Xbox’s huge outage even blocked games on disc
A widespread Xbox outage prevented users from accessing digital games and, unexpectedly, disc-based games that required license verification. While the service is slowly recovering, the incident highlights the risks of authentication requirements for physical media.
Why it matters
The outage raises concerns about the fragility of digital-first gaming ecosystems and the loss of consumer control over physical property.
An extended Xbox outage that began Sunday evening hasn’t just caused issues for people trying to play digital games — it blocked people from playing their disc-based games, too.
Xbox’s status page initially reported the outage on Sunday at about 11PM ET, and it has also prevented people from logging in, launching apps, or finding games on the Xbox store. This morning, the page also noted that users “may have problems” playing their digital and disc games, which posts on social media confirmed. During that time, my colleague Richard Lawler was able to launch digital games he owned, but trying to boot up games tied to Game Pass popped up error code 0x87e107df, indicating the license couldn’t be verified.
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