The mitigations follow a previous plea from the company to developers. According to emails obtained by The New York Times, developers are being asked to avoid the release of large updates during peak times. The new measures focus specifically on uploads, and as such should have a lesser effect on gamers’ experience. “As people look to gaming for social connection, we’re seeing record numbers across Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live, and Mixer,” said Microsoft. “To streamline moderation and ensure the best experience for our community, we’re making small adjustments. We’ve temporarily turned off the ability to upload custom gamerpics, club pics, and club backgrounds.” It follows outages in several games, with Smite and The Division 2 currently down on Xbox One. Microsoft also says its support wait times are longer than usual, so those seeking fixes for any network instability may have problems. Meanwhile, the refund process may take 72 hours or more at this time. It’s unclear how long it will be until these measures are removed, so you’d better hope the last picture you uploaded was a good one. Thankfully, no further service changes have been announced so far, but that can always change if more countries bring in strict isolation laws. You can keep an eye on the status of Xbox services via this handy beta tool.
