Microsoft Outage Hits Xbox & Minecraft.
Xbox and Minecraft Down for Hours in Massive Global Outage
Millions locked out of Xbox and Minecraft, as a massive global outage rocked Microsoft's Azure platform, causing widespread disruption.
Highlights
- A massive Microsoft outage on Wednesday impacted global services like Xbox and Teams.
- The disruption was traced to an internal configuration error in the Azure cloud platform.
- Services were resolved after more than eight hours, with a full recovery by Thursday.
Microsoft has resolved a massive global outage that locked millions of gamers out of Xbox and Minecraft on Wednesday, October 29. The widespread disruption, which also knocked out Microsoft 365 and Teams, was traced back to a failure in the company's Azure cloud platform. Services were reported as back to normal on Thursday, though some players needed to restart their consoles to reconnect.
The outage was not a cyberattack. Microsoft stated the problem began around 16:00 UTC (12:00 PM ET) due to an "inadvertent configuration change" to its Azure Front Door service. This service acts as the main traffic controller for Microsoft's online world. The error effectively broke the "address book" (DNS) for Microsoft's servers, meaning consoles and PCs couldn't find the connections they needed to connect.
Massive Global Outage Impacts More Than Gaming
For more than eight hours, players were unable to log in, access multiplayer games, or retrieve their cloud saves. Outage-tracking site Downdetector logged over 16,000 reports for Azure services at its peak, with 9,000 reports for Microsoft 365. The problem extended beyond gaming, hitting other companies that rely on Azure, including Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, and Capital One. UK internet provider Community Fibre also confirmed its customers experienced issues.
Microsoft engineers scrambled for hours to fix the problem, eventually restoring service by rolling back the bad update to a "last known good configuration" and rerouting traffic around the broken parts of the network. Xbox Support confirmed on Thursday that all services "have recovered to their pre-incident state." During the recovery, Microsoft noted its Azure service was "operating above 98% availability" and expected a full resolution by October 30.
This event has highlighted how much of the digital world, including gaming, depends on just a few large cloud companies. The failure marked the second major cloud outage in less than two weeks, following a similar disruption at Amazon Web Services. The outage occurred on the same day Microsoft was scheduled to release its quarterly earnings report.
Author
Krishna Goswami is a content writer at Outlook India, where she delves into the vibrant worlds of pop culture, gaming, and esports. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) with a PG Diploma in English Journalism, she brings a strong journalistic foundation to her work. Her prior newsroom experience equips her to deliver sharp, insightful, and engaging content on the latest trends in the digital world.
Krishna Goswami is a content writer at Outlook India, where she delves into the vibrant worlds of pop culture, gaming, and esports. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) with a PG Diploma in English Journalism, she brings a strong journalistic foundation to her work. Her prior newsroom experience equips her to deliver sharp, insightful, and engaging content on the latest trends in the digital world.
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