Copyright escapistmagazine
Microsoft's Azure cloud framework is experiencing service disruptions, with reports of login issues affecting Xbox, Minecraft, and Sea of Thieves servers too. Azure, Microsoft's massive cloud computing platform, powers a lot of infrastructure for all of Microsoft's products, hence why both Office and gaming are affected by the disruptions. The reports seem to have come in around 4 PM GMT, which is around 11 AM Eastern time and 8 AM Pacific. Games like Minecraft and Sea of Thieves rely on Azure for player logins and server infrastructure. When Azure's authentication services face issues, players can't log in, join multiplayer sessions, or access cloud-saved games. Xbox Store purchases and downloads also grind to a halt during these outages. Is Minecraft down? Microsoft is currently aware of the issues and has updated Azure's portal with the awareness of the issue. As of a minute ago from writing, the service status says the following: We are investigating an issue with the Azure Portal where customers may be experiencing issues accessing the portal. More information will be provided shortly. This message was last updated at 16:18 UTC on 29 October 2025. With the portal being down, this likely explains why there are plenty of login and accessibility issues with Azure servers. It explains how anything reliant on Azure portal access is currently facing issues. There’s potential that other gaming services are affected, but these are the games with immediate issues due to the Azure Outage. It's also unfortunate that this is happening mere hours before Microsoft's big earnings report is to go live. That's one way to dampen the mood heading into the earnings report. This comes after a week where Amazon's AWS US-east server broke, breaking other games like Fortnite. Expect the issue to go on for a few hours to a few days if recent history is anything to go by.
