Many Xbox fans were outraged at Microsoft when the company announced heavy restrictions for sharing games with friends on the Xbox One. Disc-based games would be registered to a user’s specific Xbox Live account and could not be shared with friends. The company would only allow users to transfer a game to another user’s account as a one-time only gift option. The Xbox One was also required to have an Internet connection to check in with Microsoft’s servers once every 24 hours. Microsoft pulled a 180 and abandoned earlier plans after huge backlash from the gaming community, however in doing so the company also removed some popular features.
For example, in addition to removing unpopular features such as the daily online check-ins, the company also removed the ability for users to see all their games on any system from an Xbox Live account, and ability to share digital games with up to 10 friends. Some gamers are once again upset with Microsoft and have created a petition on Change.org asking the company to return the features it removed from the Xbox One. The petition asks Microsoft to give gamers “back the Xbox One we were promised at E3.”
“This was to be the future of entertainment. A new wave of gaming where you could buy games digitally, then trade, share or sell those digital licenses,” the petition reads. “Essentially, it was Steam for Xbox. But consumers were uninformed, and railed against it, and it was taken away because Sony took advantage of consumers’ uncertainty.”
The petition is seeking 15,000 signatures and has already accumulated nearly 13,000. However, many of the signatures “supporting” the petition appear to be from PlayStation 4 fans who want the Xbox One to fail. For example, the most frequently up-voted comment on the petition said that they wanted to sign the petition “to help ps4 so we have no stupid people on the same console as me.” The second most popular comment, meanwhile, sarcastically remarked that they “love restrictions” and “always-online DRM.” And the fourth most popular comment on the petition declares that “It’s so important so that the Xbox one is [expletive] again.”
