Minecraft Worlds Are Being Destroyed Due To An Xbox App Bug

thegamer.com:

If you're a Minecraft fan and haven't updated your game just yet, you may want to either wait a few days or be extremely careful. Earlier today, Mojang warned players not to update their games through the Xbox App on PC, as a pretty catastrophic bug is causing some worlds to be completely wiped, with no way of recovering them again.

Mojang has urged everyone who usually updates their games through the Xbox App to run the Gaming Services Repair Tool for PC before downloading any updates. To do this, you'll need to go onto the Xbox App and go to your Profile. You'll then need to click on Support, then click on Gaming Services Repair Tool and start troubleshooting. You should then be able to download the update with no problems.

If you are one of the cautious individuals waiting, be aware that you probably won't be able to access some online services such as cross-platform multiplayer, Realms, and Featured Servers. This is because Mojang currently has Minecraft's most recent update completely blocked to try and prevent more tragedies from occurring. Thankfully, those of you on Java have nothing to worry about, as the issue only seems to be affecting Bedrock players.

We don't quite know when this issue will be fixed, but Microsoft already has the problem on its Known Issues page for March 2024.

Unfortunately, Mojang's warning has come a little too late for some players, as several people are already reporting the loss of their worlds, some of which have spent years crafting. For example, a player called Jimbo commented on the official Mojang bugs page that they'd lost "hundreds of hours of work" due to the bug. On the same page, you can also see several tickets filed by other players who have also had their worlds deleted as a result of the update.

We don't know quite how many people have been affected just yet, but this is definitely one of the bigger blunders from Mojang and Microsoft in recent years. This is also a very good reminder to all you fans out there that if