Update: Killer Instinct character and content access restored, Microsoft releases statement
Update: Microsoft has now released a statement claiming they have released a fix to restore Killer Instinct's characters and content to players. You can find the full statement in the story below.
It's been a somewhat rough few months lately considering a hacker completely crippled the game's online modes recently, and now this is going down for some reason.
Players who've logged onto Killer Instinct over the past few days are running into the severe issue of none of their characters or purchased content being accessible in the title, which basically renders it unplayable.
The team has deployed a fix & we have verified Killer Instinct is fixed- all characters back, stats, KI Gold etc.
— Killer Instinct (@KillerInstinct) January 18, 2023
This was a KI Service issue started 2 days ago, thanks for helping flag & apologize for the interruption!
Please R/T and let us know if this fixed it for you!
As NickyFGC and others have pointed out, KI doesn't give any sort of error or message, but trying to play any mode results in a character select screen that's completely locked aside from the free rotation pick — although some have reported still having access to Orchid or 1 other fighter too.
This applies for both online and single-player modes, so there's not really any point in trying to play unless you really just like Tusk at the moment.
The community hasn't been able to determine a cause or consistent fix for the issue, and Microsoft has not addressed what exactly is going on either.
From the look of things, however, the problem likely stems from server / authentication issues, which are preventing KI from seeing what content is already owned.
Other online users are reporting similar issues in games like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot where their DLC or even save data appears to be missing, so this could also be a wider problem facing Xbox services currently.
The Windows PC version of Killer Instinct is reportedly the most heavily impacted although Xbox users are also seeing their content wiped too.
This is a pretty big problem especially because the majority of the playerbase still playing KI use that Windows version and basically cripples the community.
The Steam version of KI appears to be functioning normally at this time, however.
Seeing this occur on such a wide scale too raises some of our worst fears about digital content ownership and access when even a game's single-player features can be rendered useless if servers aren't available or working correctly.
Considering Microsoft did go in and fix KI's leaderboard hacking problem that killed Ranked Mode last year, players can expect things to get back up and running again even if they haven't said anything yet.
We'll update this story as more information becomes available, and you can check out NickyFGC's video below to learn more about what's going on in Killer Instinct.
