Minecraft briefly went down this morning, other Microsoft services still suffering

Microsoft have reported worldwide technical issues with multiple Microsoft services this morning, including Minecraft, Xbox Live, Teams, Outlook and other 365 products. In a Twitter thread from Microsoft's 365 Status account, they said the problems have been caused by “networking configuration issues”, and that a recent network change had been rolled back. It's hoped this will solve the access problems people have faced trying to use these services this morning, but lingering issues may still be kicking about.

Minecraft appeared to be caught in whatever technical woes are befalling Microsoft earlier today, but only for a short amount of time. “We are seeing some issues affecting our services, and are looking into the issue,” Mojang’s service status account tweeted a few hours ago. The outages began to be noticed just before 7am GMT this morning, but by 8am UK site Downdetector had recorded that more than 100 people had reported Minecraft was experiencing an outage. The reports have largely died down now, but if you're still having problems getting onto servers, this is probably the reason why.

The official Xbox Support Twitter account also acknowledged that “multiple Xbox services experienced intermittent issues” this morning, but said that these should have recovered now. Some commenters were reporting that services such as Game Pass were affected by the technical problems Microsoft have been experiencing, and were unable to sign in. I’ve tested the cloud streaming service through my browser, but was able to get Monster Hunter Rise up and running with no issues.

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for any more issues with Microsoft’s services today, and let you know if there are further outages. In any case, they shouldn't affect Microsoft's first Developer Direct showcase taking place at 8pm GMT/9pm CET/12pm PT today, as this is due to stream on YouTube and Twitch.