Xbox age verification rollout begins in the UK, plagued with bugs

Xbox age verification has now started rolling out in the UK. Microsoft is prompting UK players with adult accounts to verify their age as part of compliance with the UK Online Safety Act. The system is currently only active for players in the UK, and there’s no active worldwide deployment for now.

Players who complete the full age verification process keep full access to social features such as voice chat, text chat, and game invites. Those who skip age verification can still play games and keep their purchases, but Xbox will heavily limit social interaction to friends-only. This verification is a one-time procedure, and it supports several methods, such as Government ID, mobile carrier confirmation, credit card checks, or facial age estimation through Microsoft’s partner Yoti.

Microsoft officially states that the prompt only appears for users who are 18 and above in the UK, and users in other countries will not see this. The deployment is phased, and not all at once. People have started getting it recently, and you will get it eventually over this year.

There’s some speculation online about a worldwide expansion to the age verification system. However, these claims are unfounded. There’s currently no active global testing for age verification.

Unfortunately, multiple people have reported that the current system is very buggy, and it keeps giving users the ‘Please try again’ prompt. Some verified users are being locked out. Teammate pings and chats in games such as Overwatch no longer function, and the rollout so far has been very messy and unstable.

People who have made several purchases on Xbox for several years have also been locked out, only because the system is buggy. People report several issues with email addresses as well, since the ones from decades ago aren’t valid anymore. Some people are unable to view names.

There’s apparently a workaround to this. Create a family on another Microsoft account, add it to your main account, accept the invite, remove your main account, and restart Xbox. We cannot confirm whether this works, but it’s a potential workaround. It’s not just Xbox under fire for age verification; Discord users are looking for ways to get around it as well, which we’ve covered here.

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