John Strange

I'm slightly confused because you mention M$ and Steam. With Xbox game pass, games like Back4Blood I had to buy 1 copy so that my game share kicked in and we could play simultaneously (Not happy, waste of money. Plus split screen should have been available at launch) My account is set as home on his console. But I've not had this problem with Grounded even after the update (same with Ark) and I assumed it was due to it being a preview game like Ark was (is?) On Steam my buddy and I share libraries but we have never been able to play simultaneously. Not sure about preview games. I personally would never BUY a preview game, especially with the direction this last update and a few past updates have left the state of the game. (Not that I don't think people should be paid for work, see below) I'm not a fan of paying to be a beta tester or beta testing for free, to me preview means I get to try something out and the team gets feedback, it does not mean buying a broken bug filled game like so many games these days. I am also becoming a lot more picky on buying any games these days from TOS/licenses basically stating we are renting, not OWNING games to P2W/legalized gambling/constant nerfs/DLC/season pass/other BS. I actually had 0 intention of buying this new gen of consoles for the above reasons as well as PSN/M$ way of dealing with backcharges, gamer tag/console total bans and etc and was going to push my son to full PC but my original issues were still there, I will not overpay for PC parts, and I will never game on a laptop so I got him the new gen Xbox (though again, I had to get the S as the X was way over priced and I'm not wasting time hoping to score one, entering a lottery, or paying some membership fee. I guess overall I'm not really happy with the state of video games these days which is why I really only play for/with him these days. The last 2 games I personally played for me were Destiny 1 and Dead Rising 4. I also think games that can/do/SHOULD be split screen should have an option to play on different screens simultaneously without the need for a second copy. Seeing an article on Goldeneye about the museum being able to split it to 4 monitors was awesome.

My full explanation is a bit long winded since it includes workarounds to M$ shady business practice of their Series X/S of external drives on "enhanced" games but the short version is, I uninstalled all and reinstalled all and eventually it worked for the most part. Instead of crashing every few mins, it now only crashes during important or tedious things. Long version. Series X/S should play ALL games from EXTERNAL HDD if they are normal or enhanced. And if you come from an Xbox One, they do until an update is pushed for the game or some "unknown" time. Randomly the Series X/S will FORCE you to install the enhanced games to internal drive and play from there (I ASSUME the "update" is pushed as ENHANCED instead of normal and that is the reason) Searches online and hours with Micro$oft support yield no help. Everything/everyone treats you like an idiot, (should know you can't play enhanced from external) should have bought the internal upgrade, (not happening for an S console) external HDD not compatible, external HDD failing. Micro$oft has now (since I was gamming back in 2009) outsourced their "tech" support to Indians, forces you to use a cell phone for a call back, only allows you 3 calls per day, and refuses to give an SR ticket number or transfer you to an American (my region). So its constant hold times while the Indians text the real "techs" and solutions are 1 Get a new HDD 2 Play from internal 3 Send in Xbox for warranty. BUT if you still have the old Xbox One you replaced with the new S/X, you can download the game and updates on the external to play (obviously the HDD is not broken/failing/too slow/not compatible/insert BS excuse here) then unplug the HDD from the Xbox One (make sure everything is deleted off the Series X/S) then plug the external HDD into the Series X/S and play normally for unknown time (update? M$ decides? Unknown) After uninstalling EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE and then playing: 1 Xbox One and Xbox Series S on external AND 2 Xbox One and Series S on INTERNAL: Both stopped the crashing every few mins and BOTH still randomly crash about the same; usually at key moments (major chest inventory changes, building additions, and etc but it is NOT frequently however still 99.99% more than BEFORE the update. I hope this helps.

My son and I got on to try out the update (that we were not looking forward to) and craft new chests to allow us to store more material for the new armor update and we can't go longer than 5 mins without me hearing him say "Oh, my game crashed" and then seeing my screen go black and kicked back to login. Both on xbox, hes on Xbox Series S and I'm on Xbox one (black kinect version) Custom game (no food/water needed and no backpack drop upon death)

Absolutely. I'm not sure why there is not one already. My son and I have to constantly go through it to be sure we are not wasting space. Our solution was to make individual chests which is a Pain.

Same, its become very annoying. Red ants all over.