Windows 10 users already punch drunk from multiple, recent problems need to brace themselves once again. And now it’s the turn of gamers, and some of the world’s biggest games, to suffer.
Picked up by Windows Latest, users are reporting Windows 10’s popular Games Mode is broken across both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and for a number of the world’s most popular video games. These include Call of Duty: Warzone (50M players), League of Legends (80M players) and Destiny 2 (65M players).
09/05 Update: Reports of this problem are spreading with BleepingComputer expanding the list of graphics cards impacted. The updated list includes the AMD Radeon RX 580, RX 570, RX 480, R9 290, RX 5700 XT and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, 980, 950M with isolated incidents also occurring on other cards. Terraria (50M players) has also been added to the high profile games affected. Compounding the problem, BleepingComputer notes that while it is possible to switch off Windows 10 Game Mode, Microsoft’s own support website confirms that “some games automatically turn on Game Mode” which makes it impossible to escape. I am still awaiting comment from Microsoft on this issue.
08/05 Update: AMD is now looking into this problem after two of the company’s engineers repliedto an impacted user on Reddit. If you are impacted, you can find Game Mode by searching from the Start Menu or going to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode. In addition to this, BleepingComputer has discovered that Microsoft will release its big Windows 10 May 2020 update between May 26 -28. This will bring a myriad of fixes and, despite only squeaking into the May time frame, this does provide the company with time to fix its biggest ‘Known Issue’ in the update: the fact it breaks another gaming aspect of the platform Windows Mixed Reality (more on this below).
Among the graphics cards reported to be having problems are AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 XT, RX 480 and R9 290 as well as Nvidia’s GTX 980 and GTX 1080 Ti. Typically, with such a flaw, you’d expect to blame a bad driver but that would seem unlikely with both major graphics card makers impacted simultaneously.
For most, switching off Games Mode has helped to rectify their issues. That said, the whole point of Game Mode is to prioritise CPU and GPU resources to improve performance. So it’s far from an ideal solution, long term. At the time of publishing, the troubles have not been pinpointed to a particular Windows 10 update, but I have asked Microsoft about this and will update when I know more.
This news rounds off a bad recent run for gamers on Windows 10 with Microsoft admitting last week that its new May 2020 update was rolling out, despite the company knowing it will cause problems with Windows Mixed Reality. The virtual and augmented reality platform supports more than 2,500 games and AR/VR experiences.
The good news is big changes are coming to Windows 10 updates, but the here and now is littered with problems, including deleting user data, breaking Chrome security and losing user profiles.
For Microsoft, the time to act is now.