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So I purchased the Halo collection on steam during a sale in March, got around to installing it the other day to find that Microsoft are a bunch of witches and want you to create an account for it. Fine. Done. Sat down and smashed out a Reach in a single session with no issues.
Come back yesterday to play Combat Evolved to discover that it and the other sequels haven't actually been installed, just reach. Okaaaay. What ever, install them too. 8 fething hours and some unfathomable amount of gigabytes later, all the downloads are finished. Yippee. Boot the game up to find that my newly made account has been locked. For what, they don't say. Not sure why. I literally only played Reach. Didn't go anywhere near the multiplayer servers. Says to unlock my account I need to give them my phone number and follow the account recovery process.
I'm frustrated at this point and against my better judgement enter my number. They send me the code to enter, which I do. And.... nothing. Not a thing. Get them to resend the code. Also nothing. No resent code. No unlocked account. Can't even check if there's an email as the accounts locked!
I'm now very confused and quite miffed.
Figured I might be able to get around the account thing by playing offline. Not really interested in achievements and that stuff anyway. Just want to play the game I purchased. Boot it up in offline mode, game still wants me to sign in but can't says it can't reach the xbox live servers to log in. When I click the the "x" button it throws me back to the title screen.

HOW THE feth AM I SUPPOSED TO PLAY THIS GAME? Do I have to create a new microsoft account every time I want to play? The halo support website is fething useless. Can't access anything without logging in. Which I can't because the account's locked. Can't even use the appeal ban feature because the fething ACCOUNT IS LOCKED and they require you to sign in to do literally bloody anything.
And now I'm really pissed off.

Does anyone have any advice on what to do. Is there a way around this? I've tried doing a search, but my searchfu is not great and all the results I did get were either in relation to multiplayer issues or a different issue from 2019.
I'm about ready to request a refund from steam as this is just nonsense. Not hopeful though as It's well past the 14 day cut off and with 6 hours in it already, I'm guessing I'm probably past their gameplay limit too.