Xbox Users Warned of Mass Deletion Happening Next Week

Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X users have three days to save some of their content before it is deleted on January 9. Back in October of last year, Microsoft began to quietly warn users of this event via Xbox console DM. What did the alert warn of? Well, due to “a new policy,” existing and new captures on the Xbox Network will automatically be deleted after 90 days. At the time, it was noted the first deletions would begin in January 2024. Now this date has been narrowed down to January 9. 

“Due to a new policy starting on October 1st, 2023, existing and new captures on the Xbox Network will automatically be deleted after 90 days,” reads the alert from last year. “The first deletions will start in January 2024.”

What does new captures encompass? Well, it includes both game clips and screenshots. Thankfully, there are ways to save your favorite content by backing up existing captures to an external storage or uploading them to OneDrive. Meanwhile, going forward, you can set your console up so your captures automatically upload to one of those options. These aren’t ideal options, but they are options. 

Unfortunately, if you are thinking you can bypass this by simply uploading to your internal drive, think again. As you may know, Xbox has been deleting this for a while as a means to save space on your console; to make room for all of the meaty Call of Duty updates, of course. At the time, Xbox recommended backing up your internal drive with Live, but now this recommendation is no longer valid. In other words, local copies mean nothing. 

As you would expect, Xbox fans are not happy with the whole situation, but the outrage has been small enough that it shouldn’t cause Xbox to backtrack on any decisions. And this is partially the case because many Xbox fans have no clue this is happening. More than this though, they don’t care. 

Microsoft has yet to say much about the decision or the negative feedback it has created. It only issues the initial alert, which was done quietly. Since then, it’s followed its pattern of maintaining a low profile and not drawing light to the situation. That said, and as always, feel free to let us know what you think of this via a comment or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there.