That’s it, I’m done. I may still have some physical Xbox-only games I want to play through, but aside from that, my modern Xboxes are just going to sit unplugged and no longer get used. And I cannot see myself buying another Xbox console in the future. They’ve lost me as a customer.
Let me rewind a bit…
Obviously the first element of this is me moving away from console play to PC play for just about all gaming except at our TV - accelerated by Xbox no longer reserving exclusives for just the console. Which is fine, no specifically bad feelings there - I just prefer playing on PC these days.
Second came with the stupid “home console” rules.
Xbox Live had some outages this summer, which led to my kiddo not being able to play Minecraft (the only game he currently knows how to play - and he only knows how to play on Xbox). Which like… not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but kind of insane that he can’t play an offline game of Minecraft when Xbox Live is down.
Turns out part of the reason was because my Xbox Series X (I keep in the studio for work) was marked as my “home console” and not the Xbox One X we have at our TV in the house. This would not be a problem on Xbox 360 or any retro system. This is a regression. Mild inconvenience in the big picture, but really big deal in terms of being an obvious sign of how far we’ve gone back in ownership and control over our gaming experiences.
Then came the primary fatal blow: Xbox, the tiny company that can’t afford storage, deleted all of my clips and screenshots from my Xbox. Years’ worth of Halo and Call of Duty clips from the early days - but also clips and screenshots of my Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect playthroughs with my wife, and my kiddo’s first Minecraft shenanigans. His first video game, his first creations. Something incredibly important to me.
Their announcement and policy didn’t say anything about this, though. They started announcing last September that they would be deleting clips and screenshots older than 90 days from the Xbox network as they want to push everyone to pay for OneDrive subscriptions. But nowhere did ANYTHING say a peep about deleting anything from your LOCAL Xbox console. Why would it? Why would they delete things you have plenty of room for and don’t take up space from your own local hardware??
I wound up breaking my negativity rule on lost saves to make a video on this. And while plenty of people jumped to blame me for not “backing them up” - most people seemed to share the sentiment that there was no reason to think they’d magically up and vanish from my local system and countless more have shared that they’ve lost a decade of clips/screenshots too, to this very issue of them vanishing from local systems without any warning.
I want to be very clear. This is completely unacceptable. There is no good or reasonable excuse for doing this, absolutely no excuse for doing it without much more clear and thorough warning, and they need to provide recourse for users to recover their files immediately.
But they won’t, because they couldn’t give a fuck and it doesn’t affect their bottom line.
This already soured the company in my mind big time, but I hadn’t really planned on any specific action yet. My kiddo only played Minecraft on Xbox, and I still had an ongoing Mass Effect Trilogy playthrough going, I still liked collecting the occasional game on Xbox for variety’s sake, etc.
But then it was finally time for my family to set up a shared Minecraft world so we could all 3 play.
Sounds simple, right?
Ha. Ha. Ha.
First step, I made a new child account on Microsoft/Xbox. Added it to my MS/Xbox family, picked a Gamertag, all that jazz. Then I used that account to request that the “parent” purchase Minecraft. I approved the purchase and paid for the full Deluxe Edition bundle (comes with Java/Bedrock/some microtransaction bullshit just so he had some extra stuff). ($40)
That was early August.
Next step was setting my wife up. Added them to my Xbox family, etc. But it turns out they no longer own Minecraft despite having played with me over a decade ago. How is that? Well because Microsoft decided to ditch all Mojang accounts and delete access to anyone who didn’t link their account to a Microsoft account in the very short window - at least when you consider how long the game has been around. Because apparently that’s an acceptable way to go now. Just revoking your access to a still-alive game you bought because you didn’t respond to an email in time. Coolcoolcool.
This weekend, we’re all stuck inside, sick as can be. It’s been rough. Kiddo got lots of Minecraft time and finally wanted us all to play together.
Took us like 20 minutes to even buy my wife Minecraft because the website seemingly logs us out every time we click on a new page, threw errors at every step, was generally an unusable mess. But paid another $30 and now my wife has Minecraft.
I ran into a snag with me being able to play. The plan was for my wife and I to play on PC using Bedrock and kiddo to play on Xbox. Should be fine. Except I’ve just switched my gaming desktop over to Linux and apparently Minecraft, of all games, is one that can’t run on Linux. It’s the first one I’ve encountered that’s been a big issue. Java edition works fine, obviously, but Bedrock? Nope. There’s some community launchers to run the Android edition (what a horrible compromise in concept anyway) but those are all currently broken and being fixed. And somehow Microsoft can get EAC with Halo MCC/Infinite playable in Proton/Linux just fine for Halo multiplayer, but can’t give us a Linux-compatible Bedrock launcher, let it work in Proton, or just freaking put Minecraft on Steam at all.
No worries, as ridiculous a workaround as I may think it is, I happen to have a tiny Xbox Series S that I bought purely for work purposes and have only used it for my Digital Foundry projects I had worked on. Tiny console can fit on my desk, let me play Minecraft with my kiddo and be unobtrusive. Got it updated and Minecraft installed. Launched into the game, wife and kiddo are making their new characters, and…
I can’t play because “I’m signed in on another console.”
Weird, okay. Sign me out of the TV Xbox, relaunch, and go to launch it from my kiddo’s account and… he doesn’t own it? At all.
Somehow, me buying Minecraft FROM the request from my kid’s account, bought the game for ME - despite the fact that I already owned it. Or, at least that’s all I can think happened. Best I can tell, my original $40 went into the void because I wasn’t given a redeem code or anything, was pretty convinced it went to my kid’s account at the time, and I don’t appear to have the “Mine coins” that were part of the bundle.
So I had to buy the game for my kid again. Another $30.
Only, this took OVER AN HOUR with me manually typing in my password on the console 2 dozen times to approve the parental restrictions and getting errors every step of the way. I went to the Microsoft Store page and “gifted” the game directly to his account, only I couldn’t redeem the code because he “isn’t old enough.” Despite having approved his account for the game a dozen times.
Nearly 2 hours into this whole ordeal, my only recourse was then to change his account to an adult/unrestricted account, wait through many errors for that change to syndicate to the different Microsoft/Xbox services, and then redeem the code.
OK. We’ve spent way too much money on this, but we all own the game.
It took over half an hour to download the measly 1.6 GB game because somehow downloads are the biggest bottleneck the Xbox One X has ever seen. More pointless delay. (It wasn’t even downloading that was the problem, just the “installing” steps inbetween download chunks.) Slow hard drive, probably.
OK. Game downloaded, let’s play.
Then, he “can’t play multiplayer because of how [his] account is set up.”
…come again?
Here’s the fun catch-22 of this whole ordeal.
Xbox does not have a Game Pass/Xbox Live sharing feature for families. They apparently “tried it out” last year, and shut down the idea. There’s no family plan. Family members can inherit GP/Live access from the parent account when on the same Xbox, but since I had to be signed out to play on a separate Xbox - you know, to play with my own kid in the new version of Minecraft that no longer has splitscreen like the previous versions - he lost Xbox Live access.
[Now again, this wouldn’t be an issue if I could just play on PC, but somehow Microsoft is too incompetent to make one of the most popular games in the world playable on Linux, even though 95% of my Steam library can be played just fine, so I have to play from a second Xbox.]
I’m actually grateful that I encountered another error here. Sunk cost fallacy, impulse, and desperation for our entire evening to not have been a waste led me to immediately run to buy him a Game Pass Core subscription so we could finally just fucking play together - but that was also erroring out due to the age issue. (It eventually gave me the option when everything caught up, but by then I had come to my senses.)
Sorry Xbox, but no, I’m not paying you an additional $10/month just to be able to play the game we’ve now collectively bought 6 times for 3 people (more if we count Xbox 360/PS3 copies) and the huge stack of consoles I’ve bought and decade of nonstop Xbox Live/Game Pass subscription I’ve held.
In fact, I’m just done. Not only are you not scamming me out of another subscription, I’m cancelling my existing XBL/GP sub, and I’m not buying another Xbox console again.
You deleted my personal files and memories without warning and without my consent. You’ve wasted too much of my time, and regressed gaming to a worse state than I’ve ever seen. On no other gaming platform or generation would it be so difficult to play with family and friends. Technology advancement should have made this easier, seamless even, not more difficult.
I know this is all very #firstworldproblems - but I just wanted to share my thoughts. I wasn’t filming for any of this, so I have nothing visually to show in a video, I just wanted to share my experience and why I’m done with Xbox.
As an update, here’s our “Xbox Replacement”:
Intel Core i9-12900 NUC with an Nvidia RTX 4070 Super.
I have it set to boot straight into Steam Big Picture Mode and added Minecraft for Windows to Steam so my kiddo can find it. There will be some friction getting him used to the new menus - but it’s a change for the good. Not only will it play Minecraft without paying a subscription, it’ll let us play a lot more Steam games at the TV easily, and stream anything else from our PCs. And record without someone else deleting the clips from our local hard drive without our consent.
I would have loved to use Bazzite Linux for this to emulate the Steam Deck setup, but since Minecraft isn’t working there right now, that can’t be done lol.
