That's before you get into the "openness" of PC - if you want to play a game on steam but your friend has bought it on the Microsoft store how do you play together? How do you voice chat? What do you do when the Xbox services don't work when docker is installed?
The new Alder Lake CPUs apparently breaks a bunch of games, since their DRM thinks that the new Intel efficiency-cores are a second PC trying to play on the same license.
Some games will only work if you upgrade to Windows 11, and all games should work if you find a BIOS option and enable it, but only some CPUs support that BIOS option.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/faulty-drm-breaks-doz...
And there's also all the other older horror stories of DRM, like the Denuvo DRM adding a huge performance hit on some games. Or not being able to play your offline single-player games at all, since the Denuvo DRM servers have temporarily offline due to a DNS issue.
(Disclaimer, despite all the issues, I do personally prefer PC gaming over console gaming, but I'm biased that I already have a powerful PC for CUDA/C++ programming and development, so I've already spent a bunch of money and time into PCs already).
Both services support adding non platform games through their shortcut/executable.
They also support voice chat for groups and players not in game.
> What do you do when the Xbox services don't work when docker is installed?
File a bug report? Or you just came up with some hypothetical issues?
The multiplayer services are independent and crossplay is an exception, that's what I think they were getting at. Being able to launch an executable from a different store doesn't matter if your copy uses Steamworks for multiplayer and the copy from the MS store doesn't support that.
> File a bug report? Or you just came up with some hypothetical issues?
It's not a hypothetical issue or a bug, it's a common problem for games that use anti-cheat software. Refusing to run when virtualization features are turned on or virtualization software is installed/present is a common tactic they use and if you file a report it'll usually get immediately closed as wontfix, because it's a tradeoff they decide to make. E.g. https://support.faceit.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019809319-Yo...
But that’s not the case from the games I’ve played unless you’re getting into hypotheticals.
I’ve played on Xbox live with my cousins on steam in F1 2020, age of empires, gta 4, halo.
The only friction is initial invites from the specific platform but once we’ve played in the same server, it’s very easy to send in-game invites.
As for the issues with virtualization, it’s an understandable issue with concerns around cheating in pc multiplayer games. COD4 was absolutely ruined because of it. Virtualization isn’t very widespread but I’m sure they’ll be more accommodative soon as WSL and Android ship by default on Windows.
That only launches the game through the correct store. If the game doesn't implement cross play, you can't play together.
> They also support voice chat for groups and players not in game.
But you're trying to be in game with the person, and again if the game doesn't do in-game voice chat, you have to find alternatives. On a console you join a party and the software correctly handles the cases around "do I want to put you in a voice chat channel for your game" (because it has to to pass certification).
> File a bug report? Or you just came up with some hypothetical issues?
Really helpfully closed after 30 days of inactivity. https://github.com/docker/for-win/issues/42. (I didn't make this bug, but I found it, and just logged onto my xbox instead).
I haven’t used in game voice for more than a decade now. discord, teamspeak, steam chat, Xbox live all work well and are used by quite a lot of people.
Can’t comment on that single issue, but it does look like there was barely any information provided to repro the issue.
