Xbox Live went down for the second time this week

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service went down again for the second time this week. Issues first began popping up some time after 7PM ET on Friday, with Down Detector indicating sharp spikes in user-reported connection problems and Microsoft later confirming Twitter that it’s “experiencing issues” with matchmaking, Party Chat, and Looking for Groups. ” On Sunday, Xbox Live experienced a similar outage that lasted more than two hours. That was slightly more serious, with users reporting issues signing into Xbox One devices.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live Status page currently says there are still issues with the social and gaming portions of the platform. We are aware that users are experiencing issues with matchmaking, Party Chat, and Looking For Groups. Our engineers are working on fixing this now. We will keep you posted here when we have updates!

At roughly 10:45PM ET, Microsoft said it had resolved the issues around matchmaking and Party Chat, but it did not say it had fixed Looking For Groups. Our engineers have identified and fixed the issues surrounding Party Chat and matchmaking. We appreciate your reports. As always, we are here and listening.

https://t. co/Vx7g81MEpl Unfortunately for Microsoft, it was a rather inopportune time to for its multiplayer gaming service to suffer another outage. There are millions of people in the US right now practicing social distancing and being asked by local governments to stay away from public spaces now that bars, restaurants, and other core social institutions have ceased operating in response to the coronavirus crisis. That means there are quite a few people playing video games and staying in touch with friends online in the process, or at least in the case of Xbox users, trying to do so.

Update March 21st, 1:39AM ET: Added statement from Microsoft that it had resolved most of its Xbox Live issues.