outages Archives

AppWizard

January 11, 2026

Minecraft Bedrock Realms users report widespread loading and connection issues: What we know so far

Minecraft Bedrock Realms experienced a service disruption on Saturday, preventing many players from accessing their worlds for several hours. Complaints surged around 12 PM EDT, peaking at over 4,000 reports of issues primarily related to server connectivity. Data indicated that 93% of affected users in the United States faced server connection failures, while 5% reported issues launching the game and 2% had login problems. Major cities impacted included Los Angeles, Houston, Tampa, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Neither Mojang nor Microsoft provided a public explanation for the incident, leaving the duration of the disruption uncertain.

AppWizard

January 5, 2026

Hollow Knight Silksong wins Steam’s Game of the Year with a staggering 43 million votes from PC players

Hollow Knight Silksong won the Game of the Year at the 2025 Steam Awards, receiving 43.8 million votes. It also won the award for Best Game You Suck At. The game was released on September 4, 2025, and experienced significant traffic that caused outages on platforms like Steam and Xbox. It did not win the Game Awards' GOTY, which went to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Players can expect additional content with the upcoming Sea of Sorrow expansion. Other notable awards included Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for Best Soundtrack, Hades 2 as Best Game on Steam Deck, Silent Hill F for Outstanding Visual Style, and The Midnight Walk as VR Game of the Year. Team Cherry is also developing a new release for the Nintendo Switch 2. Baldur’s Gate 3 received the Labor of Love award.

AppWizard

January 5, 2026

Rainbow Six Siege X seemingly compromised again as players hit with brain rot-inspired 67-day ‘bans’

Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege X has experienced multiple security breaches, leading to the game being taken offline, a server rollback, and a temporary marketplace shutdown. Following a significant hack that flooded players with in-game currency, a subsequent incident involved players receiving false notifications of in-game bans for harassment, with absurd durations like 67 days. Players also encountered modified messages mimicking standard reporting notifications. The official server status page indicates ongoing authentication and matchmaking outages, with connectivity marked as 'degraded.' Ubisoft has not yet provided a detailed response to these hacking attempts.

AppWizard

December 25, 2025

Steam and Valve’s online games are down

On December 24, around 1 PM ET, Steam users experienced significant disruptions, affecting access to the game store and online gaming. SteamDB's status page indicated that the Steam Store, Steam Community, and Steam Web APIs were offline. By 1:15 PM ET, DownDetector recorded over 6,000 outage reports. Valve's mobile applications were also inaccessible, impacting popular games like Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counterstrike 2. Recovery began around 4 PM ET, and by 6 PM ET, the platform had largely returned to normal, although some services remained sluggish and many online games were still experiencing partial outages or were down. This incident follows a previous significant disruption in October and accessibility issues during the launch of Hollow Knight: Silksong in September.

Winsage

December 23, 2025

Microsoft fixes Message Queuing issue in new update

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to fix a Message Queuing (MSMQ) issue that arose after the December 2025 update. This patch is available for several Windows versions, including Windows 10 22H2 ESU, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021, and Windows 10 LTSB 2016, as well as various Windows Server versions from 2008 to 2019. The issue primarily impacted enterprise environments, while users on Pro and Home editions were "very unlikely" to experience it. The root cause was a change requiring MSMQ to have write access to areas typically restricted, leading to message queuing disruptions and misleading error logs. Microsoft documented the known issue on December 12, 2025, after several days of recognition, during which administrators had to implement workarounds. The update addresses the problem but raises concerns about Microsoft's quality assurance practices, especially given MSMQ's importance in corporate infrastructures. Users expressed dissatisfaction due to service disruptions caused by the issue.

Winsage

December 22, 2025

Windows 11 Pro gives you faster workflows and an AI assistant for just $10

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Winsage

December 21, 2025

Windows emergency update fixes MSMQ faults after December patchday

Microsoft has released emergency updates to address malfunctions with Windows Message Queuing (MSMQ) that occurred after the December security updates. The issues affect several versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 10 and various editions of Windows Server up to Server 2019, posing a risk of application outages for users relying on MSMQ. The problem arose from changes to the MSMQ security model, which modified NTFS access rights to the C:WindowsSystem32MSMQstorage folder, stripping applications or services without administrative rights of necessary write permissions. The updates are identified by knowledgebase numbers: KB5074976 for Windows 10, KB5074975 for Windows Server 2019, and KB5074974 for Windows Server 2016, raising Windows 10 build numbers to 19044.6693 and 19045.6693. Initially, these updates were not available through the standard Windows update function and could only be accessed via the Windows update catalog. Microsoft has expanded the list of affected systems to include earlier versions of Windows 10 (21H2, 1809, and 1607) and Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2012. Users of these systems should verify the application of December updates and manually install the emergency updates if necessary.

AppWizard

December 15, 2025

Meta Shuts Down Standalone Messenger Desktop App on December 15, 2025

Meta Platforms Inc. will discontinue its standalone Messenger desktop application for Windows and macOS on December 15, 2025. Users will be directed to use browser-based access or the main Facebook platform instead. The Messenger app was introduced to compete with video communication tools but has seen a decline in usage as users prefer mobile devices and web browsers. The shutdown will affect businesses that use Messenger for customer service, impacting features like notifications and offline message queuing. Users have expressed frustration over potential loss of chat histories and concerns about increased dependency on Meta's web portal. Alternatives like Signal and Telegram may attract former users. Meta's decision reflects a broader industry trend toward prioritizing mobile experiences and could allow the company to focus resources on metaverse development and AI features.

AppWizard

December 12, 2025

Valley Grandma goes viral playing Minecraft

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Tech Optimizer

December 1, 2025

Risks of Manual PostgreSQL Starts in Patroni Clusters: Downtime Warnings

Patroni is an open-source tool for managing PostgreSQL clusters, automating failover and replication. Manual starting of PostgreSQL services within an active Patroni cluster can lead to severe disruptions, including data integrity issues and availability risks. Patroni uses a distributed consensus system, often with etcd or Consul, to manage cluster state and leader elections. Manual interventions can confuse this process, resulting in multiple nodes believing they are the primary, which can cause conflicting writes and potential data loss. Real-world incidents have documented outages due to manual starts, such as promoting a replica node to leader status inadvertently. This disrupts Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) synchronization, leading to divergent transaction logs. Database administrators are advised to use Patroni's built-in commands for service management and implement role-based access controls to prevent unauthorized manual actions. Monitoring solutions are crucial for early detection of anomalies. Simulating failure scenarios in staging environments can help prepare teams for real incidents. Ongoing advancements aim to enhance Patroni's safeguards against manual overrides, with future iterations potentially incorporating AI-driven anomaly detection.