Xbox One owners thought they’re being pranked when this bizarre error message about My Little Pony showed up

By Sherif Saed

For a few hours earlier today, a rogue Xbox One error message was received by players whenever they attempted to do certain tasks on the Xbox Store.

A number of users reported seeing the bizarre message and everyone was confused by it. When you read the description, you’ll see why.

It read, “This would be some long description about the error. Read it and weep! You will find a My Little Pony episode called ‘Read it and Weep.’ Cloudchasers and Wonderbolts, you’ll never be forgotten.”

As you can see, it’s not exactly a typical error message. What perplexed players even more is that, assuming they received this message instead of an actual one, what sort of problem was this message even supposed to report in the first place?

I initially assumed it’s a rogue employee trying to cause trouble, but it turns out there’s a simpler explanation. Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra confirmed after looking into it that it’s a test message that should not show up to live users, and has promised to deploy a fix today.

Fix will be in tonight, sorry about that. Test string that shouldn’t show up.

— Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) July 19, 2017

All of this wouldn’t have happened if the error message was simply blank, but we’re glad someone took the time to write all of this instead of creating a generic one.