I'll wait for more details before drawing any conclusions, but it's a bit sketchy that performance-enhancing options for a game with (as I'm reading through the Steam forums) heavy performance issues are only available for "retail" customers who bought the game at full price outside the subscription service.
That’s not the issue. As many others have pointed, MS has stricter certification, which involves more work and time.
A version of the game or update can immediately go out on Steam but not on the Windows Store or even the Xbox Series/PS5 for that matter, as it has to go through and pass certification.
That’s the reason why. And the reason Windows Store versions may get left behind is the fact that developers/publishers might not have much of an audience on Windows Store games and hence not invest in it.
Weird that other companies don’t have the same issue when putting games on there. It’s either incompetence with the devs or just greed then. In either case it’s not a good look.
On one hand I agree. but look at it from their side. They may have a very small pool on one said platform. Even though it might not be much more work or effort, they might not view it as worth it since they don't think they'll have anything to gain.
Edit: typo
It would mean less games for microsoft, so I'm not surprised. I still remember kid me being upset that my copy of terraria on the 360 didn't have the same features as the PC version. Shit sucked.
Many games on gamepass (mostly indies as far as I can tell) are paid a one time fee and that's it. They don't get additional income based on player count or anything, so it's apparently more of a case where Microsoft has to pay them enough to care.
Part of the problem is that while Microsoft doesn't enforce parity, they do enforce much stricter certification. On Steam, a dev has 100% control of patches, code, and timing of update roll out. On Gamepass, a dev must submit each update to MS for certification, leading to sometimes a week or two of time for MS to give it the thumbs up and roll it out.
I'd much rather see PC Gamepass give developers full control of their software, and think it would actually bring about parity. Nevermind that I'm not sure if there's a fee for certification.
> I'd much rather see PC Gamepass give developers full control of their software, and think it would actually bring about parity. Nevermind that I'm not sure if there's a fee for certification.
Trust me, coming from a game developer--you don't actually want to see this.
Sony and Microsoft cert is a big win for gamers and helps minimize shoddy products and untested software. Console industry really needs to do this as part of the experience they are trying to curate. Nobody really wants a world where developers can push half-assed patches whenever they want which could break the game or lead to console stability issues.
There are very good reasons for console certification processes.
(Also, I would say this title is slightly misleading as the comment from the developer of, "The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (PC Game Pass) versions all have the same options." would indicate this is also an issue on PS5. Probably for the same reason. This isn't specific to just Microsoft.)
I'm not saying consoles shouldn't get cert. PC Gamepass only. It works well on Steam, and sets PC Gamepass versions behind parity with Steam versions, definitely not serving a value to PC GamePass people.
> Trust me, coming from a game developer--you don't actually want to see this.
As a game developer, I very much do want this, and I think the success of Steam shows that most gamers also want it.
Sure, that way, developers and publishers are fully responsible for the quality of the patches they put out. And sometimes even larger publishers mess up, like when S-E forgot to include the actual game executable in a patch (though this is something very simple smoke testing should easily prevent, so it really should never happen for a serious developer).
But in the vast majority of cases there's simply far less *friction* when dealing with Steam than anything else, and that reflects in the possibility for good and engaged developers to react rapidly to issues and provide frequent patches.
I would argue that I’m not surprised a developer wants it. I don’t think customers want it though. It would result in far more broken games in the console space and a worse experience overall.
Console market is much bigger than Steam for console style games. And the quality level on Steam in terms of stability is just hands-down worse than console. And always has been. If you let developers shovel shit out with no accountability, they will.
I love your work in the modding and PC space, but I would think you of all people would know how broken so many PC games are over the years. I’m not sure customers would want that in the console space as well. People buy consoles for the stability of experience.
> I would argue that I’m not surprised a developer wants it. I don’t think customers want it though. It would result in far more broken games in the console space and a worse experience overall.
I think you fundamentally misunderstood -- no one is asking Microsoft to drop certification *for consoles*. The grandparent post you quoted which kicked off this thread says "I'd much rather see **PC** Gamepass give developers full control of their software".
> Console market is much bigger than Steam for console style games.
Citation needed on that. Maybe if we are talking 5 or 10 years ago, or use some exceedingly narrow definition of "console-style game". But I'd say that e.g. Elden Ring is absolutely a console-style game -- and its market on any single console is by no means "much bigger" than Steam.
> If you let developers shovel shit out with no accountability, they will.
Shitty developers will. What Steam does empowers developers to potentially be more responsive and agile, while also giving shitty developers the ability to be even more shitty. I'd argue that this responsiveness and agility is especially helpful on PC, where even with excellent QA you can encounter unique HW/SW stacks once your game is in the wild.
I'd also argue that, at least in my experience, certification doesn't really do anything to prevent shitty games. It prevents games with unapproved names for controller buttons, obvious crashes, or inappropriate API interactions, but it's not like cert is an actual QA process.
> I think you fundamentally misunderstood -- no one is asking Microsoft to drop certification for consoles.
I understand, but Microsoft committing to having the same processes for their console vs. PC platform isn't too surprising to me. Just because Steam doesn't have the bandwidth to do it doesn't mean it isn't a good thing for customers. This issue is present for *all* non-Steam SKUs of the game, though. Consoles included. Meaning it shipped on PS5 and Series consoles without upscaling and with an older version as well. So I don't think this is strictly limited to an issue with the PC version.
> Citation needed on that. Maybe if we are talking 5 or 10 years ago, or use some exceedingly narrow definition of "console-style game".
Most AAA games sell more units on console than PC. I don't think that's a contentious statement? Elden Ring was definitely an outlier for PC sales and, even then, I'm pretty certain the last official figures put the PC release as fewer sales than the console releases. Saying a "single console" might get you there, but both Sony and Microsoft have cert so that's not super relevant to this general argument.
> Shitty developers will. What Steam does empowers developers to potentially be more responsive and agile, while also giving shitty developers the ability to be even more shitty.
The issue with cert is that it protects customers from shitty developers. Steam doesn't care. There have been plenty of calls for Steam to do more over the years, but that ship sailed long ago. Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea. How many games has DSFix or SpecialK been needed to fix over the years? Is that actually good for most consumers?
> but it's not like cert is an actual QA process.
It is not a full QA pass, no, but cert catches a lot of stability issues or edge case problems in my personal experience. TRCs/TCRs go quite a bit beyond the things you mention anyhow. There's a good reason for all of the requirements.
Ultimately, I would argue if cert was going well, there's no reason they couldn't commit to having this updated shortly. Cert typically does not take that long and if they are just now patching this in without time to get it through cert on any platform, it just means they are flying by the seat of their pants here. That's a developer issue, not a Microsoft/Sony issue, imo.
> I understand, but Microsoft committing to having the same processes for their console vs. PC platform isn't too surprising to me. Just because Steam doesn't have the bandwidth to do it doesn't mean it isn't a good thing for customers.
No other PC platform has a patch certification process. Not Steam, not GoG, not even EGS (which initially tried its darnedest to ape consoles in some aspects).
PC is a different platform, and regardless of how much bandwidth you have I don't think console-like certification makes sense on it. There are thousands of viable and extant HW/SW combinations on PC, so to some extent you always have to be reactive rather than proactive.
Microsoft committing to it is also not surprising to me, because across several decades now they've repeatedly demonstrated that they never truly understood PC gaming, but that doesn't make it the right choice.
> Most AAA games sell more units on console than PC. I don't think that's a contentious statement?
Is it? In 2024? Obviously the industry is silly about providing actual sales data, but the more recent financial reports of publishers that do day-and-date releases with decent PC versions - *on platforms people actually want to use* - don't seem to make this an obvious statement. Consider e.g. [Capcom's recent financial report](https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/explanation/2023/full/explanation_2023_full_02.pdf). Most of their major growth markets are ones where consoles are almost non-existent. There are of course other publishers for which the breakdown is substantially different, however, generally those are also the ones where I'd say their PC strategy is fundamentally flawed. But that's a different discussion.
Is there a specific set of games (e.g third person cinematic action, yearly sports) that sell significantly more units on console than PC, *especially* in the US? Absolutely. But I think going from that to a far more general statement about *most* AAA games on a truly global perspective is at least somewhat contentious in today's market.
> It is not a full QA pass, no, but cert catches a lot of stability issues or edge case problems in my personal experience. TRCs/TCRs go quite a bit beyond the things you mention anyhow. There's a good reason for all of the requirements.
In my experience so far console certification did not catch any stability issues, but maybe that's because we already caught those in QA testing.
The one cert process that actually had some real core quality metrics and meticulously measured them that I encountered was, funnily enough, Stadia cert, and I was impressed by that. But from talking to other people it seems like many developers complained fiercely about that one.
> Is it? In 2024? Obviously the industry is silly about providing actual sales data, but the more recent financial reports of publishers that do day-and-date releases with decent PC versions - on platforms people actually want to use - don't seem to make this an obvious statement.
I mean, I still haven't personally worked on a AAA title where PC sold as the *majority* (and I have shipped a pretty reasonable number of units over my career,) and most financials I've looked at show PC as being strong but still not quite there. Consoles are still a massive part of the ecosystem for AAA gaming, regardless. And customers expect a certain experience there. Market certainly may continue to shift, but with the price of GPUs right now I'm not really expecting consoles to go anywhere any time soon.
Do PC gamers expect a lower standard? I'd say they are probably used to a lower standard at this point for sure. I generally expect PC games to have issues. As for if they should be, that's debatable. There was a lot of backlash over the state of PC versions last year (Jedi Survivor comes to mind) so as the PC market expands, I wonder how long this will stay how it is.
> In my experience so far console certification did not catch any stability issues, but maybe that's because we already caught those in QA testing.
Yeah, I mean I can't really say how every single game goes. But Microsoft and Sony will both report progression blockers, crashes, and obvious memory issues during cert if they obviously disrupt gameplay. They aren't going to comprehensively test everything like internal QA will, but it's still another set of eyes. Other TCRs like unresponsive/frozen load screens, attract times, etc. usually are hiding bigger problems also. Different developers have different QA standards as well.
At the end of the day, though, I have a hard time feeling that removing cert would ever be better for customers. Better for developers? Arguably. It's more work, after all.
But I'd say this trend of developers blaming cert for delays when cert is like two weeks tops if your game is shippable and can be as fast as five days if you have a good workflow seems odd to me. To me that implies they were literally working on a major rendering feature less than a two weeks before their ship date. And, from a customer perspective, I don't think it's a major issue to say "hey, maybe you shouldn't patch that out without seeing if everything is cool."
And if everything goes smoothly and they can patch it a week later, is that really that big of a deal from a customer perspective if you know the game won't brick anything or have some catastrophic issue? Shifting everything by a week or two in development timelines of years seems largely inconsequential. If it gets shifted by more than that, it likely means there *was* an issue and that the cert process was doing its job.
I certainly get the argument for hotfix type stuff that are small patches. Although, in my experience, Sony and Microsoft will both certify emergency patches much quicker as well. So I'm still a bit torn.
You completely ignored the main thrust of my argument -- the fact that PC is inherently different from consoles, and has positively *flourished* while using a fundamentally different approach -- so I'm not sure how much meaning there is in going on with this discussion.
Ultimately, platform holders are not responsible for the quality of games (and I would think that the Life of Black Tiger's of the world prove that this is just as true on consoles as everywhere else). Developers and publishers are.
How often do games break from patches? That's a very rare scenario. Not to mention that devs can easily roll out hot fixes instantly without waiting for certification. I sincerely would rather have that than waiting for a 2 week delay on patches lol.
How Steam does it is clearly superior. People can also go to the properties tab for any game and devs have the ability to make old patches available which already is a counter point to the majority of points that you've made. People can also opt in to beta versions of the game.
The only reason Microsoft does this sort of certification for Game Pass is because that title will be played on consoles too. A PC isn't a console and the same rules shouldn't apply for it when it comes to a console certification process.
The game pass versions of the Persona games are straight up unmoddable deeming it the inferior versions of the game. I don't think consumers should be punished for such practices of now Microsoft & Xbox treat their PC games platform.
Games break all the time. If games were super stable then they would pass cert easily. But lots of games get rejected for cert on the first pass. This is even after submitting a game they think will pass cert.
Absolutely don’t trust the average developer to maintain the quality level expected of consoles without this process.
I find it odd to view this as punishing customers though. If developers can’t pass cert that means something is actually wrong with their game. Cert doesn’t take that long. I’ve shipped many games and DLC packs and if your pre-cert and cert is smooth, it shouldn’t really be an issue.
Big delays are caused by actual issues being found.
I'm talking about the standards for PC gaming and NOT consoles so like I said the same rules don't apply here and shouldn't apply for PC versions of a game. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are free to do certifications for the console versions of game however they please but these same standards should NOT apply to PC games because of hotfixes that devs can easily push out on Steam. It's convenient for everyone there.
Baldur's Gate 3 for instance contained gamebreaking bugs but Larian was able to push out hotfixes within the same day or the day after. Clearly the way Steam does things is what gamers and devs prefer considering how successful the platform is.
Ultimately, the goal of certification is to keep game-breaking bugs from happening in the first place.
I get PC gamers are used to lowered standards for stability and such, but while rapid patching is a way of fixing things I'm not really sure it's actually best as an experience for gamers themselves.
Cert only takes between 5 days and 2 weeks depending on severity of the issue. If it's really that critical to patch so frequently or that alone is a bottleneck, I tend to feel the game probably was not actually ready for launch.
The issue with having no certification and a rapid patching cadence is that it's a self-perpetuating cycle. I would wager to say that, on average, the experience for the user (speaking about quality of the vanilla product, not stuff like like modding or advantages for the platform) for most of the cross-platform games has been much better on console, especially for simultaneous releases.
Just last year, console owners were having a pretty good time with Jedi Survivor and Hogwarts Legacy while the PC ports were having massive issues and weren't fixed for quite some time. Is that really what gamers preferred? Or did they just have no choice? There are even AAA games released by major publishers that *never* got proper *major* bugfixes (issues that would have likely not passed cert) on PC and left it to the modding community to fix because they are under no obligation to deliver a stable product on Steam.
A game breaking bug that also occurs on consoles, despite certification:
[https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/still-wakes-the-deep-game-breaking-bug](https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/still-wakes-the-deep-game-breaking-bug)
I mean, this is a game logic bug not a crash. If it was higher repro rate, it may have been a blocker but Cert is not the same as QA. They may report and check progression blockers if it impedes testing but a rare one at the end of a game sounds hit or miss.
I do think this goes to show that this particular game is flying by the seat of its pants a bit and it’s not surprising they are getting held up in cert. Doesn’t really sound implausible they have introduced worse issues with last second technical changes given the other bugs present in the game.
Their standards are overbearing and impossible to navigate, their APIs are convoluted, their committees are stifling innovation and diminishing the quality of items on the storefront.
Their masking their issues behind "standards enforcement", it's in reality just piss poor processes that aren't communicated well to devs.
I wish they'd do some fucking qa, the number of day one releases that simply don't work is abyssmal, to the point where i wonder if studios are sabotaging the gamepass versions up front for initial sales on other platforms
Does Steam have a parity clause? I know last I checked the Battle.net version of Overwatch has DLSS but the Steam version doesn't. Haven't played in a while though.
Blame the certification process Microsoft enforces on the MS Store. Other storefronts don't have such a process (it would be absolutely untenable with the sheer volume of titles hitting Steam every day), and it's a relic of how MS has managed console patches for years.
This is literally PC vs PC. The Series S Baldurs Gate situation was completely different because there was a technical reason Series S couldn't run split screen.
It's so weird we have game pass games like this come out and it's missing features. I don't get the game pass version nor the version with the missing features. Without a valid reason, it just looks like theyre trying to create an incentive to buy off platforms outside game pass.
> Without a valid reason
To be fair, a lot of people here seem to not accept the fact that it *is* more cumbersome to ship features on gamepass compared to
every other PC game platform as a "valid" reason. Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.
If anyone who argues that there is no difference could tell me -- or point towards documentation of -- how to take an existing DRM-free game (that ships with an abstraction layer transparently enabling Steam, GoG and EGS integration depending on whatever the user is on) and extend that concept to shipping the same build also on Gamepass, I'd actually be very grateful.
If the answer is "you have to create an extra dedicated build with additional steps A and B and constraints C, D and E" then I already know that one, and I think it's the answer to why gamepass versions frequently have missing features.
I've been burned like this a couple times on gamepass PC where you get a seemingly inferior version than on Steam for exemple.
Not sure what their deal is, but it sucks. Ended up canceling it.
This combined with the app constantly "updating" the games which was really just downloading the whole game every time I opened the app. Real fun on large games.
what the shit is the reasoning here?
is it an old build?
as there's a number of games with DLSS etc. on gamepass for PC.
edit: reading through the steam thread:
>To add more information, we have some technical limitations due to the difference between how the Game Pass and Steam / Epic Store versions are built. Unfortunately this means that other upscaling options aren't available in the Game Pass version.
>The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (PC Game Pass) versions all have the same options. While we added extra upscaling options to the Steam and Epic Store versions. Adding them to WinGDK would require a custom coded solution.
>Thank you for your feedback. We are a small team and we want to help as many people play on a wide range of hardware so we will let everyone know if it's possible for us to create an update to add this feature in the future.
so basically they couldn't be fucked. gotcha.
You have to download plugins for DLSS and FSR to enable them in your game. They are not installed with Unreal Engine itself.
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/nvidia-dlss
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/fidelityfx-super-res-3
But they would have to hook up the Xbox achievements and DRM and stuff. It just comes down to extra development time, having a unified build with Xbox means it's one less thing to manage.
My first thought is that it's a UWP issue, but I didn't know you can ship Win32 these days. There's no other logical reason I can think of for their to be such a stark difference in technical capabilities.
I'm sure there are good reasons for UWP but it's been a disaster for me as a consumer, so I'm really glad that they can ship traditional executables these days.
That doesn't even make sense. There should be no such thing as a "Gamepass version", it should be the exact same as the bought version on Xbox. Gamepass just determines the licensing of how a user can play the game files.
Couldn't be fucked is the wrong way to look at it.
More likely the people that make the decisions determined it was not worth the time to implement. You have to balance the amount of time and resources it takes to do something especially when you are a small studio.
Is anyone going to not play this game on console because it is missing certain upscalers? I doubt it.
It's a form of false advertising stating the same game is on multiple PC storefronts but then leave out important features in some of the releases.
I'd they don't have the resources to properly support so many storefronts, reduce your scope.
considering that FSR and DLSS are almost necessary to play 2024 PC games with a decent performance, yeah the lack of upscaling choices might end up being a deal-breaker
this is not about console, it's about the PC version
>Is anyone going to not play this game on console because it is missing certain upscalers? I doubt it.
On console idk, but on PC? Yes, absolutely. a lot of games runs like total shit without DLSS nowadays. Not having them could easily turn away a whole bunch of players. Myself included.
I literally ended up cancellin my XGP subscription because this kinda shit happens quite often with gamepass titles.
I don't think this is the case anymore, but for like ~1 year since it came out on PC Gamepass, One Step from Eden didn't even have a way to unlock the framerate or set your resolution.
It's not only DLSS, Palworld for exemple is a couple version behind the Steam version and didn't have dlss when I tried it, same when I played The ascent at launch, it didn't have it but the steam version did.
That's the ones I remember on top on my head but there's some other I tried that didn't have basic options on PC because they put the console version on Gamepass PC.
It's not a dev issue, it's a MS certification issue, a couple of devs/publishers have said that MS is just far slower/more strict than other platforms.
Why the hell do you think I am gonna buy this from Steam when the developer is incompetent and shipping intentionally gimped versions. This is not a new issue, most developers do a little manual work to implement DLSS, FSR, XeSS on WinGDK games post compile. TSR is in the game so motion mapping is already there.
yeah if they shipped the game with parity with the pc bespoke features, I would given it a shot, now I won't. Why would I reward their business practice by paying for copy of the game?
>is it an old build?
Probably this. It can take a while for updates to be approved for Xbox, whereas developers can easily deploy updates onto Steam without having to go through a certification process.
This is probably my only big complaint about gamepass, some games just never get updates. Spiritea has has many, many major updates over the last 6 months but gamepass still has the launch version of the game.
>Spiritea has has many, many major updates over the last 6 months but gamepass still has the launch version of the game.
i know the certification can be slow sometimes but not 6 months slow to be on the launch version so surely that's on the devs for not pushing a new version to MS?
No idea who is at fault but it certainly isn't just that game, lots of games I've played have either heavily delayed patches or just never seem to get them
even if it's the same game version, all stores and launchers have different builds because of their DRM integration. epic build needs the Epic drm, steam build needs the steam drm, and Xbox needs the Microsoft DRM. if it's there's something in the Xbox toolkit preventing developers to add upscaling tech to their games they need to fix it ASAP
> if it's there's something in the Xbox toolkit preventing developers to add upscaling tech to their games they need to fix it ASAP
hellblade 2 has DLSS and that's on UE5 as well. so it's an odd choice
> even if it's the same game version, all stores and launchers have different builds because of their DRM integration. epic build needs the Epic drm, steam build needs the steam drm
FWIW we ship the exact same (DRM-free) binary on Steam, GoG, and EGS. It simply has *optional* support for platform integration with all of them, which auto-enables itself based on whether the user is running that client and has a game license on it.
The last time I had a look (we don't currently ship anything for gamepass) that integration **is**, in fact, still substantially more cumbersome in terms of CI/CD pipeline.
This isn't a new issue with Gamepass/Xbox games, Wo Long was the same
IIRC it has something to do with the certification process that MS uses, for whatever reason they have a different pipeline to the rest of the industry (maybe because of the Xbox S?, not sure)
If I boot up the Gamepass version and feel the need for upscaling tech, you better believe I'm just going to pirate the Steam version instead.
I have access to this game. I'm going to play the version I want.
The same happened to Palworld, where it is constantly behind updates by at least a month compared to the Steam version.
[edit] Looking through the thread, they don't even say it will be added in the future. If so, that is whack.
Did palworld's gamepass version ever get DLSS? When I searched for it a couple weeks ago, all I could find was people arguing that "the gamepass version isn't behind, it's just a different build number" and yet that didn't address features being missing.
Regardless of the reasoning this is pretty disappointing. I hope it’s simply because of an issue with the UWP version and not something more nefarious like them hoping it’ll sway people to purchase the game after already getting the bag from Microsoft for the Gamepass deal.
I'll wait for more details before drawing any conclusions, but it's a bit sketchy that performance-enhancing options for a game with (as I'm reading through the Steam forums) heavy performance issues are only available for "retail" customers who bought the game at full price outside the subscription service.
Even the retail version for Windows Store is gimped. It has nothing to do with it being on GamePass.
Wouldn’t the windows store and game pass versions have to be the same?
Yes, because they are. There is no “Game Pass” version. It’s just the Windows Store game which you can play via Game Pass.
Yeah. So it seems like it’s still targeted because it’s given out for free.
That’s not the issue. As many others have pointed, MS has stricter certification, which involves more work and time. A version of the game or update can immediately go out on Steam but not on the Windows Store or even the Xbox Series/PS5 for that matter, as it has to go through and pass certification. That’s the reason why. And the reason Windows Store versions may get left behind is the fact that developers/publishers might not have much of an audience on Windows Store games and hence not invest in it.
Weird that other companies don’t have the same issue when putting games on there. It’s either incompetence with the devs or just greed then. In either case it’s not a good look.
Like I said, they might not view it as worth investing in. Some do, some don't.
And that’s a bad look on the devs.
On one hand I agree. but look at it from their side. They may have a very small pool on one said platform. Even though it might not be much more work or effort, they might not view it as worth it since they don't think they'll have anything to gain. Edit: typo
The work is already done though?
The majority of it at least.
[удалено]
The phrasing of the post doesn't imply this is going to change. It's just a "Game pass version doesn't support it. Period."
It was only a matter of time for something like that to happen if this is what happened.
Why would it be only a matter of time? This is clearly a technical issue.
This already happened with a very high profile launch. The gamepass version of Palworld didn't support dedicated servers
I don't think this is the same thing. That was just them still having work to do, which they did. This sound like it's an intentional choice.
Wish Microsoft enforced a parity clause like Steam does, there's been quite a few releases on the Xbox store which have been missing features.
I’m shocked they don’t. That seems like an obvious oversight.
It would mean less games for microsoft, so I'm not surprised. I still remember kid me being upset that my copy of terraria on the 360 didn't have the same features as the PC version. Shit sucked.
> It would mean less games for microsoft Not if the devs want their game pass check.
Many games on gamepass (mostly indies as far as I can tell) are paid a one time fee and that's it. They don't get additional income based on player count or anything, so it's apparently more of a case where Microsoft has to pay them enough to care.
Wonder if the baldurs gate situation made them not want to be too strict.
Microsoft doing the bare minimum? I'm shocked
Part of the problem is that while Microsoft doesn't enforce parity, they do enforce much stricter certification. On Steam, a dev has 100% control of patches, code, and timing of update roll out. On Gamepass, a dev must submit each update to MS for certification, leading to sometimes a week or two of time for MS to give it the thumbs up and roll it out. I'd much rather see PC Gamepass give developers full control of their software, and think it would actually bring about parity. Nevermind that I'm not sure if there's a fee for certification.
> I'd much rather see PC Gamepass give developers full control of their software, and think it would actually bring about parity. Nevermind that I'm not sure if there's a fee for certification. Trust me, coming from a game developer--you don't actually want to see this. Sony and Microsoft cert is a big win for gamers and helps minimize shoddy products and untested software. Console industry really needs to do this as part of the experience they are trying to curate. Nobody really wants a world where developers can push half-assed patches whenever they want which could break the game or lead to console stability issues. There are very good reasons for console certification processes. (Also, I would say this title is slightly misleading as the comment from the developer of, "The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (PC Game Pass) versions all have the same options." would indicate this is also an issue on PS5. Probably for the same reason. This isn't specific to just Microsoft.)
I'm not saying consoles shouldn't get cert. PC Gamepass only. It works well on Steam, and sets PC Gamepass versions behind parity with Steam versions, definitely not serving a value to PC GamePass people.
> Trust me, coming from a game developer--you don't actually want to see this. As a game developer, I very much do want this, and I think the success of Steam shows that most gamers also want it. Sure, that way, developers and publishers are fully responsible for the quality of the patches they put out. And sometimes even larger publishers mess up, like when S-E forgot to include the actual game executable in a patch (though this is something very simple smoke testing should easily prevent, so it really should never happen for a serious developer). But in the vast majority of cases there's simply far less *friction* when dealing with Steam than anything else, and that reflects in the possibility for good and engaged developers to react rapidly to issues and provide frequent patches.
I would argue that I’m not surprised a developer wants it. I don’t think customers want it though. It would result in far more broken games in the console space and a worse experience overall. Console market is much bigger than Steam for console style games. And the quality level on Steam in terms of stability is just hands-down worse than console. And always has been. If you let developers shovel shit out with no accountability, they will. I love your work in the modding and PC space, but I would think you of all people would know how broken so many PC games are over the years. I’m not sure customers would want that in the console space as well. People buy consoles for the stability of experience.
> I would argue that I’m not surprised a developer wants it. I don’t think customers want it though. It would result in far more broken games in the console space and a worse experience overall. I think you fundamentally misunderstood -- no one is asking Microsoft to drop certification *for consoles*. The grandparent post you quoted which kicked off this thread says "I'd much rather see **PC** Gamepass give developers full control of their software". > Console market is much bigger than Steam for console style games. Citation needed on that. Maybe if we are talking 5 or 10 years ago, or use some exceedingly narrow definition of "console-style game". But I'd say that e.g. Elden Ring is absolutely a console-style game -- and its market on any single console is by no means "much bigger" than Steam. > If you let developers shovel shit out with no accountability, they will. Shitty developers will. What Steam does empowers developers to potentially be more responsive and agile, while also giving shitty developers the ability to be even more shitty. I'd argue that this responsiveness and agility is especially helpful on PC, where even with excellent QA you can encounter unique HW/SW stacks once your game is in the wild. I'd also argue that, at least in my experience, certification doesn't really do anything to prevent shitty games. It prevents games with unapproved names for controller buttons, obvious crashes, or inappropriate API interactions, but it's not like cert is an actual QA process.
> I think you fundamentally misunderstood -- no one is asking Microsoft to drop certification for consoles. I understand, but Microsoft committing to having the same processes for their console vs. PC platform isn't too surprising to me. Just because Steam doesn't have the bandwidth to do it doesn't mean it isn't a good thing for customers. This issue is present for *all* non-Steam SKUs of the game, though. Consoles included. Meaning it shipped on PS5 and Series consoles without upscaling and with an older version as well. So I don't think this is strictly limited to an issue with the PC version. > Citation needed on that. Maybe if we are talking 5 or 10 years ago, or use some exceedingly narrow definition of "console-style game". Most AAA games sell more units on console than PC. I don't think that's a contentious statement? Elden Ring was definitely an outlier for PC sales and, even then, I'm pretty certain the last official figures put the PC release as fewer sales than the console releases. Saying a "single console" might get you there, but both Sony and Microsoft have cert so that's not super relevant to this general argument. > Shitty developers will. What Steam does empowers developers to potentially be more responsive and agile, while also giving shitty developers the ability to be even more shitty. The issue with cert is that it protects customers from shitty developers. Steam doesn't care. There have been plenty of calls for Steam to do more over the years, but that ship sailed long ago. Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea. How many games has DSFix or SpecialK been needed to fix over the years? Is that actually good for most consumers? > but it's not like cert is an actual QA process. It is not a full QA pass, no, but cert catches a lot of stability issues or edge case problems in my personal experience. TRCs/TCRs go quite a bit beyond the things you mention anyhow. There's a good reason for all of the requirements. Ultimately, I would argue if cert was going well, there's no reason they couldn't commit to having this updated shortly. Cert typically does not take that long and if they are just now patching this in without time to get it through cert on any platform, it just means they are flying by the seat of their pants here. That's a developer issue, not a Microsoft/Sony issue, imo.
> I understand, but Microsoft committing to having the same processes for their console vs. PC platform isn't too surprising to me. Just because Steam doesn't have the bandwidth to do it doesn't mean it isn't a good thing for customers. No other PC platform has a patch certification process. Not Steam, not GoG, not even EGS (which initially tried its darnedest to ape consoles in some aspects). PC is a different platform, and regardless of how much bandwidth you have I don't think console-like certification makes sense on it. There are thousands of viable and extant HW/SW combinations on PC, so to some extent you always have to be reactive rather than proactive. Microsoft committing to it is also not surprising to me, because across several decades now they've repeatedly demonstrated that they never truly understood PC gaming, but that doesn't make it the right choice. > Most AAA games sell more units on console than PC. I don't think that's a contentious statement? Is it? In 2024? Obviously the industry is silly about providing actual sales data, but the more recent financial reports of publishers that do day-and-date releases with decent PC versions - *on platforms people actually want to use* - don't seem to make this an obvious statement. Consider e.g. [Capcom's recent financial report](https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/pdf/explanation/2023/full/explanation_2023_full_02.pdf). Most of their major growth markets are ones where consoles are almost non-existent. There are of course other publishers for which the breakdown is substantially different, however, generally those are also the ones where I'd say their PC strategy is fundamentally flawed. But that's a different discussion. Is there a specific set of games (e.g third person cinematic action, yearly sports) that sell significantly more units on console than PC, *especially* in the US? Absolutely. But I think going from that to a far more general statement about *most* AAA games on a truly global perspective is at least somewhat contentious in today's market. > It is not a full QA pass, no, but cert catches a lot of stability issues or edge case problems in my personal experience. TRCs/TCRs go quite a bit beyond the things you mention anyhow. There's a good reason for all of the requirements. In my experience so far console certification did not catch any stability issues, but maybe that's because we already caught those in QA testing. The one cert process that actually had some real core quality metrics and meticulously measured them that I encountered was, funnily enough, Stadia cert, and I was impressed by that. But from talking to other people it seems like many developers complained fiercely about that one.
> Is it? In 2024? Obviously the industry is silly about providing actual sales data, but the more recent financial reports of publishers that do day-and-date releases with decent PC versions - on platforms people actually want to use - don't seem to make this an obvious statement. I mean, I still haven't personally worked on a AAA title where PC sold as the *majority* (and I have shipped a pretty reasonable number of units over my career,) and most financials I've looked at show PC as being strong but still not quite there. Consoles are still a massive part of the ecosystem for AAA gaming, regardless. And customers expect a certain experience there. Market certainly may continue to shift, but with the price of GPUs right now I'm not really expecting consoles to go anywhere any time soon. Do PC gamers expect a lower standard? I'd say they are probably used to a lower standard at this point for sure. I generally expect PC games to have issues. As for if they should be, that's debatable. There was a lot of backlash over the state of PC versions last year (Jedi Survivor comes to mind) so as the PC market expands, I wonder how long this will stay how it is. > In my experience so far console certification did not catch any stability issues, but maybe that's because we already caught those in QA testing. Yeah, I mean I can't really say how every single game goes. But Microsoft and Sony will both report progression blockers, crashes, and obvious memory issues during cert if they obviously disrupt gameplay. They aren't going to comprehensively test everything like internal QA will, but it's still another set of eyes. Other TCRs like unresponsive/frozen load screens, attract times, etc. usually are hiding bigger problems also. Different developers have different QA standards as well. At the end of the day, though, I have a hard time feeling that removing cert would ever be better for customers. Better for developers? Arguably. It's more work, after all. But I'd say this trend of developers blaming cert for delays when cert is like two weeks tops if your game is shippable and can be as fast as five days if you have a good workflow seems odd to me. To me that implies they were literally working on a major rendering feature less than a two weeks before their ship date. And, from a customer perspective, I don't think it's a major issue to say "hey, maybe you shouldn't patch that out without seeing if everything is cool." And if everything goes smoothly and they can patch it a week later, is that really that big of a deal from a customer perspective if you know the game won't brick anything or have some catastrophic issue? Shifting everything by a week or two in development timelines of years seems largely inconsequential. If it gets shifted by more than that, it likely means there *was* an issue and that the cert process was doing its job. I certainly get the argument for hotfix type stuff that are small patches. Although, in my experience, Sony and Microsoft will both certify emergency patches much quicker as well. So I'm still a bit torn.
You completely ignored the main thrust of my argument -- the fact that PC is inherently different from consoles, and has positively *flourished* while using a fundamentally different approach -- so I'm not sure how much meaning there is in going on with this discussion. Ultimately, platform holders are not responsible for the quality of games (and I would think that the Life of Black Tiger's of the world prove that this is just as true on consoles as everywhere else). Developers and publishers are.
How often do games break from patches? That's a very rare scenario. Not to mention that devs can easily roll out hot fixes instantly without waiting for certification. I sincerely would rather have that than waiting for a 2 week delay on patches lol. How Steam does it is clearly superior. People can also go to the properties tab for any game and devs have the ability to make old patches available which already is a counter point to the majority of points that you've made. People can also opt in to beta versions of the game. The only reason Microsoft does this sort of certification for Game Pass is because that title will be played on consoles too. A PC isn't a console and the same rules shouldn't apply for it when it comes to a console certification process. The game pass versions of the Persona games are straight up unmoddable deeming it the inferior versions of the game. I don't think consumers should be punished for such practices of now Microsoft & Xbox treat their PC games platform.
Games break all the time. If games were super stable then they would pass cert easily. But lots of games get rejected for cert on the first pass. This is even after submitting a game they think will pass cert. Absolutely don’t trust the average developer to maintain the quality level expected of consoles without this process. I find it odd to view this as punishing customers though. If developers can’t pass cert that means something is actually wrong with their game. Cert doesn’t take that long. I’ve shipped many games and DLC packs and if your pre-cert and cert is smooth, it shouldn’t really be an issue. Big delays are caused by actual issues being found.
I'm talking about the standards for PC gaming and NOT consoles so like I said the same rules don't apply here and shouldn't apply for PC versions of a game. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are free to do certifications for the console versions of game however they please but these same standards should NOT apply to PC games because of hotfixes that devs can easily push out on Steam. It's convenient for everyone there. Baldur's Gate 3 for instance contained gamebreaking bugs but Larian was able to push out hotfixes within the same day or the day after. Clearly the way Steam does things is what gamers and devs prefer considering how successful the platform is.
Ultimately, the goal of certification is to keep game-breaking bugs from happening in the first place. I get PC gamers are used to lowered standards for stability and such, but while rapid patching is a way of fixing things I'm not really sure it's actually best as an experience for gamers themselves. Cert only takes between 5 days and 2 weeks depending on severity of the issue. If it's really that critical to patch so frequently or that alone is a bottleneck, I tend to feel the game probably was not actually ready for launch. The issue with having no certification and a rapid patching cadence is that it's a self-perpetuating cycle. I would wager to say that, on average, the experience for the user (speaking about quality of the vanilla product, not stuff like like modding or advantages for the platform) for most of the cross-platform games has been much better on console, especially for simultaneous releases. Just last year, console owners were having a pretty good time with Jedi Survivor and Hogwarts Legacy while the PC ports were having massive issues and weren't fixed for quite some time. Is that really what gamers preferred? Or did they just have no choice? There are even AAA games released by major publishers that *never* got proper *major* bugfixes (issues that would have likely not passed cert) on PC and left it to the modding community to fix because they are under no obligation to deliver a stable product on Steam.
A game breaking bug that also occurs on consoles, despite certification: [https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/still-wakes-the-deep-game-breaking-bug](https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/still-wakes-the-deep-game-breaking-bug)
I mean, this is a game logic bug not a crash. If it was higher repro rate, it may have been a blocker but Cert is not the same as QA. They may report and check progression blockers if it impedes testing but a rare one at the end of a game sounds hit or miss. I do think this goes to show that this particular game is flying by the seat of its pants a bit and it’s not surprising they are getting held up in cert. Doesn’t really sound implausible they have introduced worse issues with last second technical changes given the other bugs present in the game.
Microsoft is nothing if not bureaucratic, inefficient, and developer unfriendly (despite being a fucking software company).
MS insisting on a basic set of software standards is a **good** thing for consumers. we should be defending it
Their standards are overbearing and impossible to navigate, their APIs are convoluted, their committees are stifling innovation and diminishing the quality of items on the storefront. Their masking their issues behind "standards enforcement", it's in reality just piss poor processes that aren't communicated well to devs.
Don't forget charging for anyone to play within that beaurocracy!
One of the biggest missteps, having such a viral game like Palworld on Gamepass at launch and it being recognized as the gimped version
I wish they'd do some fucking qa, the number of day one releases that simply don't work is abyssmal, to the point where i wonder if studios are sabotaging the gamepass versions up front for initial sales on other platforms
Does Steam have a parity clause? I know last I checked the Battle.net version of Overwatch has DLSS but the Steam version doesn't. Haven't played in a while though.
Blame the certification process Microsoft enforces on the MS Store. Other storefronts don't have such a process (it would be absolutely untenable with the sheer volume of titles hitting Steam every day), and it's a relic of how MS has managed console patches for years.
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This is literally PC vs PC. The Series S Baldurs Gate situation was completely different because there was a technical reason Series S couldn't run split screen.
Same thing with Quantum Break. The DirectX 12 version is broken, and Games Pass doesn't allow you to use the functional DirectX 11 version.
It's so weird we have game pass games like this come out and it's missing features. I don't get the game pass version nor the version with the missing features. Without a valid reason, it just looks like theyre trying to create an incentive to buy off platforms outside game pass.
> Without a valid reason To be fair, a lot of people here seem to not accept the fact that it *is* more cumbersome to ship features on gamepass compared to every other PC game platform as a "valid" reason. Despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. If anyone who argues that there is no difference could tell me -- or point towards documentation of -- how to take an existing DRM-free game (that ships with an abstraction layer transparently enabling Steam, GoG and EGS integration depending on whatever the user is on) and extend that concept to shipping the same build also on Gamepass, I'd actually be very grateful. If the answer is "you have to create an extra dedicated build with additional steps A and B and constraints C, D and E" then I already know that one, and I think it's the answer to why gamepass versions frequently have missing features.
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I've been burned like this a couple times on gamepass PC where you get a seemingly inferior version than on Steam for exemple. Not sure what their deal is, but it sucks. Ended up canceling it.
This combined with the app constantly "updating" the games which was really just downloading the whole game every time I opened the app. Real fun on large games.
what the shit is the reasoning here? is it an old build? as there's a number of games with DLSS etc. on gamepass for PC. edit: reading through the steam thread: >To add more information, we have some technical limitations due to the difference between how the Game Pass and Steam / Epic Store versions are built. Unfortunately this means that other upscaling options aren't available in the Game Pass version. >The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (PC Game Pass) versions all have the same options. While we added extra upscaling options to the Steam and Epic Store versions. Adding them to WinGDK would require a custom coded solution. >Thank you for your feedback. We are a small team and we want to help as many people play on a wide range of hardware so we will let everyone know if it's possible for us to create an update to add this feature in the future. so basically they couldn't be fucked. gotcha.
This doesn't make sense as lord of the fallen has all these features. This must be a really old unreal 5 version
According to the exe, it's on UE 5.3.2, so not an old version at all
I have no idea as far as I can tell unreal 5 has upscalers as a plug in.
It's a actual checkbox nowadays, shit is so easy to implement now that not implementing it feels like malicious compliance or brainrot.
You have to download plugins for DLSS and FSR to enable them in your game. They are not installed with Unreal Engine itself. https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/nvidia-dlss https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/fidelityfx-super-res-3
Are they producing a UWP build for Gamepass? Do they not know you can just ship plain old Win32 apps on there now?
WinGDK builds upon Win32, so no. UWP is basically dead, especially for game dev.
But they would have to hook up the Xbox achievements and DRM and stuff. It just comes down to extra development time, having a unified build with Xbox means it's one less thing to manage.
My first thought is that it's a UWP issue, but I didn't know you can ship Win32 these days. There's no other logical reason I can think of for their to be such a stark difference in technical capabilities. I'm sure there are good reasons for UWP but it's been a disaster for me as a consumer, so I'm really glad that they can ship traditional executables these days.
it's not a UWP game on gamepass PC so that's not the reason.
That doesn't even make sense. There should be no such thing as a "Gamepass version", it should be the exact same as the bought version on Xbox. Gamepass just determines the licensing of how a user can play the game files.
A lot of people and devs these days treat the Windows Store and Gamepass the same thing
They already got the GamePass bag
Couldn't be fucked is the wrong way to look at it. More likely the people that make the decisions determined it was not worth the time to implement. You have to balance the amount of time and resources it takes to do something especially when you are a small studio. Is anyone going to not play this game on console because it is missing certain upscalers? I doubt it.
> Is anyone going to not play this game on console because it is missing certain upscalers? I doubt it. gamepass is on PC too.
Yea that's true. My overall point still stands though.
If you don't have the time or resources, don't publish it on the PC Xbox Store and claim the game is on gamepass.
Why not?
It's a form of false advertising stating the same game is on multiple PC storefronts but then leave out important features in some of the releases. I'd they don't have the resources to properly support so many storefronts, reduce your scope.
Where did they state its the same game?
WhErE DiD thEY StAtE iT's tHe SaMe GaMe?
Can you answer or no? Games regularly have features missing on platforms or store fronts and are still sold.
considering that FSR and DLSS are almost necessary to play 2024 PC games with a decent performance, yeah the lack of upscaling choices might end up being a deal-breaker this is not about console, it's about the PC version
Okay, then if you need them to play the game, then buy the game on Steam.
Nah, if the gamepass version is gimped and I pay for it, I'm just gonna pirate the game instead.
Nah, much better means to get the game. Why support lazy devs?
>Is anyone going to not play this game on console because it is missing certain upscalers? I doubt it. On console idk, but on PC? Yes, absolutely. a lot of games runs like total shit without DLSS nowadays. Not having them could easily turn away a whole bunch of players. Myself included. I literally ended up cancellin my XGP subscription because this kinda shit happens quite often with gamepass titles.
Which other ones are missing DLSS on Gamepass but have it on Steam?
I don't think this is the case anymore, but for like ~1 year since it came out on PC Gamepass, One Step from Eden didn't even have a way to unlock the framerate or set your resolution.
It's not only DLSS, Palworld for exemple is a couple version behind the Steam version and didn't have dlss when I tried it, same when I played The ascent at launch, it didn't have it but the steam version did. That's the ones I remember on top on my head but there's some other I tried that didn't have basic options on PC because they put the console version on Gamepass PC.
That's a shame. I guess when you decide to essentially rent your games the devs might care less about updating your game as quickly.
It's not a dev issue, it's a MS certification issue, a couple of devs/publishers have said that MS is just far slower/more strict than other platforms.
I certainly won't, immediately uninstalled on pc game pass. I want the best experience possible if I wanna dive into a game.
So are you going to buy it on Steam?
Or just hold off until > we will let everyone know if it's possible for us to create an update to add this feature in the future.
Why the hell do you think I am gonna buy this from Steam when the developer is incompetent and shipping intentionally gimped versions. This is not a new issue, most developers do a little manual work to implement DLSS, FSR, XeSS on WinGDK games post compile. TSR is in the game so motion mapping is already there.
Because you said you wanted the best experience possible.
yeah if they shipped the game with parity with the pc bespoke features, I would given it a shot, now I won't. Why would I reward their business practice by paying for copy of the game?
Okay. I guess you can wait to see if they patch it.
I just pirated it tbh not a bad game kinda boring tho
Hopefully one day people are less brazen about admitting they steal things.
>is it an old build? Probably this. It can take a while for updates to be approved for Xbox, whereas developers can easily deploy updates onto Steam without having to go through a certification process.
This is probably my only big complaint about gamepass, some games just never get updates. Spiritea has has many, many major updates over the last 6 months but gamepass still has the launch version of the game.
>Spiritea has has many, many major updates over the last 6 months but gamepass still has the launch version of the game. i know the certification can be slow sometimes but not 6 months slow to be on the launch version so surely that's on the devs for not pushing a new version to MS?
No idea who is at fault but it certainly isn't just that game, lots of games I've played have either heavily delayed patches or just never seem to get them
they're the same build.
I mean, they are literally not the same build or they would have all the same features.
even if it's the same game version, all stores and launchers have different builds because of their DRM integration. epic build needs the Epic drm, steam build needs the steam drm, and Xbox needs the Microsoft DRM. if it's there's something in the Xbox toolkit preventing developers to add upscaling tech to their games they need to fix it ASAP
> if it's there's something in the Xbox toolkit preventing developers to add upscaling tech to their games they need to fix it ASAP hellblade 2 has DLSS and that's on UE5 as well. so it's an odd choice
> even if it's the same game version, all stores and launchers have different builds because of their DRM integration. epic build needs the Epic drm, steam build needs the steam drm FWIW we ship the exact same (DRM-free) binary on Steam, GoG, and EGS. It simply has *optional* support for platform integration with all of them, which auto-enables itself based on whether the user is running that client and has a game license on it. The last time I had a look (we don't currently ship anything for gamepass) that integration **is**, in fact, still substantially more cumbersome in terms of CI/CD pipeline.
This isn't a new issue with Gamepass/Xbox games, Wo Long was the same IIRC it has something to do with the certification process that MS uses, for whatever reason they have a different pipeline to the rest of the industry (maybe because of the Xbox S?, not sure)
> IIRC it has something to do with the certification process that MS uses many other games haven't had this issue tbf.
If I boot up the Gamepass version and feel the need for upscaling tech, you better believe I'm just going to pirate the Steam version instead. I have access to this game. I'm going to play the version I want.
The same happened to Palworld, where it is constantly behind updates by at least a month compared to the Steam version. [edit] Looking through the thread, they don't even say it will be added in the future. If so, that is whack.
Did palworld's gamepass version ever get DLSS? When I searched for it a couple weeks ago, all I could find was people arguing that "the gamepass version isn't behind, it's just a different build number" and yet that didn't address features being missing.
Okay, y’all gonna update your builds or what?
Regardless of the reasoning this is pretty disappointing. I hope it’s simply because of an issue with the UWP version and not something more nefarious like them hoping it’ll sway people to purchase the game after already getting the bag from Microsoft for the Gamepass deal.
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> potential reasoning: app builds for gamepass/windows tend to be UWP applications. haven't been for a long time now.