What is required to play downloaded games offline? Hidden licences???

Here is the situation. I have an Xbox One X and I have noticed that some games I have bought digitally I CAN play offline. Others I CAN NOT play offline. Whenever this questions comes up the answers are always...yeah, you can play them offline just make
sure blah blah blah set as your home console. Make sure you have it blah blah blah set to offline. I set it to offline and I have my system set as my home Xbox....yet I can't play hardly any games I have purchased digitally while offline.

Well it's all a bunch of blow. What I have discovered is that you CAN NOT play the games you have paid for and downloaded when you are offline...UNLESS you have some sort of license for them ON YOUR CONSOLE. This is something that you never see mentioned.
If I go to start a game when I am online I am often greeted with a screen saying "Getting your game ready. This might take a minute or two" well it never takes longer than a second or two and I am convinced this is the system getting the license for that game.
The reason I say this is because after that is done on a game....I can then play that game fine offline. If that isn't done FOR EVERY GAME AND APP they can not be played offline or even started when offline. If you try to start them you get a "First connect
to Xbox Live" message and if your internet is out....you can't really do that and your precious digital games are useless.

The issue is..........I am in the Xbox Insiders program. This means I have to reset my console to factory setting every so often when they release a buggy alpha update. So then I am back to none of my games being able to be played offline....until I start
each game while online so it can grab this little permission license and store it on the system.

My question is WHY? Why not make it so it gets all of these licenses all at one time? I mean every time I go into My Games & apps section when I am online it scans to see what is installed and what I own and is ready to be installed if I want to. Why not
have it do a scan for the games I have installed licenses and then it can download and store the ones that aren't on the system for use when I am offline? As quick as it is to grab the single license when I start a game...I can't imagine grabbing them for
all of my games taking very long.

What I am not certain of is if these hidden licenses have a limit (ex: Only the last 100 games played are stored) or even possibly a time limit (Ex: If you haven't played a game in 6 months the license drops off and needs to be re-upped by being online and
starting a game again).

In any case....it seems pretty strange that you never see these hidden licenses being mentioned and that there isn't a a way (even a manual way) to get these licenses all at one time without having to start EVERY GAME individually online to get the permission
for offline play.

A place in the setting to "Check for and download available licenses" is really all that is needed. Leave them on the system and if you have to wipe them away if you change your home xbox setting or something like that...make it so when you change a system
back to your home xbox it scans for the licenses again and ties them back to your home Xbox.

As it is now, if you have had to reset your system or upgraded to another system (ex: Xbox One to Xbox One X) you really don't know what games you can and can not play while offline without making sure you start every game while online or just trying them
when you are offline and hoping it is one you bought or have played since the change, reset or license expiring or dropping off the system.

There is something else I noticed as someone on the insider program. If you hold down the X button you get an option to the right to report a problem. If you select it the insider hub app will open and take you to the bug reporting form. If you select Add
new problem and then select games....you will see a list of all of the games that you have played or downloaded recently. These seem to be the only digital games that it WILL let you play OFFLINE. If the game is not listed there....you can not play it offline.

These small hidden license files are also needed for disc based 360 and OG Xbox games, but they do seem to be created when the game is installed, but if you have had to do a system reset or changed from one system to another....you will have to start these
games while online at least one time before playing them offline. So even though the game is installed, you have the disc inserted...you won't be able to play it offline if you haven't played the game online, if you have done a system reset or system upgrade.

I guess, all and all, it is nice that you can get this license file just by starting a game while online connected....instead of having to delete and re download the game itself, but it seems like they could have a check to scan all installed games at one
time and issue the needed offline permissions without a user having to manually start each game.

Has anyone else had these observations or noted that some games do start for you offline while others won't? Why have I never saw this mentioned when I hear people talking about having issues playing digital games offline? Why hasn't Microsoft explained this
or allowed a way to transfer licenses the way they did with the 360? It seems it could be done even more seamlessly as a "Check for and download available licenses" button seems like it would do the trick . After a 2 or 3 minute download you would then be
able to play all of your purchased digital games offline without issue, even if you have had a system reset or system upgrade.

It seems like some DRM that MS is trying to keep on the down low.

:)

 

Stupid treyarch.

[quote user="bloodtox"]at least in mw3 i wasnt required to have terminal downloaded -.-

[/quote]

But Terminal was required to play Multiplayer in MW3. What are you going on about?

 

Season Pass/Hidden Secrets

My problem is simple. I bought the Season Pass and downloaded the Hidden Secrets pack.

I go to Extras > Aditional Content and I can see both items as downloaded, but I can't play the Hidden Secrets pack. How do I do it? Do I need to do anything else before doing it?

 

Try putting your console in offline mode. Using Xbox One Offline

 

You didn't read the post did you? If you had you would have seen that just setting to offline does not work.

 

Yeah, putting it in offline DOES NOT work. As I said, this is always something people and MS put out there, but does it really do anything as far as a game being playable or not while not connected? It seems it is just telling your system to not even
look for a connection whereas having it in online mode when your internet is out...is the exact same thing except the system is waiting for your internet connection to kick back on. MS even suggests to leave it on online mode if the offline-ness is due to
an internet outage and not because you are simply someplace where you do not have internet. I guess setting the system to offline may be telling certain games "Don't worry about looking for an internet connection....we know it's not there" and let it go on
about it's business without thinking there is an issue. It may speed things up at the very least since it probably won't even bother looking for a connection. What I can say for sure is setting your system to offline will not allow the digital purchased and
disc installed back compat games to play offline if the game doesn't have that needed license file on your system.

Can anyone point out one instance of a game playing while offline and the system set to offline mode.....yet that same game will not play if offline and keeping the setting to online mode? To me it just seems like an excuse and something to tell people to
get them to stop asking questions. The REAL issue seems to be these hidden license permissions that MS has never even mentioned as far as I have seen.

They also like to use the "this is my home console" as some sort of distraction. I know that setting can be useful when wanting to play games on different systems and things, but I have 1 console and don't share my account with anyone. I also know that having
my system set as my home console has no bearing on if one of my games will or will not be playable offline. So why do they say if it is set to "this is my home console" will make games playable offline...when that simply isn't true....or at the very least
it isn't the deciding factor on if a game is playable offline or not.

Microsoft please let us know what the: "Getting your game ready. This might take a minute or two" is doing. What are you getting ready? Please don't be shy about your hidden DRM. Why not explain things instead of having confused customers not knowing why
some of their games will start when not connected to the internet while others will. Why not give people that have had to reset their systems or upgraded to your new Xbox One X have a way to import all of those hidden permissions and play all of the game they
have spent their money on offline....without having to make sure they start each game while being online?

PS: I had to reset my system yet again this morning. So now none of my digital or installed disc based 360 or OG Xbox games will work if my internet goes out. It seems the only way to correct that is to start each game while I am online to get that permission
added.