GoKawiilFacepalm: Microsoft is continuing to address the recent Xbox network outage, and while it has already given its explanation of what happened, there's one aspect it's still investigating: why some people couldn't play their physical games during the incident. The company insists that this shouldn't have happened.
The Xbox network went down on the evening of Sunday, July 26, preventing users from launching purchased games, signing in, or completing new purchases. That alone was bad enough, but what was particularly annoying for those affected was the inability to play their disc-based games.
Services were restored on July 27, and Microsoft later said the source of the outage appeared to be a licensing service operating outside the main Xbox infrastructure. The failure prevented players from signing in whenever an entitlement check was required for purchased products. These checks are used to verify the digital rights attached to content bought by customers.
Microsoft said its support team isolated the failing part of the network and shifted traffic to healthy systems. Access returned at different times around the world, which explains why some players were able to sign in and launch games before others while recovery was still underway.
Now, Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet has told The Verge that although physical games are subject to entitlement checks, these shouldn't have prevented them from working during the outage.
"We're looking into reports that some players were unable to access games using discs as expected during the service interruption. Disc-based entitlement checks should not prevent players from accessing their games and this is by design," Van Vliet said.
– Scott Van Vliet (@scottvanvliet) July 28, 2026
Microsoft has at least identified part of the problem. Van Vliet said an issue prevented some consoles from correctly using entitlement information already saved on the system. Xbox's offline mode is designed to rely on these locally stored licenses, allowing supported games to launch without contacting Microsoft's servers.
Game discs for Xbox One and Xbox Series X contain encrypted XVC packages with attached licenses rather than acting as conventional bootable media. Even so, Microsoft's documentation states that games with full disc support should remain available for offline use.
The company plans to address the fault in an upcoming update, although it has not revealed which console models or games were affected. Microsoft also hasn't explained the technical cause of the problem, or why inserting a valid disc wasn't enough for some systems to verify ownership during the outage.
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