October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 6
  • October 2023 GDK Update 5
  • October 2023 GDK Update 4
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 6

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

Issue fixes

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

October 2023 GDK Update 5

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

October 2023 GDK Update 4

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header would cause the request to not send the final empty chunk and ultimately fail.

Video

Fixed an issue where Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs could crash due to a missing delay loaded dependency.

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

This issue is resolved, make sure you are using the latest GDK Unity Package.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 6
  • March 2024 GDK Update 5
  • March 2024 GDK Update 4
  • March 2024 GDK Update 3
  • March 2024 GDK Update 2
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 6

Notifications

Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party

The March 2024 GDK Update 5 changed the encoding of PlayFab Party headers from UTF-8 to UTF-16 LE BOM, which is unsupported by some build infrastructures. This update reverts PlayFab Party headers back to UTF-8 encoding.

March 2024 GDK Update 5

Notifications

Setup

The GDK installer now detects an already-installed .NET 8 runtime and no longer installs an older version of the .NET runtime.

PlayFab Party

The March 2024 GDK Update 5 includes the 1.10.1 release of PlayFab Party. This update includes all the changes from the 1.10.0 release that are described in the PlayFab Party Release Notes and the following issue fix.

• Fixed an issue where the PlayFab Party library could crash when establishing direct peer connections in networks with three or more devices.

March 2024 GDK Update 4

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

March 2024 GDK Update 3

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

March 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where the use of XLaunchNewGame combined with the XGameSaveFiles API set would result in a sharing violation error and the inability to access saved content after launching a new game.

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 5
  • March 2024 GDK Update 4
  • March 2024 GDK Update 3
  • March 2024 GDK Update 2
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 5

Notifications

Setup

The GDK installer now detects an already-installed .NET 8 runtime and no longer installs an older version of the .NET runtime.

Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party

The March 2024 GDK Update 5 includes the 1.10.1 release of PlayFab Party. This update includes all the changes from the 1.10.0 release that are described in the PlayFab Party Release Notes and the following issue fix.

• Fixed an issue where the PlayFab Party library could crash when establishing direct peer connections in networks with three or more devices.

March 2024 GDK Update 4

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

March 2024 GDK Update 3

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

March 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where the use of XLaunchNewGame combined with the XGameSaveFiles API set would result in a sharing violation error and the inability to access saved content after launching a new game.

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 6
  • October 2023 GDK Update 5
  • October 2023 GDK Update 4
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 6

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

Issue fixes

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

October 2023 GDK Update 5

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

October 2023 GDK Update 4

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header would cause the request to not send the final empty chunk and ultimately fail.

Video

Fixed an issue where Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs could crash due to a missing delay loaded dependency.

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

This issue is resolved, make sure you are using the latest GDK Unity Package.

June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • June 2024 GDK Update 2
  • June 2024 GDK Update 1
  • June 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

June 2024 GDK Update 2

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) reception regression that incorrectly allocated temporary queue buffers from system partition memory instead of the title partition when title-provided buffers were unavailable. This regression potentially reduced download performance under default XNetworkingConfigurationSetting values.

June 2024 GDK Update 1

Notifications

Input

The GameInput API now breaks in when a debugger is connected, and it detects a possible large number of reference leaks. This is triggered only in development scenarios and is a signal that your game might be leaking references and could deadlock input.

Issue fixes

PIX for Windows

Fixed an issue that caused PIX to crash after adjusting the font size when using a non-EN culture.

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

June 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Xbox services

The Xbox.Services.API.C extension library (XSAPI) now has an additional .dll dependency, libHttpClient. This .dll must be included in the game's shipped package and configured properly for XSAPI to function. When using the GDK with Visual Studio, the library is automatically loaded. For custom engines and other build systems, see guidance for XSAPI configuration in C/C++ Custom engine integration for PC: get started.

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Documentation

Offline documentation for the June 2024 release of the GDKX is installed on your development PC by the GDKX Setup program. After running Setup, the Help file for the GDKX (gdk.chm) is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft GDK\Documentation.

• The online GDKX documentation is at http://aka.ms/gdkonline.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 4
  • March 2024 GDK Update 3
  • March 2024 GDK Update 2
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 4

Notifications

System

The XGameSave RPC transfer buffer now has a maximum size of 500 KB instead of being based on blob size. This minimizes memory defragmentation.

March 2024 GDK Update 3

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

March 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where the use of XLaunchNewGame combined with the XGameSaveFiles API set would result in a sharing violation error and the inability to access saved content after launching a new game.

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • June 2024 GDK Update 1
  • June 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

June 2024 GDK Update 1

Notifications

Input

The GameInput API now breaks in when a debugger is connected, and it detects a possible large number of reference leaks. This is triggered only in development scenarios and is a signal that your game might be leaking references and could deadlock input.

Issue fixes

PIX for Windows

Fixed an issue that caused PIX to crash after adjusting the font size when using a non-EN culture.

Game Chat 2

Fixed an issue that caused a crash in Game Chat 2 that could occur after the user changed their console language setting.

June 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Xbox services

The Xbox.Services.API.C extension library (XSAPI) now has an additional .dll dependency, libHttpClient. This .dll must be included in the game's shipped package and configured properly for XSAPI to function. When using the GDK with Visual Studio, the library is automatically loaded. For custom engines and other build systems, see guidance for XSAPI configuration in C/C++ Custom engine integration for PC: get started.

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Documentation

Offline documentation for the June 2024 release of the GDKX is installed on your development PC by the GDKX Setup program. After running Setup, the Help file for the GDKX (gdk.chm) is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft GDK\Documentation.

• The online GDKX documentation is at http://aka.ms/gdkonline.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 2
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where the use of XLaunchNewGame combined with the XGameSaveFiles API set would result in a sharing violation error and the inability to access saved content after launching a new game.

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • June 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

June 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Xbox services

The Xbox.Services.API.C extension library (XSAPI) now has an additional .dll dependency, libHttpClient. This .dll must be included in the game's shipped package and configured properly for XSAPI to function. When using the GDK with Visual Studio, the library is automatically loaded. For custom engines and other build systems, see guidance for XSAPI configuration in C/C++ Custom engine integration for PC: get started.

Issue fixes

Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where Microsoft Azure PlayFab Party could stop responding during shutdown.

Documentation

Offline documentation for the June 2024 release of the GDKX is installed on your development PC by the GDKX Setup program. After running Setup, the Help file for the GDKX (gdk.chm) is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft GDK\Documentation.

• The online GDKX documentation is at http://aka.ms/gdkonline.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 2
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where the use of XLaunchNewGame combined with the XGameSaveFiles API set would result in a sharing violation error and the inability to access saved content after launching a new game.

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 5
  • October 2023 GDK Update 4
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 5

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed an issue in xCurl where crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made to curl_multi_cleanup and curl_multi_info_read for the same multi handle.

October 2023 GDK Update 4

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header would cause the request to not send the final empty chunk and ultimately fail.

Video

Fixed an issue where Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs could crash due to a missing delay loaded dependency.

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

This issue is resolved, make sure you are using the latest GDK Unity Package.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK Update 1
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that was introduced in the March 2024 GDK where Zlib symbols were unintentionally exposed by libHttpClient.lib. This exposure caused a multiple definition linker error for titles that used XSAPI and the Zlib library.

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header caused the request to skip sending the final empty chunk. The request would then fail.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

June 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the June 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • June 2023 GDK Update 3
  • June 2023 GDK Update 2
  • June 2023 GDK Update 1
  • June 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the June 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

June 2023 GDK Update 3

Issue fixes

GDK Tools

Fixed several issues related to the Game Config Editor when using the Store Association module.

June 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused the MicrosoftGame.config file in Visual Studio to be reformatted when the xml was edited directly. This was caused because the GUI version of the game config editor was saving the file and overwriting the formatting.

Fixed an issue that caused wdapp.exe to incorrectly report error code 0x800705b4 (This operation returned because the timeout period expired) when installing a .msixvc file on a PC that has the latest public release of the Gaming Services component installed.

June 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused the Microsoft Game Config editor to scale incorrectly when the PC was set to a non-English language.

Services

Fixed an issue where XblCleanupAsync would never complete when called without any ongoing requests.

June 2023 GDK

Breaking changes

If you're updating from a GDK version earlier than March 2023 GDK Update 3, check the release notes for previous releases for additional breaking changes that might affect you.

Services

Microsoft Azure PlayFab APIs that previously took XToken in the request structure now take XUserHandle.
The following requests are affected.

• PFInventoryRedeemMicrosoftStoreInventoryItemsRequest
• PFFriendsClientGetFriendsListRequest
• PFAccountManagementClientLinkXboxAccountRequest

A compile error now occurs when XToken is used in these APIs.

Notifications

Xbox services

Multiplayer Session Directory and SmartMatch features deprecation timeline

We're announcing a deprecation timeline for new titles that use the MPSD and SmartMatch features in the GDK. These features will be deprecated by March 2024 and will be replaced with Microsoft Azure PlayFab Lobby and PlayFab Matchmaking. Titles should use Multiplayer Activity (MPA) for XR compliance. Developers can continue to use their own in-house or third-party multiplayer services in combination with MPA. We'll begin warning on API usage in the October 2023 GDK.

New titles will lose access to these features in March 2024. There will be a process for applying for exceptions after March 2024. Existing titles will continue to have access to the GDK APIs past that date. However, new titles will be prevented from access in Partner Center to configure SmartMatch Hoppers or MPSD Session Templates unless these titles are given an exception. For more information, members of a managed program can see MPSD deprecation on the GDK forums.

Issue fixes

Services

Fixed an issue where Xbox Services API (XSAPI) real-time event callbacks weren't invoked on XTaskQueue that was provided to XSAPI during initialization.

Fixed a rare crash in Achievement manager that was caused by retrieving un-cached achievements during a Real-Time Activity service resync.

Documentation

You can view the documentation online at Game Development Kit (GDK) documentation.

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 4
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 4

Issue fixes

Networking

Fixed a regression in XCurl where specifying CURLOPT_INFILESIZE on a curl request with the Transfer-encoding: chunked header would cause the request to not send the final empty chunk and ultimately fail.

Video

Fixed an issue where Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs could crash due to a missing delay loaded dependency.

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

This issue is resolved, make sure you are using the latest GDK Unity Package.

2024.03.29 - Administrator Note:
No change with this release - fixing an error with the release notes that were stuck in draft and not fully published. Release notes will be restored by April 2024.

March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2024 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2024 GDK

Breaking changes

Input

As of the March 2024 GDK release, the GDK installer no longer installs the GameInput libraries.

If you're targeting PC, add the Microsoft.GameInput NuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package's GameInput redistributable MSI to ensure that you have the latest runtime. Although the runtime is included in Windows May 2020 Updates and later, running the MSI will ensure that you have the latest version.
Include this redistributable in game installers to ensure that GameInput is available on all supported versions of Windows.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue in the task queue to avoid a race condition that could cause a title to crash with a failfast error when the title is suspended. [49474469]

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 2
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • October 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

PlayFab

Fixed an issue that could result in a "dll not found" error message when attempting to reference PlayFab.Core or PlayFab.Services libraries.

Packaging

Fixed an issue where the MicrosoftGame.Config editor would delete certain fields if the user added them to the file using a text editor.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • October 2023 GDK Update 1
  • october 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

October 2023 GDK Update 1

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue where protocol activation wasn't properly handling relative paths to the target executable.

Streaming

Fixed several issues where the title could crash or the streaming client properties would report no data if a streaming client connected while the XGameStreamingInitialize API was executing.

Xbox services

Fixed a race condition in WinHttpWebsocket teardown on suspend that could cause the title to crash or stop responding.

Fixed an issue where using XSAPI or PlayFab with trace logging enabled at information or verbose levels could cause the title to crash.

October 2023 GDK

Notifications

Visual Studio support

The GDK currently supports building game projects with the Visual Studio 2017 compiler and linker toolset (version v141) either from the command line or from the Visual Studio 2019 or Visual Studio 2022 IDEs.

Support for building game projects with the v141 toolset will be removed in the October 2024 version of the GDK.

Issue fixes

Commerce

Fixed an issue with XStoreQueryAssociatedProductsAsync where the maxItemsToRetrievePerPage parameter wasn't returning the correct number of results when 26 or more products were requested.

Known issues

GDK tools

The Microsoft Game Config editor can't be used to edit the new <shareable> element that has been added to <PersistentLocalStorage> in the October 2023 GDK. You must edit the game config file manually to add the <shareable> element.

If the Microsoft Game Config editor is used to open a file that contains the <shareable> element, it will be inadvertently deleted when the file is saved.

Middleware

Systems using the GDK Unity Package that have only the public GDK installed will have missing DLL issues in Unity projects until the next plugin release.

For more information and a quick fix, see Plugin fails to load DLLs/Tools for public GDK installs Issue #93 microsoft/gdk-unity-package.

March 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the March 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit release. You can use the GDK to develop games that can be certified and approved for release on Windows 11 PCs and Windows 10 PCs.

About this document

We have organized this document into the following sections.

• What's new
• Release notes:
  • March 2023 GDK update 7
  • March 2023 GDK update 5
  • March 2023 GDK update 1
  • March 2023 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the March 2023 Microsoft Game Development Kit

• The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, three times a year) and Updates (focused on fixes, as often as needed).
• To view the full What's New section, see the online version of What's New.

March 2023 GDK update 7

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused wdapp.exe to incorrectly report error code 0x800705b4 (This operation returned because the timeout period expired.) when installing a .msixvc file on a PC that has the latest public release of the Gaming Services component installed. [45598405]

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that could cause the title to crash when calling PeoplehubService::DeserializeTitleHistory for certain locales. [45433556]

System

Fixed an issue with user mini dumps that caused memory dumps to either fail or be much larger than needed when writing a user mini dump with the MiniDumpWithFullMemory and MiniDumpFilterWriteCombinedMemory flags.

The issue caused user mini dumps to not filter out the memory blocks with protection set to PAGE_WRITECOMBINE.

The code has been updated to make sure that the filtering for PAGE_WRITECOMBINE (when MiniDumpFilterWriteCombinedMemory is used) is applied for the memory writing phase, in addition to the descriptor writing phase.

March 2023 GDK update 5

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where XblCleanupAsync would never complete when called without any ongoing requests. [45364143]

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused the Microsoft Game Config editor to scale incorrectly when the PC was set to a non-English language. [45264919]

March 2023 GDK update 1

Notifications

Lighting

As of the March 2023 recovery, the GDK Lighting API only supports the following devices on console. Support for additional devices will be added in future recovery releases.

• Razer Turret for Xbox One (keyboard and mouse)
• Razer BlackWidow Tournament Edition Chroma V2

Issue fixes

Packaging

Fixed an issue where makepkg pack would not create a package if the source files were read-only.

Xbox service

PlayFab Party titles that use peer-to-peer (P2P) for connectivity will now fall back to relayed connectivity if P2P connectivity is disrupted and unrecoverable.

March 2023 GDK

Breaking changes

If you're updating from a GDK version earlier than October 2022 GDK Update 2, check the release notes for previous releases for additional breaking changes that might affect you.

Notifications

Visual Studio

Side-by-side GDK uninstall issues

A bug in Visual Studio Installer version 17.4 can cause GDK components in Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2022 to work incorrectly after installing multiple GDK versions side-by-side on the same PC. The installer can also cause GDK uninstall failures.

This bug is fixed in Visual Studio Installer versions 17.4.6, 17.5.3 and 17.6.

Release notes

GDK Tools

Fixed a known issue where using the Visual Studio 2022 Debug Quick Resume option could result in a failure to launch the title error message.

Input

Improved support for Japanese keyboard layouts in GameInput.

Xbox services

Live Trace Analyzer (LTA)

Added checks to the LTA tool to detect if an Azure PlayFab title is using a known sample titleid. The tool now returns a red failure that indicates that a sample titleid is being used and must be configured to use a non-sample titleid prior to being shipped to retail.

PlayFab

Added the PlayFab SDK Unreal Marketplace Plugin and GitHub Source to the ongoing official GDK compatibility matrix. Both releases were tested and are compatible with the March 2023 GDK and later.

Documentation

You can view the documentation online at Game Development Kit (GDK) documentation.