Xbox Game Pass for PC Announced [XGP:PC]

PC modding has gotten a bit of a renaissance thanks to C#'s easy disassembly and hacking. Game developers rarely have the ability, the desire or the permission to truly open up their game for modding but with C# all they need to do is step aside.

That kind of invasive modding is a poor fit for the locked down app model though. Microsoft is now making a subset of the files for a subset of games modifiable and putting them in modifiablewindowsapps, but that's a poor solution. What they should do is simply create an override system. So lets say you have windowsapps/windowsappsmodified, modded games would be run from windowsappsmodified which initially is just a symlinked version of what's in windowsapps, but if a file is overwritten you just get an entirely new version in the modified directory. They get to keep their pristine version in windowsapps, we get something useful.

 

I think the main issue is that Game Pass is subscription, so I'm assuming the locked down executable is part of their protections to ensure they can deny access to games if the subscription is ended. That and to prevent the game files from simply being copied by the user and ran offline (no idea if they have any other piracy checks in the exe itself)

 

You get a discount on the gamepass games if you wish to keep them. Don't see the issue

I am currently playing Kingdom Come deliverance which is free on game pass , $30 on the store or $24 with my game pass discount. I would most likely buy it on steam because of the summer sale putting it at $15 however that's not an option year round. So out side of the steam sale i would buy it on the microsoft store because of that discount

 

Well, I'd have just waited for the steam sale so I could get a moddable version of the game.

 

Yeah if you buy the game, that doesn't necessarily mean you have access to the actual game files properly, does it?

 

Everything in windowsapps is a disaster for modding, modifiablewindowsapps not much better.

The shadowy DRM bullshit built on below the ACL filesystem restrictions is always going to be an accident waiting to happen.

 

I had to run linux to get around the stupid permissions - note to microsoft do not deny me access to my own hard drive....

 

I was messing around with permissions and thoroughly hosed windowsapps, needed to uninstall and reinstall most apps (some of which can only be removed with an administrator powershell and stuff like "Get-AppxPackage -allusers Microsoft.GamingServices | Remove-AppxPackage"). Of course uninstalling still left all the directories with fucked up permissions behind and files which were not deletable, so reinstalling did fuck all, so I had to delete those in Linux.

 

@MfA I've seen reports that WinStore/GamePass Battletech is unable to save at the moment, so don't play too far... or bother with it.

The developers are aware, and are anticipating a fix.

Spoiler

jfc

 

that's coming to the xbox pc app

 

As far as I know the modifiablewindowsapp directory isn't necessarily a free for all, so if the devs are stingy with permissions because they know best (they don't) it will likely still cripple modding quite often.

Assuming they even bother using it, it's optional after all.

PS. looking a bit more closely I'm wrong, devs could in theory put part of their game under modifiablewindowsapps and part under windowsapps, but as long as they put it in a single folder under modifiablewindowsapps it's a free for all. But this has existed for nearly a year now, why the fucking fuck didn't Harebrained Schemes install their game like that? Is Microsoft being stingy with permissions? Do decision making people at Harebrained Schemes secretly hate the community for doing an end run around their modding framework?

 

A gem from the Battletech forums :

I suspect that's because every MSIX desktop app is a full trust app, full trust being a restricted capability. I always kind of assumed that with MSIX Microsoft would find a way to properly sandbox win32, but it seems that apart from some directory protection the sandboxing is almost non existent. That's a shame.

If they manage to properly sandbox MSIX apps, they could just rubber stamp updates as long as they don't change the capabilities or have a restricted capability. Baby steps I guess, but I hope Microsoft gets their act together. I actually quite liked the concept of MSIX, but the implementation is lacking.

 

a newer update to windows 10 allows for programs to run in their own sandbox environment. I think its only a matter of time for programs to start using it

 

That's one thing that Valve has gone above and beyond with. Making games so easily modable that you don't need to know anything to mod your games via the Steam Workshop.

If not for that I would never bother modding games anymore, but it's so easy and pain free to mod via Steam Workshop that I'll use the occasional mod. I love not having to hunt down mod files on the internet and then hope that they work. And hope they aren't compromised by malware. And hope that the hosting service doesn't require a sign up. And...and...

Instead, just browse the workshop, find something interesting and poof there it is.

MS, and frankly every other store on the internet could learn a lot of things from Steam.

Regards,
SB

 

A workshop mod can easily contain malware, also any existing mod can easily get an update to carry malware so relying on age of the mod is no guarantee either.

This is the dilly of a pickle Microsoft is in. Valve feels comfortable accepting that PR risk, Microsoft does not. In principle sandboxing should be able to solve it, but their current sandboxing techniques aren't up to the task.

 

Wait... Valve has PR?

 

Only if the message can fit on an eHat!