5 ms·

I was surprised to come back to my XBOX account after 10 years in the US and see that very old digital purchases from previous console generations were not only

by glimshe 3mo ago

I was surprised to come back to my XBOX account after 10 years in the US and see that very old digital purchases from previous console generations were not only still available, but actually playable on the latest console through transparent emulation! They did a pretty good job with that.

PaulHoule 3mo ago
Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility -- even if they are always moving your cheese in the UI.
- amlib 3mo ago
  Except for the hundred thousands if not millions of people who lost their Minecraft account due to the way Microsoft handled multiple successive account migrations, also including the many accounts that were stolen due to lax security. And since digital ownership legislation is a joke consumers have pretty much no recourse.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
    Beat me to it. I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I really am curious to see some of the changes that have happened since I last played (when still owned by Notch), but I refuse to repurchase it.
    - galleywest200 3mo ago
      > I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I kept my Minecraft license after migrating to a Microsoft account. Unsure how it got messed up for you.
      - NekkoDroid 3mo ago
        > Unsure how it got messed up for you. If you didn't transfer it from your Mojang account to your Microsoft account in time (before the account was shut down) you just straight up lost access to it.
        thibaut_barrere 3mo ago
        And sometimes, like in Sharepoint, the process could not be completed.
        decremental 3mo ago
        [dead]
        topgrain2 3mo ago
        Microsoft accounts being an absolute pain in the ass to set up and manage, and the new launcher being aggressively terrible, are salt in the wound even if you finally gave in and migrated your account. Also, good luck running Microsoft’s Minecraft launcher on a kid’s computer with allowlist-only internet access. It connects to like 20 apparently-random IP addresses every time it launches, will not work if any of them fails, and the pool of addresses is evidently huge. I never did find anything like a list of IP blocks to allow. Maybe they keep a file with them all in it somewhere, never looked, but I have a feeling they hit one address that gives them their list of the others for each session, and only that list, like if I had to bet on it I’d go with that (if they had a larger list, why aren’t they re-trying with different addresses when one fails?). I guess they just don’t care about that use case. (“Why don’t parents just police their kids’ internet access?” yeah look some of us really try but shit like this is everywhere and makes it stupidly difficult)
      - deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
        I don’t know what to say. I went to the migration site, entered my information-no dice. Contacted support and got no assistance. There are others with a similar experience. Microsoft could have gone above and beyond to manage the forced migration. Instead there was a convoluted process which left many cheated. They could have just punted and automatically emailed brand new entitlement codes to all of the original purchase emails. Yes, people who switched emails would have been missed, but that would have covered 95%+ of customers in a single action.
  - giancarlostoro 3mo ago
    Or when they decided to wipe people's Hotmail accounts. Now some random person has my original hotmail that I had since the 90s through to the 2010s... Presumably, this person now indirectly has a ton of my original accounts for different services I can no longer access... thanks Microsoft.
    - Telaneo 3mo ago
      I'm so happy I managed to transfer everything important over to my own domain before anything like that happened. I still have my old Hotmail and Gmail, and while nothing important shows up there, there's still a trickle of non-spam email coming in there, even after 5 and 10 years since I transferred everything I could remember at the time.
  - arjie 3mo ago
    Haha, I was one of these people. I'm unreasonably salty about this (given the monetary loss is not high and I got a lot of playtime out of the game back then), especially because I also had one of those Alpha keys unused as well!
  - ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago
    You had years to move your Minecraft account
    - skotobaza 3mo ago
      Is two years period supposed to be a lot? What if a person haven't played the game for five years (which happens quite often) then comes back and sees that it's gone?
  - mastermage 3mo ago
    Yeah i belong to them i have an ancient account that was connected to a shitty mail hoster that deleted mail accounts after not use and i paid back then with a paysafe card. So i had no way to rpove ownership and got shafted. Abit of my fault I guess but i was like 14 when I bought it.
  - danudey 3mo ago
    I lost my original minecraft account because I wasn't able to get in contact with them. I had the original purchase information as required, but it wouldn't accept it. I contacted the e-mail address they said to get in touch with but heard nothing. No matter what I did nothing happened and now my old account is gone forever.
- reaperducer 3mo ago
  Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility This is the same company that closed its e-book store, and everyone lost the libraries they'd worked so hard to curate.
  - wolpoli 3mo ago
    Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall they did give a full refund when they shut down the ebook platform.
    - reaperducer 3mo ago
      A refund for the price paid. But life is more than financial transactions. Those people wasted hours and hours curating their personal libraries with books they loved. Considering how the price and availability of ebooks fluctuates, the refund value is not necessarily equal to the replacement cost, plus more hours finding replacements, if replacements are even available.
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  Yup. Too bad the lead executive of such initiatives got laid off. https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-backwards-compatibility-program-and-cloud-gaming-lead-has-been-laid-off-from-microsoft-after-37-years https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-backwards-c... Not that this person couldn't have retired years, if not decades ago on his stocks from 1989. But a real shame nonetheless.
jamesfinlayson 3mo ago
Glad to hear this - I bought a bunch of things on the Xbox 360 shop years ago but haven't had a new Xbox of any sort since then.

by glimshe 3mo ago

PaulHoule 3mo ago

Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility -- even if they are always moving your cheese in the UI.

amlib 3mo ago
Except for the hundred thousands if not millions of people who lost their Minecraft account due to the way Microsoft handled multiple successive account migrations, also including the many accounts that were stolen due to lax security. And since digital ownership legislation is a joke consumers have pretty much no recourse.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
  Beat me to it. I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I really am curious to see some of the changes that have happened since I last played (when still owned by Notch), but I refuse to repurchase it.
  - galleywest200 3mo ago
    > I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I kept my Minecraft license after migrating to a Microsoft account. Unsure how it got messed up for you.
    - NekkoDroid 3mo ago
      > Unsure how it got messed up for you. If you didn't transfer it from your Mojang account to your Microsoft account in time (before the account was shut down) you just straight up lost access to it.
      - thibaut_barrere 3mo ago
        And sometimes, like in Sharepoint, the process could not be completed.
      - decremental 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - topgrain2 3mo ago
        Microsoft accounts being an absolute pain in the ass to set up and manage, and the new launcher being aggressively terrible, are salt in the wound even if you finally gave in and migrated your account. Also, good luck running Microsoft’s Minecraft launcher on a kid’s computer with allowlist-only internet access. It connects to like 20 apparently-random IP addresses every time it launches, will not work if any of them fails, and the pool of addresses is evidently huge. I never did find anything like a list of IP blocks to allow. Maybe they keep a file with them all in it somewhere, never looked, but I have a feeling they hit one address that gives them their list of the others for each session, and only that list, like if I had to bet on it I’d go with that (if they had a larger list, why aren’t they re-trying with different addresses when one fails?). I guess they just don’t care about that use case. (“Why don’t parents just police their kids’ internet access?” yeah look some of us really try but shit like this is everywhere and makes it stupidly difficult)
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
      I don’t know what to say. I went to the migration site, entered my information-no dice. Contacted support and got no assistance. There are others with a similar experience. Microsoft could have gone above and beyond to manage the forced migration. Instead there was a convoluted process which left many cheated. They could have just punted and automatically emailed brand new entitlement codes to all of the original purchase emails. Yes, people who switched emails would have been missed, but that would have covered 95%+ of customers in a single action.
- giancarlostoro 3mo ago
  Or when they decided to wipe people's Hotmail accounts. Now some random person has my original hotmail that I had since the 90s through to the 2010s... Presumably, this person now indirectly has a ton of my original accounts for different services I can no longer access... thanks Microsoft.
  - Telaneo 3mo ago
    I'm so happy I managed to transfer everything important over to my own domain before anything like that happened. I still have my old Hotmail and Gmail, and while nothing important shows up there, there's still a trickle of non-spam email coming in there, even after 5 and 10 years since I transferred everything I could remember at the time.
- arjie 3mo ago
  Haha, I was one of these people. I'm unreasonably salty about this (given the monetary loss is not high and I got a lot of playtime out of the game back then), especially because I also had one of those Alpha keys unused as well!
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago
  You had years to move your Minecraft account
  - skotobaza 3mo ago
    Is two years period supposed to be a lot? What if a person haven't played the game for five years (which happens quite often) then comes back and sees that it's gone?
- mastermage 3mo ago
  Yeah i belong to them i have an ancient account that was connected to a shitty mail hoster that deleted mail accounts after not use and i paid back then with a paysafe card. So i had no way to rpove ownership and got shafted. Abit of my fault I guess but i was like 14 when I bought it.
- danudey 3mo ago
  I lost my original minecraft account because I wasn't able to get in contact with them. I had the original purchase information as required, but it wouldn't accept it. I contacted the e-mail address they said to get in touch with but heard nothing. No matter what I did nothing happened and now my old account is gone forever.
reaperducer 3mo ago
Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility This is the same company that closed its e-book store, and everyone lost the libraries they'd worked so hard to curate.
- wolpoli 3mo ago
  Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall they did give a full refund when they shut down the ebook platform.
  - reaperducer 3mo ago
    A refund for the price paid. But life is more than financial transactions. Those people wasted hours and hours curating their personal libraries with books they loved. Considering how the price and availability of ebooks fluctuates, the refund value is not necessarily equal to the replacement cost, plus more hours finding replacements, if replacements are even available.
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
Yup. Too bad the lead executive of such initiatives got laid off. https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-backwards-compatibility-program-and-cloud-gaming-lead-has-been-laid-off-from-microsoft-after-37-years https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-backwards-c... Not that this person couldn't have retired years, if not decades ago on his stocks from 1989. But a real shame nonetheless.

jamesfinlayson 3mo ago

Glad to hear this - I bought a bunch of things on the Xbox 360 shop years ago but haven't had a new Xbox of any sort since then.