The number of players joining a hosted multiplayer game via Xbox Live is limited to 28

First, I need to clarify that this bug has existed for a long time, at least since the 1.20 update in June 2023 (which we have confirmed). However, based on records from the Minecraft Wikipedia, we speculate that this bug might have theoretically existed since October 2021 with version 1.17.40.

1. Bug Occurrence

1. First, the host enters a world with Xbox Live multiplayer enabled (cheats are turned on to allow command execution) and then executes the command /setmaxplayers 40.

2. Other participants join this world via the Xbox Live multiplayer service (for now, we assume all participants join through Xbox Live, as we have not tested whether joining via LAN would affect the player limit later).

3. When the number of online players reaches 29, players who have not yet joined the world will see "Connecting to multiplayer game" after clicking on "Joinable Friends" in the play menu, followed by the message "Wow this server is popular! Check back later to see if space opens up."

At this point, the bug has already occurred!

2. Bug Details

As mentioned in the first part above, considering only participants joining via Xbox Live, when the total number of online players reaches 29 (excluding the host, meaning 28 players have joined), those attempting to join the multiplayer game will be notified that the server is full, even though it is not actually full.

3. Additional Notes

• As I am submitting this issue now, the game is gradually rolling out a hot update to the play screen for more and more players, updating the previous json UI to Ore UI, which may make it slightly difficult to reproduce the bug.

• Under the json UI, the bug is more visually apparent. Unjoined players can see in the "Joinable Friends" list that the multiplayer game shows 29/40 players, and the circle next to it remains lit (a dimmed circle would indicate that the server is full and cannot be joined, clicking would directly notify that the server is full). However, clicking to join first shows "Connecting to multiplayer game" and then incorrectly states that the server is full, which clearly indicates this is a bug and not intended behavior.

• When I attempted to use HTTPS packet capture software on Windows 10 to gather relevant data, I noticed that the maxplayers value in the Xbox session was set to 30. This might be the cause of the bug, but I am not certain. I am simply reporting everything I know here as thoroughly as possible.