Minecraft Vibrant Visuals update seems to have broken Xbox split‑screen play

Minecraft players on Xbox are reporting a frustrating issue following the recent “Vibrant Visuals” update. It appears that the highly anticipated graphical overhaul, while making the game look prettier, has unfortunately caused significant problems for local split-screen multiplayer. Many players are finding that secondary accounts are no longer logging in correctly, instead being treated as “guest” profiles, leading to lost inventory and progress.

The “Vibrant Visuals” update, which just landed on Bedrock Edition for compatible devices including Xbox, promised a stunning cosmetic upgrade with improved lighting, shadows, and reflections. Players were excited to see their blocky worlds come to life with new visual flair. However, this excitement has quickly turned into disappointment for those who regularly enjoy Minecraft with friends or family on the same console.

Reports have been flooding X and Reddit, with countless users detailing similar experiences. The main complaint centers around the game failing to properly recognize logged-in secondary accounts for split-screen play. Instead of loading their proper profiles with all their hard-earned items and progress, these players are being spawned into the world as generic “guest” accounts. This means they start fresh, without any of their inventory, XP, or even access to their pets.

One Reddit user shared their frustration, explaining how they and their girlfriend had invested a lot of time into a shared world. “With the new update she’s now unable to connect with my second account and it keeps logging in with a guest account so all of her inventory is lost,” they wrote, adding that they had tried restarting the game and console without success. “This has never been an issue before.”

Another player echoed this sentiment, lamenting, “This is also happening to me and my brother too, we were working on a town yesterday and we loaded our world up today to finish it, just for split screen to not work and sign him in as a guest multiple times.”

For many, split-screen is a core way they enjoy Minecraft. It offers a unique bonding experience, letting players build, explore, and survive together on one screen. The current bug effectively takes away that experience.

“I play a lot of Minecraft with my wife and sons on our Xbox Series S on Bedrock edition,” explained another affected player. “Today when we tried to get on for a bit before work, I could sign in and join just fine. One of my sons always joins as my guest [L0N3STARR(1)], and that seems fine. But when my other son tried to join using his accounts, he instead joined as a new to the world user, L0N3STARR(2). When my wife tried to join using her account, it crashed the world saying two players were trying to join as the same user in one world and that’s not allowed.” This particular issue highlights a chaotic mix of guest accounts and outright crashes.

The problem has even been reported on the official Mojang bug tracker, confirming that developers are aware of the situation. One user on the bug tracker described a temporary, though risky, workaround. They suggested that players could join the world from a separate device online to access their proper inventory, then place all their items in a chest for the split-screen player to use. However, they strongly cautioned against logging off with items in the guest account’s inventory, as guest account Player IDs tend to change, leading to permanent loss of those items. “Do NOT EVER log off of a world when a guest account has items in its inventory,” they stressed. So this clearly isn’t a long-term solution.

As usual, we’ll keep tabs on the situation and will post an update if there’s something to share.