gran Turismo 7 on PS4 and PS5 few weeks ago). For three days, to quote the Xbox status page, “some users couldn’t buy & launch games or start Cloud Gaming sessions “on Microsoft consoles, tragically just when the streaming game collaboration with Fortnite and Epic Games was launched – which, however much someone has ventured a connection, should not be the cause of this prolonged downtime .
“Microsoft change the DRM” –
Some of the views collected on ResetEra include that of the Washington Post reporter Gene Park, who notes that “the DRM problem is my biggest problem with Xbox. It’s crazy that I can’t play games that I bought and own because they can’t get their thing to work. Imagine not being able to read a book because the publisher’s office in England is on fire ”. The creator Parris Lillywho hosted several episodes of Inside Xbox, also expressed his disappointment about it: “the outages on Xbox made it clear that something needs to change with their DRM policy, the games that have been downloaded to my console. they should have a window to be offline and playable without checking“. For the moment, no comments from Microsoft: for now only the Twitter account has ‘spoken’ Xbox Support, who closed the matter six hours ago, pointing out that the emergency has returned to Europe as well. But the community is waiting for answers, and who knows if the usually very open, especially on Twitter, Phil Spencer does not make himself felt in this regard.
09 May 2022 – 09:20
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