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My son got an Xbox One for his birthday. Someone advised me to set up a Gold subscription in my own name and then a child account for him, so I could be in control of who does what (and also let his sister set up her own child account and share the benefits).

He has just received a Xbox gift card. If he redeems the code under his own child account will he still be able to take advantage of the gold deals or will he have to pay full price? If he buys the game under his account, will the games also work for other family members?

Perhaps I should just redeem the code under my own account and make all purchases for him?

Although he's still quite young, I'm also mindful that in a few years he might want to have an adult account on a new Xbox but still be able to play some of the old games he bought with his own credit.

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    For specific confirmation of how that works, you may have to speak to MS support, or do a trial run with a cheap game. This post confirms your child account can make a purchase with a gift card (but not your account credit card). It does not specify if that links the purchase to the child or main MS account, but I'd imagine its the child, since you create child profiles with a unique MS account.
    – Dpeif
    Nov 27, 2016 at 20:18
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    Their documentation is nearly worthless sometimes though, the page on upgrading a child account to a regular account is literally blank
    – Dpeif
    Nov 27, 2016 at 20:18
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    Thank you @Dpeif I think you're probably correct about it tying the purchase to my son's account. I will probably do as you suggest and push a few pounds into his account and make a test purchase. I'll comment again when I get a chance to try this.
    – Daz
    Nov 27, 2016 at 21:14
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    Well I decided to push a few pounds to my son's account so he could buy a gold deal, but found that I couldn't push some of my existing account credit to him, I had to add more funds from a credit card. Tried to do this but the payment page kept crashing. At this point my enthusiasm for the experiment started to wane. However I did notice that when my son went to to the payment page in the store (from his own profile) the price displayed was the gold deal price.
    – Daz
    Dec 16, 2016 at 9:40

2 Answers 2

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As long as your Xbox is set as the home Xbox under your account, any account in the Xbox itself can share Games with Gold, and all of your game purchases, including your Xbox Live Gold status.

Account funds are tracked separately. If you purchased the game, it would be under your account only, so if your son were to get his own Xbox, he wouldn't have access to it unless you downloaded your account onto his Xbox and set it up as the home Xbox.

If you're still unclear on anything, I'm more than happy to clarify. I know this by experience because I have my girlfriend's Xbox as my home Xbox, allowing her to access all the games I've purchased, and my Xbox live gold status.

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  • Cheers @Cory-Ahapow. I've marked this as the correct answer, but just to clarify on one point: If the Xbox is my "home Xbox" then my son shares the Games with Gold benefits, including being able to make his own purchases (with his own funds) at the GwG price?
    – Daz
    Apr 7, 2017 at 16:14
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    @Daz Yes, because his account technically has Xbox Live Gold, he will be offered the same price discounts and Games with Gold free games. But it's always useful to sign in on his account and check. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll edit my answer, cheers.
    – Cory Ahapow
    Apr 8, 2017 at 3:12
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I did a bit of testing, and in case anyone else stumbles across this, this might help:

  1. If you have an Xbox account with Games with Gold previously claimed but Gold is currently inactive, and there is another account with Gold on the same console and it is set as their "Home Console", then those previously claimed games are accessible. Quite simply, as long as there is access to Gold, previously claimed GwG can be accessed by that account and installed/played.
  2. For making new claims of GwG titles, that is account specific, you can't claim GwG titles from an Account which doesn't actually have Gold on it. Quite simply, the benefit of claiming GwG games does not share across accounts.
  3. Any game installed by an account with the "Home Console" option set, can be accessed by any other user on that console.

So unfortunately, the status does not fully carry across, only mostly.

If you want the Games to stay with the other person even if they leave and get their own Xbox, then it is better to have the Gold under their name so that the GwG claimed games stay with them.

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