Xbox games were refusing to open or launch for many across Europe today, with an error message being presented instead. “The person who bought this needs to sign in,” said the error. The issues started at around 1PM ET, and Microsoft posted the “All Clear” on its status page at 3:30PM ET.
The problems appear to have been related to the Microsoft Store, which was also preventing some Xbox owners from purchasing games. The problems persisted for around two hours.
You should now be able to browse the Xbox Store on all platforms & any previously purchased games or apps should launch as expected. Thank you for the reports, we\’ll be here & listening.
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) May 6, 2021
if you\’re having problems launching Xbox games in Europe right now, you\’re not alone pic.twitter.com/uFswmohMnT
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) May 6, 2021
The rest of the Xbox Live, or Xbox network, service appeared to be functioning, with Party Chat, LFG, and other parts of Xbox still accessible while games were not. Xbox Live last went down last month, alongside an issue with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft blamed the previous issues on DNS problems, but Thursday’s error message suggested there was an authentication problem somewhere preventing some Xbox owners from accessing their digital games.
Update May 6th, 3:55PM ET: Updated to reflect that the service appears to be back up.