To: My old email address; Subject: Why did you kill my Gamertag?

And so we meet again, Xbox Annoyance #010. Microsoft is currently "investigating" an issue afflicting Xbox Live accounts, specifically those tied to expired email addresses, according to GI.biz. It seems certain email services, which are set to expire after a certain period of disuse (see: Hotmail), are taking their linked Windows Live IDs with them into the internet's graveyard.

Once the email account has perished, the player's Gamertag also ceases to exist. GI.biz notes that the problem exists among "a relatively small percentage of users," the only solution currently being the creation of a brand new Gamertag. That's one with a pitiful "zero" Gamerscore, by the way.

We expect Microsoft will receive quite a few angry emails about this problem -- probably from Gmail addresses.

Reader Comments (107)

>I was even able to tell them the password to my old e-mail...which they confirmed

How were they able to know what your password was? That's not possible.

I know it sounds weird Mystic but it was just as weird to me. They told me they knew what my old e-mail address was and that they would fix the problem when they collected enough information. So I had to give EVERYTHING to this guy in India who would always respond "that is correct". They took my new address, my old address, my serial number, gamertag, old password (which I had to guess at and he responded "that is correct"), they even asked for my old phone number which I had to look up. After an hour of this he informed me after I had correctly answered everything that they could NOT help me. I don't think they guy really understood english at all or they just sat around giggle while they listened to me jump through hoops.

>"How were they able to know what your password was? That's not possible."

I don't know how they were able to know my password, maybe you should call them and try. I'll give you my old gamertag and I wish you luck. I didn't come here to spread lies, only my experience so no one else has to go through it. If you want my old gamertag I will post it here, but I will not post my personal information tied to that account. Hell I can even give you the date and time of the phone call. I also posted my complaint on Major Nelsons blog the same day....not sure if it's still there but I will go looking for that too.

Amazing how you have to "prove" yourself when you get screwed by a corporation. Next we won't be able to question politicians or lawyers.

ah iknow! this terrible curse was placed on my cousin, he has two 12+1 cards waiting for them to fix this so he can get his halo katana back!
using silver in meantime =[

What's gay is this actually happened to me on Facebook..

I see this as the problem that Xbox encouraged people to create Bogus hotmail accounts to link the gamertag to It wouldn't have been so bad if they put a warning up when you linked the gamertags. I use a hotmail to link to my gamertag. And I use it a lot. However My nieces often come over and I created gamertags for them and my brother. I was managing them because I knew how. I discovered this problem 2 weeks ago when we tried to upgrade my brother's account to gold. Couldn' t do it. Luckily, he had less than 1000 gamerscore and probably doesn't care too much. BUt I bet all the accounts I created went bad.

This happened to my girlfriend. I had purchased a second 360 for an upstairs TV, and it was a pain using a memory card to move profiles back and forth, so I just tried recovering her profile on the other one, and it wouldn't work. I even deleted the profile on the other, thinking that might be the problem, and after many, many calls to XBL, this issue is what ended up being the culprit. It was escalated to management and they called us back, telling us the profile was corrupted because the original hotmail account had expired.

What it had meant was certain things about the profile, such as a security question and the like were missing, which made them inaccessible to both me and XBL in its entirety. It basically became dead according to XBL. What was weird is that you can still log on and play and stuff, but you can't "change" anything to the account or retrieve it from Microsoft. So in our scenario, the profile is still there and she can log on, but she can't upgrade it to Gold, change her e-mail, recover it, nothing. We were, of course, outraged because of the gamescore, so to compensate, they gave us both free 1 year subs to XBL.

What's funny is that now she's replaying all the games, purposefully going for achievements and is now getting more enjoyment out of them than before. So.... achievement points ftw. And free XBL.

that why you make a backup and have a backup email such as yahoo or better yet.

backup this too.... lavabit pop3.

unfortunately bluebottle users in july of 2008 ,like ME, WERE affected.

MS goes roundabout trying to 'solve' your issue.finally some smart broad told me just what i had been thinking.UNFORTUNATELY, thats 3 months of solid gaming to recover from........1200+ pts down the drain.....OUCH.

To: My old email address; Subject: Why did you kill my Gamertag?

Reader Comments (107)

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 2:22AM Mystictrust said

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 10:49PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 1:25PM DevelopedMilk said

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 3:12AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 6:52AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 8:37PM HandOfReason said

Posted: May 2nd 2009 10:52AM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW