Microsoft has fixed the software bug behind the Xbox outage that left some players unable to access their game libraries two weeks ago, according to Xbox Chief Technology Officer Scott Van Vliet. The disruption stemmed from two compounding issues: the failure of an external licensing service used by Xbox and some publishers, and a separate internal bug in the Xbox client software that caused further license checks to fail once the external service went down, triggering cascading problems for players trying to launch games.

Van Vliet said a patch fixing the internal bug is already rolling out and will become mandatory for all Xbox players from Monday 18 August. Microsoft is also taking ownership of the previously external licensing service, transferring it to the Xbox team so engineers can harden the underlying infrastructure against future failures, though the service itself was not named. The outage struck at a particularly sensitive moment for Xbox, coinciding with the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, ongoing fallout from recent layoffs, and wider industry debate over digital game ownership following Sony's decision to end physical PlayStation game production.