An outage hit Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming service today, rendering online multiplayer unplayable for some users, but another notable problem occurred: In some cases, it appears offline gaming is impossible in certain situations as well.
In "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare," some users with the digital copy of the game complained they were unable to play its campaign, including Neowin's Brad Sams. Unlike games such as "Destiny" or "Titanfall," however, the campaign in "Advanced Warfare" doesn't rely on Xbox Live, and there's no indication that a connection is required to play the campaign on the game's box.
When Microsoft reversed some of the copy protection policies for Xbox One in June 2013, it noted that users who "choose to download" games from the console's store "will be able to play them offline just like you do today [on the Xbox 360]." That policy means the campaign of "Advanced Warfare" should be working for users who bought it digitally, yet that isn't the case.
With the campaign for "Advanced Warfare" not working for users impacted by the outage, it would appear that the offline portion of the game for some reason is linked to Xbox Live – at least in the case of those who purchased it digitally. One user who purchased the digital version of the game tweeted to Xbox Live's support team that the game wouldn't even launch.
When Neowin asked Microsoft why the digital copy of "Advanced Warfare" was unplayable for Xbox Live users with the service's downtime, a spokesman provided the following statement: "We’re aware of an issue impacting sign-in to Xbox Live on Xbox One. Our engineers are working hard to resolve as soon as possible. Stay tuned to Xbox Support for the latest updates."
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