Microsoft hasn’t just discontinued most of its outgoing Xbox One consoles — it also scrapped one of the staples of online Xbox gaming. The company confirmed to TrueAchievements (via IGN) that it stopped selling 12-month Xbox Live Gold memberships. You can still buy one- or three-month access, but you’re out of luck if you want to commit for the long term.

The spokesperson didn’t outline why Microsoft was discontinuing the year-long Gold offering. Gold is required to play most Xbox content online and provides free games each month.

Your Xbox One game collection can come from a variety of services, which can make it a pain to manage your library. Which games can you most afford to delete to free up space? You won’t have to guess from now on. Microsoft is trotting out an Xbox June 2020 update that, among other things, identifies where your games come from — you’ll know if a title is from Game Pass, Live Gold or EA Access. It’s not clear if other services are in the pipeline, but this will at least help you sift through your catalog with little effort.

You’ll also see a Game Pass or Live Gold badge next to your Gamertag on the home screen and in the Guide, and your Game Pass content will float to the top of your dashboard if you’re a new subscriber.

The strain on gaming services might be easing now that pandemic lockdowns are easing in some parts of the world. Windows Central notes that Microsoft has restored custom Xbox Live gamerpic uploads nearly three months after disabling the feature to reduce the workload for moderators. We’ve asked Microsoft for comment, but it’s safe to say this is good news if you’re tired of your virtual Xbox persona.

The return suggests that demand for Xbox Live isn’t as heavy as it was in March, when many lockdowns began. The service’s active population surged 42 percent year-over-year at the time, with Game Pass subscriptions and friends also soaring at the same time. It might be a long time before the numbers settle down to something vaguely resembling normal (especially if there’s a second virus wave), but the initial crush of demand might be over.

Microsoft cited “record numbers” of users across Xbox Live, Xbox Game Pass and Mixer as a factor, although it didn’t provide numbers. In a separate update on Azure, Microsoft said it was taking “proactive steps” to manage the strain on the servers themselves, such as delivering game updates during quiet hours.

This won’t affect your existing images. However, it is a stark reminder that internet giants are struggling with moderation in light of the outbreak, and may have to choose between either limiting features or letting their oversight slip.

Security holes that leave the Xbox Live network vulnerable to spoofing attacks can earn researchers up to $5,000, for instance. Remote code execution exploits pay the most — from $10,000 to $20,000 — so long as they’re previously unreported vulnerabilities found in the latest version of Xbox Live.

Those who want to send in a submission will have to include reproducible steps to be able to claim a reward. And while the program covers quite a few different types of vulnerabilities, some things are out of scope, such as DDoS issues and URL Redirects.

The Xbox Live program is but one of the bug bounty programs Microsoft is running for its products and services. Some of them have a reward cap of $15,000, but the biggest program overall promises up to $300,000 for the most severe vulnerabilities found in the company’s Azure cloud computing services.

As before, owner CD Projekt says the goal of its app is to unify your disparate game libraries and friends lists in one place. While you’ll still need to have launchers like Steam and the Epic Games Store on your computer, GOG Galaxy 2.0 allows you to install and play any games you may have on those platforms using its client. You can also link your Xbox and PlayStation accounts to GOG Galaxy 2.0, allowing you to see your console games as well — no need for a spreadsheet. At the moment, GOG Galaxy 2.0 supports 20 platforms, either officially or through community-made integrations. Some of the bigger ones include Steam, Origin, Uplay and the Epic Games Store.

We took a look at GOG Galaxy 2.0 earlier this year when it was in closed beta. At the time, the client didn’t have a lot of features, but it did allow us to organize the majority of our games. Since then, GOG has been busy at work adding features that enhance the platform’s original pitch. With its latest patch, for example, GOG Galaxy now allows you to see the online status of your friends across different gaming platforms. It’s a nifty feature that makes it easier to pull your buddies into an online game like Destiny 2. GOG Galaxy 2.0 probably won’t spell the end of store exclusives like Hades and Metro Exodus, but it will least make them easier to handle.

The first two months of the Xbox Game Pass subscription cost a dollar each. After that, the price will rise to the standard $15 per month. Once your six months of the free Spotify Premium are up, you can either cancel or roll over into the normal rate for the service of $10 per month. You’ll have to be a new Spotify customer to be eligible for the deal; if you’ve subscribed to any Spotify service or even just signed up for a free trial, you’re out of luck.

Spotify typically offers two- or three-month trials, so six months of free music streaming is a good deal. Per usual, the company says that the offer is only available for a limited time. You can sign up now, but don’t forget to mark your calendar for the trial’s end date in case you want to cancel.

A month after another extended outage impeded Xbox gamers from playing for hours — and with a number of smaller issues in between — Microsoft’s network is down once again. Right now, many people can’t sign in or do much other than maybe watch Netflix on their Xbox Ones, after hours of problems and more than an hour and a half after its support account said the team was aware of problems. As usual, the Xbox Live status page is the best place to look for updated information, and it shows the issue running since around 8 PM ET.

We’ve heard that gamers who bought Gears 5 Ultimate to jump in early have been able to play through the campaign by taking their boxes offline, so if you enjoy single player gaming you may be in luck. For everyone else hoping to take their NBA 2K20 MyPlayer online or get in some multiplayer action, maybe it’s time to read a book, or take a walk. Whatever it is that other people do might help, if you don’t have a PS4, PC or Switch to keep your attention. One thing’s for sure — a string of service outages isn’t the best way to convince people that cloud-streamed gaming is a good bet for the future.

Since just before 5 PM ET, an Xbox outage has caused gamers error messages when trying to launch their digital titles. Whenever a player tried to open a game, it quickly close and flash a message to sit tight as outages happen “once in a while”.

Within the last few minutes (around 9 PM ET) some people have reported being able to access their games after repeated tries, but as we move away from physical copies of games to DRM’d digital copies and subscription access like GamePass, an unspecified error that lasts for hours isn’t making this seem like the best future of gaming.

As Microsoft makes Xbox Live an entertainment service that spreads across more platforms (including Switch, Android and iOS), it’s also relaxing the naming scheme. Since it’s been in operation since 2002, many commonly-requested aliases are already taken, but now users can grab pretty much any name they want, even if someone else already has it.

Now, it will still let you create a new user name even if someone else has it, but it will auto-assign an ID number after it to make yours unique. Other services like Steam and Discord already use a similar setup, and it should mean an end to purging old, abandoned usernames or forcing them to expire so that new users can get a crack at them. Of course, if you’ve been around for a while, everyone will know you are the original CheeToMan247 given your lack of an add-on ID number.