After Sony announced that it's delisting over 500 movies from users' accounts with no refunds, discontinuing physical discs for PlayStation games, and closing down PlayStation 3 and PSVita's digital stores — people are increasingly skeptical of making all media digital-only.
Brazilian Xbox gamer, Ordo_Liberal, also found this out the hard way, as back on April 6 (via Reddit), 2026, his Microsoft account was hacked and promptly suspended by Microsoft as its IT team determined it was "unrecoverable" by policy, due to the account's security details being changed by the hacker.
This isn't the first time we've seen reports of this at Windows Central. Microsoft's policies for restoring accounts are often incredibly flimsy. Getting in touch with the right support services can be a Kafka-esque nightmare of AI bots and outsourced customer service layers.
A Brazilian Xbox gamer wins digital library lawsuit against MicrosoftMicrosoft had suspended his Xbox account (including his OneDrive) indefinitely after someone hacked it.The court ruled in the gamer's favour under Brazil's strict consumer laws, ordering Microsoft to fully… pic.twitter.com/cTA16eimteJuly 12, 2026
As a result of being blocked, Ordo_Liberal not only lost his Xbox games but also lost all his OneDrive files.
Enraged that Microsoft took away his game library and insisted he buy them again, Ordo_Liberal then sued Microsoft in a digital library lawsuit. The court case dragged on until July 12, 2026, when Ordo_Liberal announced on Reddit that he had actually won.
According to (translated) comments, the Brazilian court ruled in favor of Ordo_Liberal under Brazil's strict consumer laws, and has ordered Microsoft to completely restore Ordo_Liberal's account, giving him his entire Xbox digital games library back, and pay him $400 in damages.
Digital preservation of games has become quite a hot topic in recent days, following Sony's culling of physical media to the point where some would argue that "piracy is the only extant form of media preservation" due to no viable, legal option being available.
However, Ordo_Liberal's court win against Microsoft for taking away his digital library for something that wasn't his fault proves that it is possible to find a legal means to protect and preserve digital games and a player's ownership rights over them, provided they have the courage, legal know-how, and careful planning to do so.
The European Union is also taking a more aggressive stance on digital preservation lately. As more and more of our data goes up to cloud services, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the consequences when companies like PlayStation or Xbox pull the plug.
Microsoft needs to do better here, and if they refuse, maybe the courts will be able to force them to do so.
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