Xbox LIVE Server Problems Cause Achievements To Disappear

by Dan Landis on January 7, 2008 at 9:35 pm

As if the recent Xbox Live issues hadn’t caused enough problems, it now appears that you can actually lose an unlocked achievement as well. I’ve had a recent run-in with this disturbing occurrence, and as always, 1-800-4my-xbox’s Max was there to help me out — and of course by help me out, I mean annoy me while I try to connect to a real person.

It all started with a 400-mile trip home for the holidays. I met up with one of my friends to play some co-op Guitar Hero II, something that requires both people to be in the same room (no online play, which is why we didn’t do it before).

We decided we would try to get all of the co-op achievements while I was home because it would be a long time before we would get another chance.

To make a long story short, we got all of the co-op achievements except for 800k pair and millionaire pair (800,000 and 1 million points in a co-op song, respectively).

We had done pretty well on Free Bird so we decided we would try to get the 800k - it seemed doable if we rocked out hard enough. We played quite a few times, getting close but not quite breaking the 800k mark. We decided to rest for the night and try again the next day.

After a nap and some cereal, we were primed and ready to melt faces. After two or three attempts, we blew the doors off - 840,996 points. I was so excited that we finally unlocked the achievement that I immediately hit the guide button and stared at it for about 2 minutes.

We were so proud of ourselves that we actually took a picture of the newspaper score screen so we could remember this moment always.

This picture is not doctored - we really are that sexy

Fast-forward about a week to today. Out of curiosity, I looked at my Guitar Hero II achievements to see what I had left, and to my surprise - no 800k pair. What the hell?

I checked my friends achievement list, and he still had the achievement. I know it wasn’t just a dream. So why the fudge don’t I have it? I thought maybe this was yet another problem with Xbox Live, so I gave them a call.

Once I connect to a real person, I tell him this whole story. After I finish he asks:

“Is this related to Halo 3?”

What? Are you fucking serious? I keep my composure (because I’m asking him for help, after all) and simply say “No, Guitar Hero II”.

He puts me on hold for 10 minutes and when he comes back, much to my surprise, he says that this is actually a known issue with Halo 3 and that I’m not the only one. I repeat again that it’s not Halo 3 I’m having trouble with, it’s Guitar Hero II.

“Oh, right. I thought you said Halo 3, but it applies to all games anyways”.

Basically, while attempting to “fix” Xbox Live, they’ve systematically been rolling back and recovering portions of their servers to weed out the bugs. Again, this is not the “official” word from Microsoft, but the guy on 1-800-4my-xbox said that’s what was going on. He seemed to know what I was talking about when I told him my issue, so that leads me to believe he’s not just making stuff up.

Now, for my problem, what I need to do is get another achievement on Guitar Hero II in order to update my account. Unlocking a new achievement should re-register my previous achievements, and re-unlock the one I’m missing.

Simple, right? No. Absolutely not simple at all. The only achievements I have left to get require 5-starring Hard and Expert (not gonna happen), getting a million points in co-op (doing that would get me 800k anyways, and I can’t do any co-op by myself), and getting 500,000 points on a song in single player (again, not gonna happen).

What if this missing achievement was the last one I could possibly get on the game? What would they do then?

I do have to give the “agent” credit, though. Most tech support blows smoke up my ass because they really have no idea how to help me. This guy at least found out about the problem and how to solve it. While I don’t know (and might never know) if it will work, it’s nice that it at least seems to make sense. On top of that, he didn’t treat me like I’m the idiot, even though he did try to make me think I was playing Halo 3. They never stop advertising that game, do they?

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Tags: Bungie, Guitar-Hero-II, Halo-3, Xbox-Live

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Comments »

Julianna
on January 7, 2008 11:29 pm

medium?

and you call yourselves hardcore?

pfft
John Kershaw
on January 7, 2008 11:45 pm

Achievement junkey! Good job I’m rubbish at these games, so am not likely to miss out on the hard achievements.
Know it All
on January 7, 2008 11:52 pm

That sucks. I was hoping that you meant you could just get an achievement for any game but obviously you say right here:

“What I need to do is get another achievement on Guitar Hero II in order to update my account.”

That is bollox.
Brandon Wilhoite
on January 7, 2008 11:58 pm

I just had the same thing happen to me with some of my Mass Effect achievements… As in all of them from my 2nd play through… which were about half of my 35 achievements.

I hope they come back by unlocking another achievement, if not I’m not going to be very happy.
Michael
on January 7, 2008 11:59 pm

I know why you didn’t get the acheivement. Did you get 800,000 on your hard drive? On your live account? If not, the acheivement was not recorded on your Live Gamertag.
Dan Landis
on January 8, 2008 12:22 am

I keep my profile on a memory card so I can take it with me wherever I go. I was logged into Live, and I vividly saw the achievement unlock. I have done nothing different with this game or this achievement than I have with any other game/achievement since I first got my 360. All of my other Guitar Hero II achievements I got that night are still there. This one, which I got 6 hours later, is the only one I’m missing… that I know of.
William
on January 8, 2008 12:50 am

The same thing happened to me in Mass Effect. So i have the achievements for the last mission and beating the game, but not for the first 4 planets. lol, my friends keep asking me how I beat it without even doing half the missions.
Mike
on January 8, 2008 2:07 am

Crying over a digital merrit badge. Do you want a cookie?
Krispy Demon
on January 8, 2008 2:08 am

I’ve had people get achievements on my 360 while playing from a memory card before without any problems, so I don’t think it’s that. It’s saved to your profile on XBL servers as far as I know and has nothing to do with whether or not you save your game or not.

Oh, and thanks. Now I have to go back and scour my games played for the last couple of weeks and make sure I didn’t lose anything.
dobson
on January 8, 2008 4:33 am

well..the same thing kinda happened to me.. xcept my whole gamerscore got deleted..i had over 20,000 gamerscore.. and a 5 star rep on xbox live… and now my gamerscore is at 0 and my rep stars are all gone…xbox live sucks now..i sat on the phone for two hours trying to figure out what was going on and they have no idea whats going on.. it wont even let me play on that account now.. its terrible
Noddegamra
on January 8, 2008 6:22 am

I had the same problem of losing achievements. About 100 of them! It took about an hour for them to re-appear. I posted about it about a week or so ago on the xbox forums and apparently a lot of people have been having this trouble.
Dylan Duarte
on January 8, 2008 11:43 am

Are the people at Live capable of deleting achievements? If so, they should offer to delete an easily attainable achievement, so you could just get that one again.
andrew
on January 8, 2008 1:57 pm

HEY!!! HE HAS THE PIC OF DESTINY!!!!! HE CAN PLAY!!!! GO MC GO
kaliberto
on January 8, 2008 5:16 pm

sorry for all you guys… but it’s also a shame they banned my account for no reason… i haven’t modded my box and it still got banned… screw M$ and their achievements
BH
on January 8, 2008 8:32 pm

Try recovering your account
Dennis
on January 8, 2008 11:14 pm

Wow, this feels like the end of the world!

I’m cold and frightened. What will we do when all of our XBL has been depleted and we can no longer feed our ADD?!
Kevin
on January 9, 2008 12:58 am

I wouldn’t be a bit suprised if Sony or Nintendo hired hackers to do this so they could plug their own networks. All of this looks entirely too fishy.
Krispy Demon
on January 9, 2008 4:57 am

For all the Doom-sayers out there, I remember World of Warcraft had some growing pains at some point in time. The wait time to get into a server could be hours at times. While I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing, it is similar. People certain complained about it just as much. If people having problems getting access to WoW has caused them any long term issues, you certainly wouldn’t know it by their supposed subscriber numbers.
ajc
on January 9, 2008 6:04 am

mann that totally sucks. i thought i was the only one with achievement deletion problems. not long ago after i beat nfs most wanted i went back and wondered why i only had 925 instead of 1000. and it seems that i didn’t receive the achievements on one of the bosses i beat, but i knew i had beaten him because the game was over. soo i did the same thing as you and called xbox and they were horrible at game recognition. they didn’t even know how to spell need for speed. ( i had to repeat it several times) soo it ended up that nothing was achieved. sucks though, at least for you there are still achievements to unlock (even though they may seem impossible) but for me the game is done. blehhhh!
Harth
on January 9, 2008 1:25 pm

This happened to me when i played Naruto: Rise of a Ninja. I got all the achievements for offline, once i signed into Xbox live after my internet being down i lost all of the achievements. I then log onto the game it only provides me with 3 achievements for having everyone like you. Yet i should get 850 for beating the game and doing all the other activities.
Tom
on January 10, 2008 6:05 pm

I also have lost achievements on Mass Effect and also every achievement on Tomb Raider Legend has dissapeared. Absolutly gutted!
Kurow Shinobi
on January 14, 2008 1:04 pm

The same thing happen to me in Mass Effect, its says I unlocked 5 achievements, but when I look at the tall it doesn’t add up…..yet it shows them unlocked.
Kurow Shinobi
on January 14, 2008 1:05 pm

Also this happen to me in Naruto, which makes me wanna throw some games out the window again>
Sean
on January 16, 2008 5:24 pm

I had something wierd happen on Halo 3 like this, my acheivements are still on my xbox, xbox.com, and bungie.net but all my campaign stuff simply disappeared on my hard drive. Ie: Lost all skulls, campaign completions, and armor purmutations. ???
jay
on February 16, 2008 8:30 pm

im 100% with you guys. i damn think microsoft should put an end to this now! but sometimes its the game’s understanding. you can think that ur gonna get an achievement but the game dont recogonise it. ive recently had smackdown vs raw 08 and there is an achievement ‘this year’s inductee’ where for 350 gamerscore-points you have to win general manager of the year on 24/7 mode, iv’e done this SIX times and clearly won it as it tells me, but for some reason the achievement just wont unlock whereas other friends got it first time! seriously annoying! :@
Will
on February 18, 2008 11:49 am

well my rockbandachievments disappeared and now wont let me go to xbl and i log in to xbl but then logs me back out wont let me go to memberships neither Sux i had all guitar and drum achievments and 100% songs in guitar in drums and wont give them back by getting other achievment becuase i got 3 after wards but i dont care bout that haha care about it lets me log in xbl
Pablo
on March 10, 2008 10:19 pm

I got a worst problem in Halo 2 Vista…for example i make a killing spree (Theirs an achievement 4 that) and when i check my achivemnts nothing….i have done a lot of the achivements on the list but only 1/41 appears omg and i dont belive my friend will belive me…he will say ima noob :(
Pablo
on March 10, 2008 10:31 pm

Ps:Dont belive me? Add me im GRP Spartan 983
John
on March 25, 2008 3:55 pm

I’ve recently had the same problem with Mass Effect, god that sounds like a common game to be having this problem with doesn’t it?

I’ve tried re-unlocking some of them such as collecting the codex entries for scholar, but that doesn’t work, i’ve tried recovering my account, which doesn’t work either, and I have also tried unlocking another achievement on the same game, this unlocks the one I just did but not the ones that have been locked.
Mataeus
on March 30, 2008 11:25 am

This all sounds like a load of crap to me. Achievements are stored on your local profile AND on your roaming profile, otherwise a) people who don’t have Xbox live wouldn’t be able to get them and b) if you recovered your account to another console your achievements wouldn’t show up. The two versions of your account are usually kept in sync with one another, but the user can do things to screw this up. For example, if you just turn off your xbox at the plug instead of shutting it down on the console, you may cut the power whilst the local and roaming profiles are out-of-sync, resulting in lost data. You wouldn’t do it to your PC, so don’t do it to your Xbox. When you boot up your console, if you get an achievement whilst off-line it will be added to your roaming profile the next time you login, but the date you obtained it won’t be displayed for it. (so, if you have any achievements without dates by the side of them that’s why). Also, take a look at the size of your profile on the storage device. It’s about 4 or 5 meg, right? Well, as you play more and more games you will notice this figure go up and up. This is further proof that your achievements are stored locally first and foremost, your roaming profile is only updated as a) a back up, and b) convenience. (ie you DON’T have to carry your profile around in your pocket, you CAN recover it to another console). So, the bottom line is this: Xbox Live, whether Xbox tells you so or not, can have nothing to do with achievements being ‘deleted’. You’ve either not been logged into your correct profile (or you’ve had multiple people logged in and you’ve been suing the wrong one), you haven’t read the achievement description properly (some achievements can only be gained by the HOST or LEAD PROFILE), or you’ve failed to shut down your Xbox properly or removed the storage device whilst the console is turned on, resulting in the risk that the Xbox could be reading / writing to the device at the time. The only way you can LOSE an achievement is through user error, your account being banned through Xbox live whilst signed in (as in banned from LIVE permanently, resulting in a loss on everything for that profile) or if you thought you’ve unlocked something but infact you haven’t. For example, when it says ‘unlocked’ take notice of the lights on the sign that show you which player this relates to.

End of.
ryan
on March 30, 2008 11:41 pm

I have been playing on an account that I believe I made as an xbox live account, but i had never logged it into xbox live. I did today and all my achievements that i had gotten offline have now disappeared and i have a 0 gamerscore. This can’t be normal?
i dont cheat
on March 31, 2008 5:36 am

i am soo sorry for everyone but this site explaines the all ( all u dirty cheaters ) http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/87620
Mataeus
on April 6, 2008 11:50 pm

I refuse to believe many people here are telling the whole story… Ryan, if you recovered your profile from Xbox Live (which I suspect many of the people here are doing) then your off-line achievements will have a chance of disappearing as the two profiles attempt to consolidate themselves. For you in particular, it is possible that, when signing your profile up to Xbox Live, you filled in the information on the form as if you were creating a new gamer profile, which can be an easy mistake to make. The good news is of course your old offline profile will still be available on your hardrive. Sign in to that one, then sign in to Xbox Live from there.
ryan
on April 7, 2008 7:19 pm

So far 2/6 games have instantly given me back all my achievements once i updated the game and started playing. The other four I guess i’m just out of luck. I was happy to get my ones from AC at least bc those took a while to do and I don’t even feel like playing that game again. Theres 2 or 3 others I rented/borrowed that have potential but we’ll see.

Either way that’s a pretty lame glitch to have all your game stats erased like that. My friend said the same thing happened to him once. At least I only had like 4,000ish points, could have been worse.
Mataeus
on April 8, 2008 11:19 am

Just for anyone else that seems to think my comments are invisible (as they seem to be) THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. Achievements are not disappearing for anyone, people are either MAKING THIS UP for whatever reason or they are NOT GETTING THE ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Follow the rules of how to get a particular achievement and get it, make sure that’s it’s not THE OTHER PLAYER that’s getting the achievement and STOP WINING this story IS NOT TRUE.
Thank you.
Dan Landis
on April 9, 2008 6:46 am

Mataeus,
As much as I enjoy being called a liar, rest assured that I am not a liar. I did not make this story up. I’m glad that you apparently have insight into everyone’s Live profile and a deep knowledge of the inner workings of Microsoft, but you must realize that there exists the possibility that you have no clue what you’re talking about. Sometimes things just don’t work properly. I actually find your faith in “the system” somewhat disturbing. Next thing you know you’re going to tell us that the red ring doesn’t exist either.
Mataeus
on April 10, 2008 12:31 pm

I apologise if I have offended you, and I realise my last post was not that clear. I did not intend the “This story is not true” element to imply that you made it up, just that you were mistaken in gaining the achievement on your profile, which I stand by. When an achievement is saved onto your memory unit under your profile, it’s saved just like any other bit of local data; like a gamesave for instance. Dates that the achievement were obtained are irrelevant, therefore any roll-back of servers can NOT affect your achievement being on your profile. For them to disappear as if you never had them would consist of a piece of code that deliberately searches out and recognises a particular achievement and be programmed to remove it. Anything else I could say would just be repeating myself from earlier posts, so I’ll leave it there. You say I have no idea what I’m talking about. This is of course entirely possible, but at least I use my technical background from years of software development right back from the 8-bit days (with System Masters) to attempt reasoning of my point of view. If you could provide an example of how this can happen which doesn’t conflict with my reasons of why it can’t, I would be most interested. I mentioned before it’s possible for a roaming and local profile to conflict, but you can read about that above if you so wish.

Regards,

Mat.
Dan Landis
on April 10, 2008 10:04 pm

Okay, Batman, riddle me this then: Why would the technical support people have a solution to a problem if it doesn’t exist and, according to the use of your extensive technical background from years of software development, can’t even accidentally happen?

I understand the roaming versus local profile argument, but that is irrelevant because my profile is stored on my memory card and physically goes with me when I visit someone else’s 360. Your theory is also not supported by the fact that the rest of the achievements I earned just hours before are still there — only this one has disappeared.
Mataeus
on April 11, 2008 11:29 am

Well, thank you for an interesting debate in which we both shared our points of view, but as you appear to be getting rather irate and sarcastic, I’ll leave my input there. Xbox support is just like calling any other call centre, they are people hired to answer a phone and follow their guide and training in order to provide a solution for your problem. I doubt you are the first person to believe you have ‘lost’ an achievement especially if the other posts here are anything to go by therefore of course they will tell you they have heard of this issue before. That still doesn’t make the issue true. Simply, I think you were mistaken in getting your achievement. Unfortunately where guitar hero is concerned that’s not hard to do. GH3 is a good example of when achievements aren’t clearly listed, for example some of the co-op achievements only unlock for the lead profile (ie the one signed in at the dashboard). I have tried to offer an explanation and reasons of why an achievement cannot just be deleted from your profile and have tried to be reasonable with the exception of my slightly miffed post as nobody seemed to take on board the comments I was making but as you would rather make sarcastic comments than discuss this properly, I will not be returning here.
I hope you manage to sort out any problems that you may (or may not) be having. My advice? Do the song again with you as the lead profile and play it again until you get it. And take note of which little light flashes up on the screen. Even better, play it for real. I’ll send you the Powertab if you like :)

Regards,

Mat.
LC
on April 11, 2008 12:22 pm

oh noo dan you wounded blind allegiance…
Dan Landis
on April 12, 2008 12:41 am

I wouldn’t say I’m irate at all. Sarcastic, yes, but not irate. In order to avoid sounding like a broken record, however, I ask that you read the story again for several reasons:

1. This is not Guitar Hero 3 we are talking about, it’s Guitar Hero 2. I’m well aware of the stupidity involved in the GH3 co-op achievements, and my friend and I decided it was NOT worth doing everything twice. We skipped GH3 and concentrated on GH2. Believe it or not, they are actually two different games, and GH2 does not have the co-op achievement problems that GH3 has.

2. I very clearly said that I immediately hit my guide button and stared at my achievement as soon as I got it. I don’t know why you think I can’t tell the difference between pushing the guide button on the guitar in my own hands versus pushing my friend’s guide button, or that I could mistake the gamertag I was looking at on the television as being mine if it was not.

3. Though I didn’t say this anywhere in the article, I did not play as the lead profile. Somehow I managed to still get all the other co-op achievements, so I guess that doesn’t matter. Not that it mattered anyways because, as I said, we aren’t talking about Guitar Hero 3, and that’s the game with the co-op achievement issues.

If this “discussion” actually does result in you not coming here any more, then frankly I think that’s quite immature. Regardless of how sophisticated you are trying to sound, the bottom line is that you walked into an article and said that the person who wrote it and about 15 other people are all mistaken. Now you are surprised and upset when I defend my position? You have basically said that my experience didn’t actually happen, that I never actually earned that achievement, or that my very eyes deceived me as I stared at my profile with my newly earned achievement. Nowhere within the realm of possibility could it be that Xbox Live screwed up? I just can’t comprehend why it’s so hard for people to believe that not everything works 100% of the time, especially in regards to the 360.
IVI
on April 22, 2008 2:53 pm

Yeah, so this tirade was fun to watch by Mataeus who apparently works for MS. Look sport, I can nix your whole Microsoft never fails, ah, hem, blue screen, by saying that my achievements show up on the Bungie net site but don’t show up on my console or on the live website. So before you say that MS is infallible, I’d get the whole story. Remember, there is no such thing as a perfect system, especially in computing.
numberwang44
on August 3, 2008 5:49 pm

I have got 1 million on the downloadable song ernten was wir saen about 6 times as lead and bass and the achievement wont unlock i dont know why!
If somebody wnats to help message my gamertag numberwang44
Galen
on September 16, 2008 1:46 pm

This is quite problem. I’ve just recently had this happen to me with Tales of Vesperia. I had 48/50 achievements unlocked before I went to sign onto Xbox live. Now it’s telling me I only have 42/50. I click on the list and IT tells me I have the 48/50 I know I have but the official gamercard tells me it’s 42. I’ve also added up the points I should have and it’s a much higher total than what my gamercard shows. A friend of mine told me I might have to get a gold account again to fix the problem but we’ll see. This is quite frustrating.
SIMPLYMIDGET
on October 2, 2008 11:22 am

Mataeus=owned.
Omega Trion
on November 21, 2008 9:59 pm

Missing achievements does happen. I just beat Halo 3. It shows achievement for all 8 missions completed, but does not show my achievement for beating the game on heroic, and the achievement for Normal did not unlock either. So I have all the achievement for all the levels and saw the ending, but the game did not unlock the achievement for beating the game.
adam
on March 14, 2009 1:40 pm

same thing happened to me almost. i didnt have internet at the time(idk if that matters)but i got the achivement from Mile High Club on veteran on Call of Duty 4. I was so exited i had been trying to get it litterally for the past 11 hours and finaly got it. i got internet the next day when Comcast finally showed up and fixed my internet. I signed into xbox360 live and checked my achivements to show my friend that was over at my house. And wtf? it wasnt there. he still believed me a little that i got the achievment but didnt know how the heck that would happen. niether did i. I still dont have the achievment and im not going to do that ficken mission for another whole day…
adam
on March 14, 2009 1:47 pm

yeah ryan thats what happened to me when i first got my xbox. i made a silver account got some achievements for the game that came with the xbox360 and when i bought xbox live all of the achivements i had done where gone. I didnt know what the heck happened. then later i had the same problem with a very tough achievment “Mile High Club” on veteran cod4, i did it all right.. no cheats, nothing. It showed The achivement at the top after i jumped out of the airplane. when my internet got back i got on xbox live it wasnt there….

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