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Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

birchtree.me

581–590 of 797 posts

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to take a 25 year break from Microsoft, from 2000 to 2025. Yet I was drawn back in because my son wanted to play Minecraft. This was the worst account process of any system ever invented, as far as I can tell. Plus in 2025 I had some interesting clients that are large corporations that use Microsoft as their core IT practice. The escape to the relative simplicity and consistency of AWS interfaces, from MS…

This is basically my experience. I switched to Mac with the Intel change around...2006 maybe? Converted my entire family. I personally switched to various flavors of linux around 2016-2017 because I wanted more hardware options. Eventually, my son got into gaming and eventually we let him get an Alienware laptop maybe 2-3 years ago. Then my wife had to get one for work this year. It's like nothing has improved in 20…

If ever there was a case study in the complexity of "market forces", it's Microsoft's Windows' resilience to pressure from clearly superior options like MacOS. As a life long Linux user, I'd like to believe it's the year of desktop Linux, and Linux is a clear threat, but...maybe next year.

Naively one would think that the single greatest market force on Windows would be its users making informed decisions and migrating to better OS options. But continually they don't. So it's clear that Windows' own merits are not what shapes those market forces, but a complex ecosystem of gaming, IT departments, and a long tail of other things difficult to enumerate.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 10 years old Xbox One, and every fucking time my family and I want to play a game, maybe once in a few months or so, it's always a struggle. Oh, let me download a few gigs of a system update. Oh, and the game you want to play needs an update too. Oh, and you are now logged out so go remember your password and type it using the controller. It's never a seamless experience that you would expect of a game conso…

Does the XBox not have an option for doing those updates in the background or when you aren't playing?

If you haven't played a game recently it will punt it out of the auto update queue.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#583
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience with all Microsoft software. The worst thought out, buggy, untested pile of crap. There's something seriously wrong in Redmond. At least with linux, you can search on the web and find a forum post telling you the magic incantation. With Microsoft, you will be forced to consume some second-rate engineer's unmanaged, barely workable, edge case until it might or might not work. Office on the web is…

Azure is also such a mess. 10 redirects to get to the portal, when creating an account/etc. if you do one thing wrong it might just disappear from a tenant or not bind properly or something and then you gotta do it all over again (happened last year) I just don't know how this is possible, why is everything so broken?

Compared to the old Win32 apps and settings menus of Windows Server, the Azure web interface is a disaster.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#584

I encourage folks with a PlayStation 5 (or 4) to participate in the blackout by unplugging their console for the week of August 23 at 7:00 PM your local time and run to August 31 at 7:00 PM your local time. Hopefully that helps send a message. We should irrevocably own our games, not rent a revokable license. And we should have price competition from multiple store fronts.

What like le reddit blackout?

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft products are no longer ubiquitous. That's an early 2010s view. In 2026 most clients are running Android, followed by iOS, followed by Mac, and use Google Docs for their office work. Windows is only used on a per-company basis. If your company uses it it uses it, otherwise it doesn't.

Only small companies here (North EU - Sweden) use Mac + Gsuite + Slack + Zoom as a stack. Companies over 20 staff are on Windows laptops + Office 365 E3 or E5. Android and iOS? Sure on the phones... What "clients" are you talking about? Edit: Re-reading I think you mean clients as in general computers, not business clients. Yes, more of the world is on phones but that is due to cost and society (ipad/iphone kids or t…

That's the same for the vast majority of the United States.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t find it. I know for a fact it isn’t illegal in my country.

It's coming. https://www.iipa.org/files/uploads/2026/01/BRAZIL-2026-COPYE... (Search "circumvention")

There’s a huge difference between the US bullying us into making this illegal, and the US throwing a fit in a report suggesting we should do it.

We’ve been on this watchlist before.

There’s no such law being proposed right now.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All problems with Microsoft products are design and intent problems, not engineering.

WinUI 3 was upgraded to stable/release when it had literally thousands of outstanding issues, including stuff like [fully replicable] 'using drag and drop causes the program to crash.' That was about the time I started opting out of the entire MS ecosystem after investing decades in it. I can't even imagine the chaos they must have going on inside for them to be failing the way they are on the outside. I'm also curio…

There's a reason why people either stick to Win32 or go with something like Electron when it comes to making Windows apps.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#588
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pirate it. Minecraft is really easy to pirate if you don't want to play multiplayer, or want to play on pirate-compatible servers (which is one boolean flag in the official server configuration file and doesn't require a pirated server). Make sure to get Java Edition. The other one is just an ad-riddden slopfest where they also ban you if you say swear words.

That is my plan, I have (had, you have to let it go) an old account from when it was a just username, never bothered "updating" it to the email account, I tried to convert when Microsoft said they were dumping all the old accounts, but the process was not working and I quickly decided I don't actually want a Microsoft account. At which point I decided that if I ever wanted to play again I would just do so sans accoun…

It isn't if you can afford enough lawyers to make microsoft's legal department blink at the cost of prosecution. If you can't drop $10K+ on a lawyer at the start though I would not put any money on winning.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#589

I wanted to show my gf the halo 1 campaign, so I downloaded the 30GB Masterchief Collection via steam. When I launched it, I was greeted with a black box. After 1 Minute it was a microsoft login screen that looked eerily like a browser inside the game. Since I couldn't do anything else, the game was stuck at a sub 720p resolution. I said fine Ill just create an account. Yea so mail, firstname, lastname, birthday, cou…

Thank you for sharing. MCC is nice when it works. I’ve also found that running the original Halo in Xemu emulator makes for an extremely lightweight, fast, and performant experience. It’s remarkable how heavy weight MCC is compared to the original games.

Re: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The streaming service is a Cathedral: You've paid your tithe to the temple of HBO Max? Marvelous, please come in, my child and gaze upon our wonders! What? James Cameron's True Lies? It is not in our collection, please remain here and we can watch Commando together! It's just as good! The digital copy is a Bazaar: You wander the booths of Prime Video, iTunes, and... Fandago!?! They assure you their copy of True Lies…

Just a minor correction: Commando is superior to True Lies ;)

It is, but it's not much consolation if you want to watch True Lies and not Commando.
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