Van Vliet had previously explained that the outage was caused by the failure of an external licensing service used by Xbox and some publishers. This, Van Vliet said, has now been done in a patch that has already begun rolling out, and becomes mandatory for Xbox players starting Monday, Aug. 17. The second part is to give Xbox control of the external licensing service. Subscribe to the newsletter for clear, evidence-based analysis of Xbox's licensing outage, the move to internalize services, and what it means for players and the industry. The response of Van Vliet and his team has been swift and professional.