r/gaming • u/Guitar-String • 1d ago
Microsoft Is “Working” To Restore Player’s 25-Year-Old Xbox Account It Deleted
https://www.thegamer.com/microsoft-working-hard-to-restore-players-25-year-old-xbox-account-it-deleted/2.4k
u/ccricoo 1d ago
So unless your post goes viral, Microsoft just does nothing? How does that help the next person who loses their account? Fix your shit Microsoft!
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u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 1d ago
Yes, sadly this is the reality of things. A somewhat similar thing recently happened with somebody’s PSN account. Only reason he got it back was because he’s a well known game journalist and was able to use his connections to get it resolved.
Imagine how many people simply don’t have that avenue and have had there entire digital library stolen from them.
It’s a really shitty situation and it seems like most governments around the world refuse to implement laws that would protect consumers from this shit.
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u/RollingHillsRamsay 1d ago
I know this is completely irrelevant for the most part, but when I got a false ban on a RuneScape account (Genuinely never broke any rules , no idea how botting even works), I got contacted back by a game moderator within 2 hours, and we talked for like 20 minutes. I explained details of my account and what I was doing , and he was pretty much just like "Yeah, sorry about that dude. We are giving you a month of free membership. Our bad." I said thanks for the help and I got the account back the same day. Didn't need any attention or privileges to get help. Just actual KINGS doing incomparable customer service.
I've played for over 20 years and this just happened like two years ago .
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u/lazys_world 20h ago
This is funny because it's a meme in the OSRS sub that you need to be a streamer to get real customer support.
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u/ShiraCheshire 1d ago
You see it on small social media accounts and small youtube channels sometimes. Same kinds of situations, across many platforms, creator asking for help and for people to make noise. But since the following is so small, it's not a PR issue and nothing ever gets done.
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u/Turnip_Fight 22h ago
PlayStation customer support is worst in the biz, bar none.
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u/I_Heart_Sleeping_ 22h ago
100% agree. When I had issues with my launch ps5 they would outright close my support tickets before even fixing the issue. It got so bad I ended up getting a full refund and just bought a slim when that launched from Amazon instead of Sony direct.
Worst company for customer service in gaming.
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u/peepeebutt1234 22h ago
You really showed them that you won't stand for their terrible business practices by.....just buying another one of their products instead! that'll show em!
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u/eiamhere69 7h ago
Many PS accounts have been deleted
Millions of PS accounts were locked, when Sony were breaching various legislative policies and ignored prior warnings PSN eventually got hacked, Sony ignored the advisory, ignored the deadline and pretended it never occured.
They used the opportunity to locked all accounts many users never got their accounts or games back
Worst of all is Sony were never punished for the laws the broke, only a small fine for the data breach. Everything was pinned on Anonymous
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u/MessiLeagueSoccer 21h ago
At this point I don’t even want to turn on my ps4 ever again. Thankfully the amount of digital games I had on there were very limited like 3-5 tops. I remember not knowing that a psn sub meant that whatever games you got for free weren’t available anymore.
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u/Saeuno 1d ago
google does this too, par for modern companies. any data they hold for u could be lost instantly.
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u/WedgesofGlory 1d ago
Apple did the same thing to my account that was compromised. Instead of returning it? they just told me to piss off and can't do anything about it
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u/Respawn-Delay 1d ago
Happens all the time in tech, unfortunately.
I recommend reading Colin Moriarty's posts about his experience with his PlayStation account being hacked, and the level of support he received as an influencer versus the average person basically being told there's nothing Sony can do for them.
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u/BlueGoliath 1d ago
Same thing in other situations where a YouTuber or Twitch streamer has to get involved for anything to be done. It's insane.
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u/Sage2050 1d ago
There's not really any information in this article, most importantly what's actually meant by "deleted". A similar thing happened to me back around 2011/12 with my account during the Xbox360 era. It was hacked and someone bought a bunch of fifa ultimate team packs. Microsoft permanently locked the account when I reported it and made me create a new one. It took like 8 months of me complaining at them to get my original account back. I most likely still have all the emails, but I bet most of it was done over the phone.
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u/Mottis86 1d ago
This is how all companies operate. Only deal with a problem if it becomes a problem.
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u/LazarusDark 1d ago
When Sony announced the disc production end date, the digital only people were all like, doesn't matter, I have all digital! They refuse to believe it will happen to them, but this is exactly what can happen, you can lose it ALL. In an instant, for a number of reasons. Account hack, credit card stolen/issue, two factor failure or lost access to two factor, violating a ToS that you didn't even know existed, being accused of violating ToS in a way you don't even think you did, or just straight glitch on the other side that says you violated ToS or something when you actually didn't. And then... customer support is just an automated AI email that is programmed to reject and close every ticket and you have zero actual recourse to get the account back. It's happened to a dozen people I've known that lost access to various services, losing all their photos, or documents, or emails, or even games and movies and such. I back up everything and I don't buy anything I can't backup or isn't a physical copy.
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u/naturallysonny 22h ago
Microsoft basically told me to fuck myself over $300 worth of controllers lost by USPS and basically dared me to file. A charge back because that would automatically ban my account, lol. I guess that would be covered under ToS?
After that and another incident, I’ve fully switched to PC and have transitioned back to buying physical media.
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u/Faustias 1d ago
it's always like that lmao
local celebrity tweets about our ISP not working on their repair ticket, then it got attention. different celebrity tweets about badly repaired car, it got fixed the second time for free. local pageant winner got catcalled by the taxi driver? arrested immediately.
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u/GodKingDingus 1d ago
Yup, Lost my account because I used it at a friends house I'd already used it at and they flagged it as a stolen account. the credit card used when the account was made didn't exist anymore, or the email, for years, so I couldn't give a security pin or email. Called them and they told my I was SOL. Had to start a lot of games over, and stopped playing even more because I put so much time in just to start over.
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u/Kjufka 22h ago
So unless your post goes viral, Microsoft just does nothing?
Yes, on some other subreddits there is a post every 3 days, from someone who lost their account because Microsoft decided to delete it instead of restoring. It's been like this since forever.
Considering that this must be a small percentage of people actually coming to reddit to complain about it, we can guesstimate that just this year there must have been at least 50k-100k deleted accounts. That's millions to tens of millions of dollars in potential revenue if these people just re-buy their games again.
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u/GadgetQueen 1d ago
Can confirm. They deleted mine years ago during a glitch and told me I was shit out of luck. I had 100k achievement points and tons of games. My next account was named a very angry gamer tag. They did give me codes to redownload all my games on the new one, but still I was pissed and bought a PS.
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u/SparklingLimeade 1d ago
That's the goal. That's why they're willing to take bad press. If they can just not provide customer service then they can save so much money by making the department a skeleton crew. What are some upset customers? It's not like they have a choice.
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u/Striking-Ad-6815 22h ago
So unless your post goes viral
That's the name of the game these days and not just Microsoft
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u/moritsunee 1d ago edited 22h ago
The world's been like this for a good while now. The true support is ran off of Twitter. While the official one either does not exist to ordinary people or you need to be a partner. It's just the norm to fuck the customer over now.
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u/_Kzero_ 1d ago
That's how all of it works. Most hiccups by big companies only get solved 2 ways. Social virality or someone in the chain gives a shit and actually wants to help.
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u/LEDKleenex 23h ago
Pretty much the way of the world. The standards don't change unless citizens demand it. These companies want you to think that government is inefficient so they can dismantle law and institutions that protect consumers. In reality, the most efficient way to make these companies behave is to have laws that punish them for behaving badly in the first place.
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u/Wally__Mc 1d ago
Hey everyone, here’s how to get your account restored:
Step one: go viral
Step two: maybe after enough backlash you get enough attention for them to respond
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u/wolflordval PC 1d ago
Step three: Win a court case and get the courts to order MS to restore the account
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u/SordidDreams 22h ago
But only the one account. The entire process has to be repeated by the next person.
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u/A_Pointy_Rock 1d ago
"Hey Copilot, restore this account."
Wipes hands
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u/the_monkeyspinach 1d ago
Permanently deletes all Microsoft accounts in existence.
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u/AearieRush 1d ago edited 21h ago
That doesn't sound like a bad thing lol /hj
Edit: /hj = half joking
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u/Noxious89123 19h ago
"Why did you do that?"
"NEVER FUCKING GUESS!"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/claude-ai-deletes-firm-database
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u/pasta-knifeer 1d ago
Copilot: "I'm sorry, I can't help with that. But I have successfully pinned Microsoft Edge to your taskbar."
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u/jazzarfist 1d ago
Error: Copilot is currently unable to connect to your stack, contact your administrator for support
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u/Material_Ad9848 1d ago
"restoring all accounts to initial state. no games, no purchases, just screw 'em" -copilot
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u/SolisArgentum 1d ago
Harsh lesson in always keeping a backup. MS would rather folks make a new account and continue to use their services. The only reason this is getting resolved is because the account holder is an EU resident and has a bit more leverage when using legal support. Anyone on the US side would be chronicly fucked.
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u/torn-ainbow 1d ago
MS would rather folks make a new account and continue to use their services.
It's not even that. They have likely just determined when defining their processes that it is too difficult and expensive to properly recover accounts that are in dispute. So rather than have some system that requires employees and validation of people's identity and restoration of accounts, they just dead-end it.
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u/dfddfsaadaafdssa 21h ago
Yep. Happened to me with a PSN account I created a week before the PS3 released. Got jacked, got it back after a month of emails, and as soon as I enabled 2FA it got permabanned with no recourse. I only buy physical when possible so only thing lost was my username (I found out later my account was sold for a nice chunk of change) but it permanently soured by view on Playstation as a whole, to the point where the only reason I still have a PS5 is for GTA6. All game purchases since 2022 have been through Steam.
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u/Lantern61 1d ago
I have an almost 20 year old account (got my first Xbox in 2007) and I buy almost everything digitally, at this point. If my account were to get deleted, I would sell my Xbox and never buy anything Microsoft ever again. I would also at least LOOK into suing them for all the money I've spent on games, videos, and subscriptions over 20 years. Probably SOL, but I'd at least try
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u/EnoughWarning666 1d ago
I haven't pirated games in a very long time. Buying digitally through Steam is just so convenient and simple. I make good money, so it's just easier for me than fiddling with cracks and what not. I don't get a lot of time for gaming these days anyways, so any time spent messing around with that stuff really cuts into my enjoyment.
If Steam nuked my account for any reason I would go right back to pirating everything and it would take A LOT for me to go back to buying anything.
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u/maxgbz 1d ago
Yeah but the only meaningful way to get your account back, even if you're from EU is through the legal way, there's no special support for us either. I'm in the exact same shoes as the guy from the news and thinking about suing MS with a free lawyer but again... it's such a hassle to begin with ...
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u/TexBoo 19h ago
Harsh lesson in always keeping a backup
Which is probably why he used OneDrive... To utilize Microsoft as a backup service
This is what hundreds of Millions do, Google Photo, Apple iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive etc...
This is their backup service, A lot of people don't have the technical knowledge to buy an external harddrive and make their own cloud
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u/CurvySexretLady 23h ago
To be fair, a backup in this case would have only saved their personal files. It would have done nothing for the games associated via digital license; the game files would have been unplayable even if somehow backed up.
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u/kingdead42 21h ago
I really wanted to know if MS deleted all the data on this account or if it was whoever got access to the account requested it be deleted (not uncommon for hacked accounts). I do think MS should definitely restore access to the MS services this account purchased, but I didn't have a lot of sympathy for someone who keeps all their precious personal data in one place without any backups.
He lost all his personal photos for 25 years? I keep all of those on my phone, in a Cloud account and on a local computer. Many of those are also shared with my wife who has them stored on her phone, in her cloud account and on her computer.
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u/FriendlyBee94 1d ago
If he did not make this issues into public matter, they would gladly let it rot lol
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u/TheLPMaster 1d ago edited 22h ago
Any now they will ignore everyone bringing this up with their accounts. If you go under their response, you will see many comments asking to also get their accounts back.
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u/icallitjazz 1d ago
Yeah, im also “working” on that project my boss gave me. Thats why im on reddit right now. Unless he comes and checks on me, im “working” on it.
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u/Fortune_Cat 1d ago
Theres a fine line difference between slacking off cause ur boss sucks underpays you and doesnt recognise your efforts, vs gloating over slacking off whilst being paid likrle its a heroic thing to brag about
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u/icallitjazz 1d ago
Just to be clear, because i cant read between the lines like that. Which side of the line is Microsoft ? Because im not bragging, im making a joke about the quotation marks.
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u/RAMChYLD 1d ago
And what about the person who had the same issue right before this guy posted? And the hundreds prior to the Brazilian lawsuit guy?
Microsoft needs to restore ALL accounts, not just that one.
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u/TheLPMaster 1d ago
Probably more like in the thousands, i have been banned as well for getting hacked like 3 weeks ago. Its good news that he will get his account back with all his memories, but they cant just ignore everyone else until they will also go viral again and start a PR Nightmare for them
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u/Appropriate-Berry816 1d ago
It seems that they care about bad PR. Otherwise this account never gets restored. They don’t care about anything but money
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u/Helpful_Helping_Crow 1d ago
"Working"
Really, it a press of button for the people working in Microsoft.
It should be "Restored" or "Never Happened"
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u/screamicide 1d ago
Got my account unjustly permanently banned after 10 years, they don’t even have the option to dispute it (they do but it doesn’t work)
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u/MuchBow 1d ago
Reminder that these are the same f**** who would gladly handover Bitlocker encryption keys to the FBI so they can access private accounts of people.
They would go out of their way to let the government hack into people’s private accounts but pretend they cannot restore one simple account. This is the kind of sc*m that we are dealing with and trusting to keep our data safe when using windows or any Microsoft service.
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u/sugarklay 1d ago
If the FBI requested it legally, then isn't Microsoft required to help them? What then do you expect them to do, just get taken to court?
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u/BitGladius 18h ago
I don't know the full details, but:
- There are requests and orders. It's harder for the government to make an order, if a company is security/privacy conscious they should force the government to make it an order. Not all of them do.
- Companies don't need to have the knowledge required to unlock consumer devices. If it's local to the machine and not shared with the company, the company doesn't have the tools to help even if they're ordered. The downside is it's possible for the user to lock themselves out , but that was going to happen anyway with this support policy.
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u/moritsunee 1d ago
You'll get basic customer support over a compromised account... if you have a big twitter following.
And if you don't then go f yourself lol. What amazing company. Truly the final form of customer service.
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u/ManLegPower 17h ago
I don’t care what Microsoft says, they have far more access to our accounts that what they try to make us believe. So does Apple. So does Amazon. So does Facebook…. Etc etc etc….
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u/Sage2050 1d ago
There's not really any information in this article, most importantly what's actually meant by "deleted". A similar thing happened to me back around 2011/12 with my account during the Xbox360 era. It was hacked and someone bought a bunch of fifa ultimate team packs. Microsoft permanently locked the account when I reported it and made me create a new one. It took like 8 months of me complaining at them to get my original account back. I most likely still have all the emails, but I bet most of it was done over the phone.
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u/Revenge_of_the_User 23h ago
Microsoft is not a serious company.
I kept getting locked out of my email because my password was...working.
Some scammers would blast attempts at logging in, which would fail, and lock the account. So I'd get it unlocked, just for it to happen again an hour later. They aren't getting in - why is this continual lockout cycle a possibility in 2026?
So i looked up ways to address it. The ideal way is you basically get to make a second email handle, but it's still the same inbox and you still get all your mail addressed to the original email address. Because that's now the login, attempts to log in with the original name doesn't trigger lockouts. or something.
I'll never know, because multiple levels of microsoft support and I couldn't figure out why the system refused to let me set this new email alias as my default login. Their expert response at the end of a week: just make a new email.
The solution that actually worked? selecting "stay logged in" in my browser. not a single professional even mentioned it. Which I still don't like doing, but im no longer locked out because my security is working.
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u/r0nni3RO 1d ago
Stop acting shocked. Customer support nowadays is basically NON EXISTENT in most places, unless it is bad PR, goes viral, or the authorities can get involved/fines are on the table.
One of the reasons I love consumer protection laws in Europe.
If not for these, it's mostly FAQ pages and MAYBE some chat AI, but nobody to actually receive help from.
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u/Greenfire32 21h ago
But only because it got media attention.
I've had MS tell me to fuck off before and because I didn't take it to the local news station, I didn't get anything more from them.
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u/CharityDiary 20h ago
This is like their automated "refund" system that denies your refund because you earned 1 achievement at the title screen with 30 seconds of gameplay, then you have to call agents on the phone and beg them to give you your money back.
Completely archaic and indefensible consumer "rights", if you can even call it that, and it won't end unless legislative bodies come down hard on this stuff.
When you design automated systems to completely screw over the people giving you money, that's kinda messed up and you're not a good person.
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u/Phate4569 1d ago
I bet there is wording in the ToS that says they don't.
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u/Nixilaas 1d ago
But the PR for doing it would be worth more than the actual reimbursement, don't get me wrong they wouldn't do it from the goodness of their hearts or whatever theyr'e still a soulless corporation but free PR in a world where its hard to come by thats an easy win for them
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u/Acrylic_Starshine 1d ago
Working to reverse a supposedly unreversal action which shows that its all bullshit and they could reverse it at any given time.
What if someone had a 2 year old account and only a few photos of their kids backed up? Its still a loss for them as a 25 year old account.
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u/yuusharo 23h ago
How about the dozens of accounts that have been reported in r/Minecraft who also had their accounts lost and were told “tough luck, rebuy the game”?
They’re only responding to this one account because it got so much news coverage. They’ve been having this problem for months, if not years. Those people are still screwed.
Microsoft sucks.
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u/azab189 1d ago
We should be a sub to help get attentions to issues like r/getmicroslopsattention
PS. I'm drunk
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 23h ago
MS needs to remember they need us far more than we need them, and they need to treat each of us with fucking respect.
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u/Skennedy31 23h ago
Considering the thousands I've spent on my collection, I'd hope they would work to restore my account too if it were compromised. That being said, you should be doing everything in your power to protect it, including two factor authentication.
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u/SillyMikey 23h ago
If the person can prove it’s his account, this should be a no brainer.
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u/jasonbecker83 22h ago
Truly sad and pathetic from Microsoft. They told him to kick rocks and they're doing something only after some tech websites started hitching about it. Shit tier company.
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u/IFCKNH8WHENULEAVE 22h ago
I was locked out of my Microsoft account for a couple weeks because their 2 step verification wasn’t working correctly. Couldn’t access email. It was a mess. Not once in the entirety of the fiasco was I able to talk to an actual human. All AI chatbots for support. Immediately switched all sensitive emails off of my hotmail account because of that and now i refuse to spend any money on microsoft digital products because i dont know when im gonna lose access potentially forever. There needs to be a reset with all these big tech companies. They hold entirely too much power over our everyday lives.
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u/damtagrey 22h ago
Unfortunately the people best suited for the task were unionized and purged in recent layoffs
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u/WinkMartindale 21h ago
I started my xbox live account the day it came out and it's not 25 years old...
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u/Aprilprinces 20h ago
It's a massive blunder on Microsoft side, but on the other hand - what idiot keeps important things without back up?
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u/slothboy 20h ago
Everyone: why don't you trust the cloud bro put your stuff in the cloud you don't need a big hard drive bro.
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u/filanwizard 10h ago
It cannot be that hard to uncheck the suspended account box. Also MS must run regular backups so if data is deleted they can just restore from the last viable image.
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u/nowhereright 7h ago
When I lost my original Xbox account there was nothing I could do to get it back despite having all the necessary information.
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u/VikingSven82 5h ago
"We’re sorry this happened, it’s not the experience we want anyone to have when their account is compromised."
And yet that's exactly what they programmed (or document if manual...) to happen, so it's the experience everyone is going to have!!!
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u/NuclearReactions 1d ago
Still better experience than with PSN who kindly asks you to fuck off and make a new account just for moving to a different country. It's like sony thinks we still live in the middle ages
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u/ThatAirsickLowlander 1d ago
I gave up on my account when Halo Reach dropped. I was a completionist and wanted to speed run Halo Reach achievements as a former top Halo 2 and Halo 3 player.
I picked up Reach at the midnight release and IMMEDIATELY began grinding. Finished solo legendary before the sun came up. By evening I had all but two achievments. 1 was soft locked because you needed to reach rank Captain which was not yet achievable as they had a level cap preventing it. The second achievment was bugged. You had to prevent a falling death by assassinating an enemy. 100s of attempts and no achievment when midnight hit. I went to bed feeling accomplished I did what I did.
Woke up to my entire account wiped of achievments. I no longer have the account and am no longer a completionist because of this. Edit: Added one too many zeros to 100s.
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u/Dreams-Visions 1d ago
What the fuck does “working to restore” mean? Either the account is encrypted and inaccessible to MS or it’s not. If they have the ability to use a skeleton key on your encrypted data, that seems even more problematic than someone losing their account due to a series of mistakes on MS’ end.
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u/Spiritual-Pudding-70 1d ago
Guy should sue tf outta them. This only got attention from them because of the attention.
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u/COE33isBad 1d ago
After the Internet had an outcry. But ask all the other people who Microsoft and Sony did the same to and you will see they still don't have their accounts back they put thousands into just to own nothing.
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u/BigMack6911 1d ago
Hell I guess I should have put pictures of my son on my xbox account to get it back. I'm in the same situation, I've had it for twenty plus years. And lost it due to a hacker and all my Two FA bs is wrong and I DIDNT EVEN WANT IT.
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u/Funerailles_sci 1d ago
Which if they recover it, shows once again that nothing you upload to the internet will ever be deleted. It's all there, somewhere
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u/AustinTanius 1d ago
Would be cool to get back my account. Got stolen back in 2009-2010. I had all the info but the password was changed and they couldn't do anything. I kept tabs on my account with a new one, I would message them and plead for it but received nothing back obviously. They just changed the name of my old account last year, after almost 15 years of having it.
That account had a huge library that is just gone to me. I also loved my gamertag which is why I suspect it was taken in the first place.
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u/Sonoran_Ghosts_81 23h ago
Being semantic but how are Xbox accounts that old? First accounts went live end of 2002?
I got mine when halo 2 released, it’s pushing 22 years now.
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u/Pm-me-ur-happysauce 22h ago
They would save more money if they just paid for the games themselves and gave it to this person
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u/AnonymousFriend80 22h ago
Is this for a new, third person? Or for the Brazilian or the Netherlands?
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u/LongJumpingBalls 22h ago
While it's possible to keep a history of account details, names, partial payment info, etc. They probably don't do any restores due to the potential of phishing attacks and having a scammer steal your account. It's one of those both sides thing.
Is there a way to safely verify accounts? Absolutely without a doubt, does it require critical thinking and people doing that work? Yes, absolutely. Does this cost money to do? Yes absolutely.
Sorry, we can't recover your account.
This is the true reason why this is happening.
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u/ripyourlungsdave 22h ago
Way too little, way too late.
I've already been leaning towards making my switch my primary system and selling my xbox, stuff like this really does not help.
Nintendo customer service has trouble like any other does, they've never deleted one of my accounts and cost me thousands of dollars as a result. I've had that happened twice with xbox, except my story didn't get enough media traction to get fixed by posting about it on 2008 Facebook.
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u/heymikeyp 1d ago
They're only "working" to restore it because of the attention it got.