Microsoft's Jason Ronald has confirmed that Xbox has "no plans" to remove or disable developer mode on Xbox consoles following speculation this week that it was planning to do just that.
Ronald, who is Partner Director of Program Management at Xbox, confirmed this on Twitter. "We continue to believe in and support a healthy independent app and game development community on Xbox," Ronald said.
Some Partner Center accounts were "inadvertently deactivated," Ronald said, which is what caused the confusion and speculation that the developer mode feature was being removed. "We are actively working on identifying and reenabling these accounts as soon as possible," Ronald said.
Ronald said those who had their accounts accidentally deactivated can reach out to Microsoft at ReportApp@microsoft.com to speed up the account recovery. "We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working to remedy this as quickly as possible and thanks for your patience."
We have no plans to remove or disable Developer Mode on Xbox consoles. We continue to believe in and support a healthy independent app and game development community on Xbox.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) January 5, 2022
As part of a regularly scheduled maintenance to clean up inactive accounts, a number of Partner Center accounts used to enable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles were inadvertently deactivated.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) January 5, 2022
We are actively working on identifying and reenabling these accounts as soon as possible. Once an account has been reactivated, users will be able to reenable Developer Mode on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) January 5, 2022
If your account was accidentally deactivated and you would like to restore access sooner, feel free to contact ReportApp@microsoft.com. We apologize for the inconvenience and we are working to remedy this as quickly as possible and thanks for your patience.
— Jason Ronald (@jronald) January 5, 2022
In other news, Xbox Game Pass is adding a big group of great games to kick off the new year, including Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Gorogoa, and Spelunky 2 this month alone.