Xbox Living

A bug — or, rather, an oversight — over at Xbox HQ is causing some Xbox 360 owners to lose their Gamertags.

The issue surrounds the Windows Live ID that is a required part of your Gold account sign up.  If you have previously linked your Xbox Live account to a Windows Live ID — such as a Hotmail address — and that ID has expired (because, for instance, you never check your Hotmail account), you could find yourself in trouble.

As reported by Gamesindustry.biz, the issue doesn’t prevent you from connecting as a Silver user, or downloading Live Marketplace content — but only from upgrading your account to Gold status.  That means that if you’re looking to play online, you’ll need a new Gamertag (or to wait it out until the problem is resolved).

Microsoft had little to say beyond “we’re looking into it”.  If you’re having trouble upgrading your Xbox Live membership to Gold status, error code 8015d080 will let you know that there’s an issue.  Supposedly, not too many are affected yet, since certain requirements are needed for the problem to occur — but it’s a good idea to log into that old Hotmail account, just to be safe.