Microsoft's Xbox Live servers are back up again after crashing for the second time this week as millions of people isolate themselves in their homes to fight the spread of coronavirus or COVID-19.
The online gaming service experienced downtime again on Friday evening, with users reporting issues like being unable to log into Xbox Live, play multiplayer titles, and access its suite of social features parties and matchmaking. On Sunday, Xbox Live experienced a similar outage that lasted more than two hours.
Xbox Live down, again
Xbox Live is Microsoft's online gaming hub that connects players and allows them to play online-only games, sometimes even for free. However, the Live servers also handle a lot of the connectivity aspects of the Xbox console. Everything from using the store to downloading items and playing games depends on Xbox Live servers.
Xbox Support immediately acknowledged the issue and said their engineers were working to fix the problem and hours later confirmed that engineers had identified the issue and were able to fix the same. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the timing couldn't have been worse for its multiplayer gaming service to suffer another outage.
An increasing number of people around the world are staying indoors and practicing social distancing to avoid contracting COVID-19. Countries across the globe have enforced lockdowns and closed non-essential businesses like restaurants, bars, cinemas, etc. forcing people to stay in and entertain themselves by playing video games.
Users express anger on social media
Social media is ablaze with reactions to the Xbox Live outage with gamers expressingtheir anger over the company's inability to handle the increased usage on social media and even threatening to make the switch to PlayStation.
"Alright that's it @Xbox give everyone a free month of live. I pay 60$ a year to play my Xbox whenever I want. Xbox live servers are down yet again," wrote one user. "Xbox live is down again. Give everyone Gamepass Ultimate for a month since it's getting ridiculous at this point!" shared a different user, while another commented, "Xbox live being down again is almost tempting me to buy a PS4. Things are getting that bad. Stay strong people."
While some users were left infuriated, others were amused by the crash. Here are some of the top reactions on Twitter:
