Microsoft needs to stop forcing console-like restrictions on Windows Store PC games

With the upcoming Quantum Break a Windows Store exclusive, users are up in arms.

Mark Walton – Feb 29, 2016 9:15 am | 293

With the news that Remedy Entertainment’s upcoming Xbox One and PC exclusive Quantum Break would only be available for Windows 10 via the Windows Store, and only run under DirectX 12, there’s been something of an uproar in the PC gaming community. Along with lamenting the cessation of support for the likes of Windows 7, of course—a sadly inevitable decision given Microsoft’s aggressive push of its latest OS—there are also some incredibly steep recommended system requirements, which call for a Core i5, Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD R9 390, and 16GB of system memory.

But the biggest problem stems from Microsoft’s distribution method of choice: the Windows Store. The Windows Store is Microsoft’s own platform for selling apps and games directly to consumers, which some may remember Valve’s Gabe Newell calling “a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space” when it debuted with Windows 8 back in 2012. Steam OS arrived just a year later. Games and apps sold through the Windows Store differ from those sold on the likes of Steam and GOG in that they’re built as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, rather than as a standard desktop app.

That’s fine for downloading the likes of Candy Crush, Minecraft: Pocket Edition, and Dropbox—even if the latter has some issues—but UWP apps have some limitations that dramatically affect top-tier PC games. Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider recently debuted on PC both on Steam and on the Windows Store. Those that forked over for the Windows Store version were disappointed to find a host of limitations, including not being able to turn v-sync off, no SLI or Crossfire support, and no .exe file that can be loaded into Steam for use with its overlays or Big Picture mode.

The latter also means that players aren’t able to override the game’s v-sync or SLI/Crossfire settings using the Nvidia Control Panel or Catalyst Control Centre. Other issues include locked game files (which limits modding), being forced to play in borderless full-screen mode, FPS overlays like Fraps refusing to work, and mouse software that creates custom binds for each game not working. The Steam version of the game, which costs the same, supports nearly all of those features.

@BigMouthGamer We know lists like this include features PC gamers want to see from us, we appreciate the feedback and have plans to improve

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) February 26, 2016

Nixxes—the porting studio responsible for the PC version of the game—confirmed on Steam that not being able to disable v-sync is a limitation of the UWP framework, not its port. Indeed, many of the issues are intrinsic to the design and ostensible purpose of UWP. Apps built for UWP can target a number of devices, including desktop PCs, mobiles, or even IoT gear. But many of those devices are designed to run heavily sandboxed apps—mobile especially—and this limitation has been extended to PC.

Microsoft’s UWP guidelines do state that developers are able to target a single platform like the PC, but the limitations remain. For its part, Microsoft has begun to respond to the concerns of PC gamers. Just this weekend, Microsoft’s head of Xbox Phil Spencer took to Twitter in response to a Howtogeek article about the Windows Store issues, saying: “We know lists like this include features PC gamers want to see from us, we appreciate the feedback and have plans to improve.”

More recently, Microsoft’s Mike Ybarra spoke up and directly addressed criticism over v-sync, saying that “SLI and Crossfire work, games just need to support it just as always. We will fix vsync.” Given that Microsoft has been bullish about supporting PC gaming in the past, it’s galling to see v-sync being forced on. And while those players do at least have the option to buy the Steam version of most games, including Rise of the Tomb Raider, the same won’t be true of Quantum Break.

“We weren’t fully committed as a company, and I’ve said that before. We made commitments to developers and consumers that I don’t feel we lived up to. The key difference now is that the Xbox team is driving the Windows and console gaming efforts as one connected ecosystem.” Spencer explained back in June 2015. “I can tell you definitively that our team has never committed more resources to making Windows better for game developers and gamers, and that means any gamer on Windows 10, regardless of storefront or device.”

Unfortunately for Spencer, not only has the PC as gaming platform seen little improvement from Microsoft—bar DirectX 12—but the company’s one-platform-fits-all approach simply isn’t going to fly on PC. The PC community has its own rules and expectations. Forcing console-like restrictions on a group that values freedom was never going to end well. And now, with those people backed into a corner with Quantum Break—one of this year’s most highly anticipated games—the backlash is only going to get bigger.

Correction: This story originally said that the recommended system requirements included a Nvidia GTX 980 Ti or AMD Fury X. Those were in fact the Ultra specs, which developer Remedy initially sent out erroneously as recommended.