UPDATE: Microsoft has issued a statement on this morning's shenanigans, and claims everything should be fixed in a few hours.

"We are aware that some Xbox LIVE members are having problems with their Gamerscores. Affected users should log out and back in to restore their scores. While this should fix the issue, updated Gamerscores may not be reflected on Xbox.com for a couple of hours. We’re working on this and expect it to be fully resolved soon.”

As for achievements earned during the glitched period, Microsoft told me the company is working to have everything restored "shortly."

--

A terrifying scenario presented itself this morning on Xbox Live: if you logged in and earned an achievement, your entire gamerscore was wiped out. Zip, zero.

This specific issue has reportedly been addressed, according to Xbox Support, but there are lingering problems.

“I want to let you know that we're aware of an issue with achievements, and that we're doing everything we can to resolve it ASAP,” said Xbox Support representative Mister Fitzer in a thread.

If you’re one of the people with a suddenly missing gamerscore, and thus missing achievements, the first step is to sign out of Xbox Live and sign back in. If that doesn’t work, try re-downloading your profile. Hopefully that works, but any achievements you earned during this weird period have to be earned all over again. That's unfortunate.

If this support thread is any indication, the issue hasn’t been resolved for everyone, and some gamerscores remain borked. I’ve contacted Microsoft for comment, and hopefully we’ll know more soon.

For now, however, it’s probably best to stay off Xbox Live.

Make sure to report any of your own issues in the comments.

UPDATE: Microsoft has issued a statement on this morning's shenanigans, and claims everything should be fixed in a few hours.

"We are aware that some Xbox LIVE members are having problems with their Gamerscores. Affected users should log out and back in to restore their scores. While this should fix the issue, updated Gamerscores may not be reflected on Xbox.com for a couple of hours. We’re working on this and expect it to be fully resolved soon.”

As for achievements earned during the glitched period, Microsoft told me the company is working to have everything restored "shortly."

--

A terrifying scenario presented itself this morning on Xbox Live: if you logged in and earned an achievement, your entire gamerscore was wiped out. Zip, zero.

This specific issue has reportedly been addressed, according to Xbox Support, but there are lingering problems.

“I want to let you know that we're aware of an issue with achievements, and that we're doing everything we can to resolve it ASAP,” said Xbox Support representative Mister Fitzer in a thread.

If you’re one of the people with a suddenly missing gamerscore, and thus missing achievements, the first step is to sign out of Xbox Live and sign back in. If that doesn’t work, try re-downloading your profile. Hopefully that works, but any achievements you earned during this weird period have to be earned all over again. That's unfortunate.

If this support thread is any indication, the issue hasn’t been resolved for everyone, and some gamerscores remain borked. I’ve contacted Microsoft for comment, and hopefully we’ll know more soon.

For now, however, it’s probably best to stay off Xbox Live.

Make sure to report any of your own issues in the comments.

OK...no more online play...stupid xbox

Damn that would suck asses, two of them.

I got struck by this. I went from having 870 points in Mass Effect 3 to having 130. So that's great.

Bummer.

when i saw the title i thought this was about giant bomb

Thanks for the heads up, I don't want to have to deal with this.

Yeah, this really blows. Stay off LIVE, Jeff!

I had this happen. I lost 40K points. But thankfully a fix was issued and I got it all back. Crisis averted.

Still having issues with my profile, went to the contact us page on xbox to find the tip of trying to log out/in to try to fix it but nope. At least they know about the issue & seem to be working on it.

@Brodehouse: weak...

Yeah, I'm afraid to turn on my 360.

I guess I won't play Mass Effect 3 today... Thanks for the heads up, though!

@fox01313 said:

Still having issues with my profile, went to the contact us page on xbox to find the tip of trying to log out/in to try to fix it but nope. At least they know about the issue & seem to be working on it.

Did you re-download your profile? That seems to be the real fix.

I hesitantly logged in about an hour ago, everything seemed fine for me.

Well, then I guess I won't log into xbox live for a while. Kind of sucks.

I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've seen "borked" as a term used in an article, haha.

Actually I think if my profile had a ton of games played and a 5 year XBL membership and 0 gamescore, that'd be way cooler than its dumb high number it has now. Sign me up for this bug!

Just curious, but has anything similar happened to xbox live before?

I haven't used my xbox yet today, so theoretically if I unplugged my ethernet that would prevent my achievements from getting deleted?

Oh man, and I really wanted to spend a little time this afternoon in ME3... well, maybe tomorrow...

Ah well, I guess I can catch up on Shadows of the Damned on my PS3.

Thankfully I'm away for a few days.

In the aftermath of all of this I think I've lost 210 points from one game but i can't be sure, since i can't remember the exact number i had prior to this. I did earn an achievement during this problem, which is what made aware of it. My score now reads 55205 but in my achievements page its 55195.

The one achievement I earned in this time was 10 points, so instead of earning 10 points i've lost 10 points...on top of the 210? or is that part of it? I don't know, it's way too confusing to me.

Happened to me a few hours ago, but a quick profile re-download fixed it.

Looks like Microsoft just sold me a copy of Journey.

I feel sorry for those playing something like ME3 and not knowing this is going to happen. Happened to me and I lost a couple of achievements that weren't story related after downloading my profile. For the people locked in and making story based achievement decisions later in the game? That would suck to lose those points.

Patrick is really quick with these articles!

I usually don't play any games on Tuesday mornings before work, but for some reason this morning I decided to unwrap my copy of Dodonpachi Resurrection. I earned 50 achievement points and didn't realize anything was amiss until I noticed a forum topic on the forums here about it. I wasn't able to fix it, but I'll give it another try in 8 hours when I am home from work.

It sucks for people who play for achievements, but I'm not bothered. I just want to play Mass Effect 3.

If I can lose those Last Airbender and Saints Row 1 achievements I'd be ok with it. And I think Project Gotham and a motorbike game? I rented a lot of crap I never played again when I first got one... didn't realise profiles could be stained. :(

Lately my profile stats look a bit wonky on the dashboard, just by virtue of how things are adding up. The max is /129995 GS and /5901 possible achievements. I blame DLC, especially for my decline in S-ranks. "ROBBED!" ~Brad

So it's not MAss Effects 3 fault. Loosy Dutch news reporting.

Ok so yeah, re-downloading my profile did indeed fix the problem, although in my gamertag details i have 200/200 points...BUT this is the closest I've been to 'all good'. Got those 210 points back, they never actually left, silly me.

@Bassman2112 said:

I'm fairly sure this is the first time I've seen "borked" as a term used in an article, haha.

You should take a look at this, it's from May 18, 2011. That was the first time I saw that word and I thought it was a typo...

Read about this on another forum, and from the players reactions I have to ask here;
- How many of you would not be on the 360 if it lacked gamerscore?
 
Because that other forum is a clear demonstration in the only reason why Microsoft have won the moneymaking race this console generation and can continue to ask $60 a year for the privilege of doing things that other systems let you do for free. The amount of people buying games and XBLA releases just to increase their gamerscore, and choosing their game purchases based on how easy it is to get all the achievements, is freaking gargantuan.

I jumped online just to check if my gamerscore had gone away. Nope, it's stuck where it was at before. Well, that's good news, though it wouldn't have bothered me if my gamerscore was back at 0.

I never keep my xbox hooked up to live, but I connected this morning to sync up to live, lost everything but my Mass Effect 3 achievements. So when I redownload my profile just those will be gone. A damn shame considering I've lost all drive to ever play anything Mass Effect related ever again, so I likely won't be getting them back.

I have to play ME3 online though. Have to. Risking 100 000 points on this!

The article mentions losing what you would have earned during this day but it doesn't really say if your total score can not be recovered.

Happened to me as I was playing ME3. Lost everything then logged out and in. It started to fix itself slowly. People were saying to just download profile again (recover) to fix it. I did that and all is well again. I wouldn't worry about it.

@SomeJerk: I find the XBLA experience better by a longshot than that of the PSN and that is the reason why despite owning both consoles I pretty much only use my 360. For me personally it has nothing to do with achievements. I like getting them, and they sometimes motivate me to keep playing when I would have otherwise put the game down - but buying titles solely based on them is crazy talk.

So is it okay to play offline? Or will I lose achievements i got while offline when this is fixed?

Oh noes! Numbers without meaning might disappear!

@acrimsonbullet said:

I haven't used my xbox yet today, so theoretically if I unplugged my ethernet that would prevent my achievements from getting deleted?

I'm guessing this would be server side issue.

Lost all my ME3 achievements. Now I've lost my will to play it even though it's my favourite game this year. Now I'm depressed.

@Vodun said:

Oh noes! Numbers without meaning might disappear!

But, but the numbers-Yeah you're right.

Oh man. I played ME3 this morning, now I'm afraid to turn on my Xbox. Just looking at xbox.com I see that it isn't showing the Explorer achievement for doing 5 N7 missions, which I did see pop this a.m., but it is showing the other one I got this a.m., for doing all the N7 missions. Silly Xbox.

One other thing to try that helped some (not all for me but not sure if the recent Skyrim patch has something to do with it when I downloaded it last night), is try to get another achievement on the profile where the reset happened. If something better comes through the forum post I put up on xbox I'll put it up for others to try.

By the way, if you lose an achievement or two you should only need to start up that game since it looks like they are also tied to your save game.
I can't guarantee all games work this way but SFxT definately does since it happened to me this morning.

I was playing some ME3 multiplayer this morning, and it popped a bunch of achievements I had already got (finish a map etc). Once the system corrected itself, it took the 'fake' achievements as real and appears to have forgotten the 'real' ones.

@SomeJerk said:

How many of you would not be on the 360 if it lacked gamerscore?

I definitely choose to buy games for 360 over PS3 because of the achievements. And I never spend that much time on PS3 games because I never really figured out how the trophy system actually works.

@SomeJerk said:

How many of you would not be on the 360 if it lacked gamerscore?

I definitely choose to buy games for 360 over PS3 because of the achievements. And I never spend that much time on PS3 games because I never really figured out how the trophy system actually works.