Microsoft Criticised for Xbox Auto-Upload Stance Following Baldur’s Gate 3 Nudity Bans

BT has apologised after it emerged that some broadband customers are being charged for Xbox Game Pass subscriptions without their knowledge.

One area hit during the recent round of layoffs at Microsoft were the departments focused on bringing physical Xbox games to retail. On January 25, word began circulating that Microsoft Gaming was laying off a massive 1,900 employees from its 22,000-person team. A large portion of this number apparently is coming from the customer service group at newly acquired Activision Blizzard, which up till now was known for having relatively solid customer service.

While Palworld aspires to new heights, selling over six million copies in four days of launch, Xbox and PC players on the Microsoft Store are getting a lower-quality experience. It’s ultimately due to the versions differing from Steam and being at the “mercy” of the certification process. Nevertheless, an update is live and fixes several issues on those platforms.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the January 2021-announced Indiana Jones game from publisher Bethesda Softworks and developer MachineGames, will launch for Xbox Series and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store in 2024, the companies announced. It will also be available via Xbox Game Pass.

The Xbox Series and Xbox One versions of Neptunia: Sisters VS Sisters will launch on April 16, publisher Idea Factory International announced.

The Baldur's Gate 3 creative director, Swen Vincke, stated that acquiring good video game content might be more challenging if subscriptions become the dominant model in the industry. The Baldur's Gate 3 creative director's comments were in response to recent statements from a Ubisoft executive who suggested that gamers may need to adjust to not owning their games as video game subscriptions gain popularity.

Over the last decade or so, the entertainment industry has seen many rises and falls across all brands. These changes have affected music, TV, movies, and even video games. Things “for sure never going to fail” started to fail. Then, things that “could never work” have done well and made many wonder if things could go further down that path. One such path is that of the “game subscription service,” which was punctuated by the Xbox Game Pass, which has done wonders for Microsoft. However, Larian Studios isn’t on board with this notion, nor with notions of such services made by fellow game developers.

The director of Baldur's Gate 3 has discussed the possibility of their games heading to subscription services, sharing: "Direct from developer to players is the way."

With the debate around the future of video game subscriptions heating up, one high-profile developer has come out strongly on the side of the traditional method of selling games.

Baldur’s Gate 3 players on Xbox have been dealing with a major bug that’s causing lost save files, but a fix is expected for next week, according to Larian Studios. The developer posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday to reassure fans that Microsoft’s firmware update should address the save file bug when it’s released on Jan. 16.

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has said Microsoft plans to release a firmware update to fix the pesky save bug that has plagued the game’s release on Xbox.

Microsoft has reportedly uncovered the cause of an issue that can result in Baldur’s Gate 3 saves being lost on Xbox Series X/S.