Releases: microsoft/GDK
October 2024 GDK Update 3 v2410.3.1923
October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes
Introduction
Welcome to the October 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:
- Documentation
What's new in the October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit
- The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, two 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 2024 GDK Update 3
Issue fixes
GDK tools
Fixed an issue that caused heap dumps to be only partially written when using Visual Studio 2022 or when calling
MiniDumpWriteDumpfrom within the title.The following error was previously displayed.
Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a
ReadProcessMemoryorWriteProcessMemoryrequest was completed.
October 2024 GDK Update 2
Issue fixes
Xbox services
Fixed an issue where
MultiplayerManagerresources weren't cleaned up whenXblCleanupAsyncwas called during an ongoing multiplayer request.
October 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation Transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
October 2024 GDK
Breaking changes
System
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK release, the directory layout of the various extension libraries (for example, XSAPI, XCURL, GameChat, and PlayFab) has been modified to shorten the overall path length and simplify use in custom build systems. These changes are automatically handled by MSBuild rules for those customers who are using the Gaming.*.x64 GDK build platforms. No changes are required in these scenarios.
The changes between March 2024 and August 2024 are described by the following string substitutions.
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\ExtensionLibrary.props" is now "ExtensionLibrary.props"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Include" is now "Include"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Lib" is now "Lib\x64"
- "Redist\CommonConfiguration\neutral" is now "Redist\x64"
GDK tools
Support for using the Visual Studio 2017 IDE for game development was removed in the October 2022 GDK. Support for building games with the Visual Studio 2017 toolset (v141) remained in place for use with Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2022 to ease the transition to a newer toolset.
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK, support for building with the v141 toolset will be removed. Note that versions of the GDK prior to October 2024 will continue to support building with the v141 toolset.
Microsoft Azure PlayFab
In the PlayFab Economy inventory redemption APIs,
PFInventoryRedemptionSuccessandPFInventoryRedemptionFailureresponses now returnmarketplaceAlternateIdinstead ofofferId.Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new
marketplaceAlternateIdfield.
Notifications
Multiplayer
- Improved internal diagnostics.
- Updated
PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicketto automatically handle failures where a match member is already a member of too many tickets. In this situation, the SDK automatically cancels existing tickets for members of the backfill ticket and retries ticket creation.
Issue fixes
Multiplayer
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 20024 GDK where some events wouldn't be queued after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 2024 GDK that caused a crash after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue where the internal
PubSubnotification WebSocket was slow to detect and react to disconnects. This could lead to errors when creating or joining lobbies and matchmaking tickets.- Fixed an issue where failure of
PubSubto establish a connection with theSignalRservice wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequentMultiplayerAPI calls to subscribe toPubSub.
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
Known issues
Heap dumps aren't written completely
Resolved: This issue is resolved in the October 2024 GDK Update 3.
Heap dumps are only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling
MiniDumpWriteDumpfrom within the title. The following error is displayed.Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a
ReadProcessMemoryorWriteProcessMemoryrequest was completed.Applies to the following:
- April 2025 GDK
- October 2024 Update 1 GDK and Update 2
Workaround
You can use one of the following workarounds:
- When calling
MiniDumpWriteDumpdirectly, add theMiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemoryflag to theDumpTypeparameter.- Heap dumps can also be successfully taken by using the version of xbWatson in either Update 1 of the October 2024 GDK or the April 2025 GDK.
A fix to enable heap dumps to be completely written from Visual Studio will be made in future GDK updates.
GDK tools
In Visual Studio 2019, opening the GDK Help file by using the "?" button from the Xbox Gaming Explorer or any other Xbox tool windows in Visual Studio 2019 causes the GDK Help file to open to its overview page. This occurs rather than the topic page opening that's specific to the tool being used. This issue doesn't occur when using Visual Studio 2022.
Documentation
Offline documentation for the October 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.
April 2025 GDK v2504.0.4020
April 2025 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes
Introduction
Welcome to the April 2025 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:
- Documentation
What's new in the April 2025 Microsoft Game Development Kit
- The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, two 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.
April 2025 GDK
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Documentation
Offline documentation for the April 2025 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.
October 2024 GDK Update 2 Public Release
October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes
Introduction
Welcome to the October 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:
- Documentation
What's new in the October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit
- The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, two 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 2024 GDK Update 2
Issue fixes
Xbox services
Fixed an issue where
MultiplayerManagerresources weren't cleaned up whenXblCleanupAsyncwas called during an ongoing multiplayer request.
October 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation Transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
October 2024 GDK
Breaking changes
System
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK release, the directory layout of the various extension libraries (for example, XSAPI, XCURL, GameChat, and PlayFab) has been modified to shorten the overall path length and simplify use in custom build systems. These changes are automatically handled by MSBuild rules for those customers who are using the Gaming.*.x64 GDK build platforms. No changes are required in these scenarios.
The changes between March 2024 and August 2024 are described by the following string substitutions.
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\ExtensionLibrary.props" is now "ExtensionLibrary.props"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Include" is now "Include"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Lib" is now "Lib\x64"
- "Redist\CommonConfiguration\neutral" is now "Redist\x64"
GDK tools
Support for using the Visual Studio 2017 IDE for game development was removed in the October 2022 GDK. Support for building games with the Visual Studio 2017 toolset (v141) remained in place for use with Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2022 to ease the transition to a newer toolset.
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK, support for building with the v141 toolset will be removed. Note that versions of the GDK prior to October 2024 will continue to support building with the v141 toolset.
Microsoft Azure PlayFab
In the PlayFab Economy inventory redemption APIs,
PFInventoryRedemptionSuccessandPFInventoryRedemptionFailureresponses now returnmarketplaceAlternateIdinstead ofofferId.Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new
marketplaceAlternateIdfield.
Notifications
Multiplayer
- Improved internal diagnostics.
- Updated
PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicketto automatically handle failures where a match member is already a member of too many tickets. In this situation, the SDK automatically cancels existing tickets for members of the backfill ticket and retries ticket creation.
Issue fixes
Multiplayer
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 20024 GDK where some events wouldn't be queued after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 2024 GDK that caused a crash after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue where the internal
PubSubnotification WebSocket was slow to detect and react to disconnects. This could lead to errors when creating or joining lobbies and matchmaking tickets.- Fixed an issue where failure of
PubSubto establish a connection with theSignalRservice wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequentMultiplayerAPI calls to subscribe toPubSub.
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
Known issues
GDK tools
In Visual Studio 2019, opening the GDK Help file by using the "?" button from the Xbox Gaming Explorer or any other Xbox tool windows in Visual Studio 2019 causes the GDK Help file to open to its overview page. This occurs rather than the topic page opening that's specific to the tool being used. This issue doesn't occur when using Visual Studio 2022.
Documentation
Offline documentation for the October 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.
June 2024 GDK Update 5 Public Release
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:
- Documentation
What's new in the June 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit
- The GDK is released in two types: Major (focused on features, two 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 5
Issue fixes
Xbox services
Fixed an issue where
MultiplayerManagerresources weren't cleaned up whenXblCleanupAsyncwas called during an ongoing multiplayer request.
June 2024 GDK Update 4
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation Transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
June 2024 GDK Update 3
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 June 2024 Update 3 GDK 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.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused a small memory leak during the initialization of the H264/HEVC decoder Media Foundation transforms (MFTs).
Fixed an issue where pending decoder fence waits could cause memory corruption when the decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT) or Source Reader was being released. The memory corruption could result in the title crashing when attempting to playback video.
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
Fixed an issue where a thread object wasn't getting released correctly in the H264 decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT). This caused a memory leak.
GDK tools
Fixed an issue that prevented users with work accounts from signing in to the Store Association Wizard in the Microsoft Game Config Editor.
Fixed an issue that caused the Visual Studio 2019 integrated development environment (IDE) to stop responding. This occurred when an attempt was made to open the GDK documentation from the Xbox Gaming Explorer and other integrated GDK tooling windows.
June 2024 GDK Update 2
Notifications
System
The
XGameSaveRPC 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
XNetworkingConfigurationSettingvalues.
June 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Input
The
GameInputAPI 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.
October 2024 GDK Update 1 Public Release
October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes
Introduction
Welcome to the October 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:
- Documentation
What's new in the October 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.
October 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation Transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
October 2024 GDK
Breaking changes
System
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK release, the directory layout of the various extension libraries (for example, XSAPI, XCURL, GameChat, and PlayFab) has been modified to shorten the overall path length and simplify use in custom build systems. These changes are automatically handled by MSBuild rules for those customers who are using the Gaming.*.x64 GDK build platforms. No changes are required in these scenarios.
The changes between March 2024 and August 2024 are described by the following string substitutions.
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\ExtensionLibrary.props" is now "ExtensionLibrary.props"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Include" is now "Include"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Lib" is now "Lib\x64"
- "Redist\CommonConfiguration\neutral" is now "Redist\x64"
GDK tools
Support for using the Visual Studio 2017 IDE for game development was removed in the October 2022 GDK. Support for building games with the Visual Studio 2017 toolset (v141) remained in place for use with Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2022 to ease the transition to a newer toolset.
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK, support for building with the v141 toolset will be removed. Note that versions of the GDK prior to October 2024 will continue to support building with the v141 toolset.
Microsoft Azure PlayFab
In the PlayFab Economy inventory redemption APIs,
PFInventoryRedemptionSuccessandPFInventoryRedemptionFailureresponses now returnmarketplaceAlternateIdinstead ofofferId.
Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new
marketplaceAlternateIdfield.
Notifications
Multiplayer
- Improved internal diagnostics.
- Updated
PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicketto automatically handle failures where a match member is already a member of too many tickets. In this situation, the SDK automatically cancels existing tickets for members of the backfill ticket and retries ticket creation.
Issue fixes
Multiplayer
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 20024 GDK where some events wouldn't be queued after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 2024 GDK that caused a crash after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue where the internal
PubSubnotification WebSocket was slow to detect and react to disconnects. This could lead to errors when creating or joining lobbies and matchmaking tickets.- Fixed an issue where failure of
PubSubto establish a connection with theSignalRservice wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequentMultiplayerAPI calls to subscribe toPubSub.
Known issues
GDK tools
In Visual Studio 2019, opening the GDK Help file by using the "?" button from the Xbox Gaming Explorer or any other Xbox tool windows in Visual Studio 2019 causes the GDK Help file to open to its overview page. This occurs rather than the topic page opening that's specific to the tool being used. This issue doesn't occur when using Visual Studio 2022. [54221676]
Documentation
Offline documentation for the October 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.
June 2024 GDK Update 4 Public Release
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:
- 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 4
Notifications
Networking
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation Transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
June 2024 GDK Update 3
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 June 2024 Update 3 GDK 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.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused a small memory leak during the initialization of the H264/HEVC decoder Media Foundation transforms (MFTs).
Fixed an issue where pending decoder fence waits could cause memory corruption when the decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT) or Source Reader was being released. The memory corruption could result in the title crashing when attempting to playback video.
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
Fixed an issue where a thread object wasn't getting released correctly in the H264 decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT). This caused a memory leak.
GDK tools
Fixed an issue that prevented users with work accounts from signing in to the Store Association Wizard in the Microsoft Game Config Editor.
Fixed an issue that caused the Visual Studio 2019 integrated development environment (IDE) to stop responding. This occurred when an attempt was made to open the GDK documentation from the Xbox Gaming Explorer and other integrated GDK tooling windows.
June 2024 GDK Update 2
Notifications
System
The
XGameSaveRPC 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
XNetworkingConfigurationSettingvalues.
June 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Input
The
GameInputAPI 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 GDK Update 9 Public Release
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:
- 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 9
Notifications
Azure PlayFab Party
The version of Microsoft PlayFab Party that's included in the GDK has been updated to v1.10.5. You can view the release notes at PlayFab Party Release Notes - PlayFab | Microsoft Learn.
Issue fixes
Tools
Fixed an issue that caused the Visual Studio 2019 integrated development environment (IDE) to stop responding. This occurred when an attempt was made to open the GDK documentation from the Xbox Gaming Explorer and other integrated GDK tooling windows.
Media
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding upon source reader termination. This was caused by Media Foundation transform (MFT) samples being freed without waiting on pending fences.
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
March 2024 GDK Update 7
Issue fixes
Tools
Fixed an issue that prevented users with work accounts from signing in to the Store Association Wizard in the Microsoft Game Config Editor.
Media
Fixed an issue where a thread object wasn't getting released correctly in the H264 decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT). This caused a memory leak.
Fixed an issue where pending decoder fence waits could cause memory corruption when the decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT) or Source Reader was being released. The memory corruption could result in the title crashing when attempting to playback video.
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
XGameSaveRPC 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
XLaunchNewGamecombined with theXGameSaveFilesAPI 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
xCurlwhere crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made tocurl_multi_cleanupandcurl_multi_info_readfor the samemultihandle.
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_INFILESIZEon 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
GameInputlibraries.If you're targeting PC, add the
Microsoft.GameInputNuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package'sGameInputredistributable 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 thatGameInputis 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 2024 GDK Public Release
October 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes
Introduction
Welcome to the October 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:
- Documentation
What's new in the October 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.
October 2024 GDK
Breaking changes
System
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK release, the directory layout of the various extension libraries (for example, XSAPI, XCURL, GameChat, and PlayFab) has been modified to shorten the overall path length and simplify use in custom build systems. These changes are automatically handled by MSBuild rules for those customers who are using the Gaming.*.x64 GDK build platforms. No changes are required in these scenarios.
The changes between March 2024 and August 2024 are described by the following string substitutions.
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\ExtensionLibrary.props" is now "ExtensionLibrary.props"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Include" is now "Include"
- "DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\neutral\Lib" is now "Lib\x64"
- "Redist\CommonConfiguration\neutral" is now "Redist\x64"
GDK tools
Support for using the Visual Studio 2017 IDE for game development was removed in the October 2022 GDK. Support for building games with the Visual Studio 2017 toolset (v141) remained in place for use with Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio 2022 to ease the transition to a newer toolset.
Beginning with the October 2024 GDK, support for building with the v141 toolset will be removed. Note that versions of the GDK prior to October 2024 will continue to support building with the v141 toolset.
Microsoft Azure PlayFab
In the PlayFab Economy inventory redemption APIs,
PFInventoryRedemptionSuccessandPFInventoryRedemptionFailureresponses now returnmarketplaceAlternateIdinstead ofofferId.
Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new
marketplaceAlternateIdfield.
Notifications
Multiplayer
- Improved internal diagnostics.
- Updated
PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicketto automatically handle failures where a match member is already a member of too many tickets. In this situation, the SDK automatically cancels existing tickets for members of the backfill ticket and retries ticket creation.
Issue fixes
Multiplayer
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 20024 GDK where some events wouldn't be queued after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue for the Xbox October 2024 GDK that caused a crash after suspending and resuming a title.
- Fixed an issue where the internal
PubSubnotification WebSocket was slow to detect and react to disconnects. This could lead to errors when creating or joining lobbies and matchmaking tickets.- Fixed an issue where failure of
PubSubto establish a connection with theSignalRservice wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequentMultiplayerAPI calls to subscribe toPubSub.
Known issues
GDK tools
In Visual Studio 2019, opening the GDK Help file by using the "?" button from the Xbox Gaming Explorer or any other Xbox tool windows in Visual Studio 2019 causes the GDK Help file to open to its overview page. This occurs rather than the topic page opening that's specific to the tool being used. This issue doesn't occur when using Visual Studio 2022. [54221676]
Documentation
Offline documentation for the October 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.
June 2024 GDK Update 3 Public Release
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:
- 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 3
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 June 2024 Update 3 GDK 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.
Issue fixes
Media
Fixed an issue that caused a small memory leak during the initialization of the H264/HEVC decoder Media Foundation transforms (MFTs).
Fixed an issue where pending decoder fence waits could cause memory corruption when the decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT) or Source Reader was being released. The memory corruption could result in the title crashing when attempting to playback video.
Fixed an issue that caused the title to stop responding because of incorrect fence waits. This occurred during Source Reader shutdown with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video playback.
Fixed an issue where a thread object wasn't getting released correctly in the H264 decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT). This caused a memory leak.
GDK tools
Fixed an issue that prevented users with work accounts from signing in to the Store Association Wizard in the Microsoft Game Config Editor.
Fixed an issue that caused the Visual Studio 2019 integrated development environment (IDE) to stop responding. This occurred when an attempt was made to open the GDK documentation from the Xbox Gaming Explorer and other integrated GDK tooling windows.
June 2024 GDK Update 2
Notifications
System
The
XGameSaveRPC 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
XNetworkingConfigurationSettingvalues.
June 2024 GDK Update 1
Notifications
Input
The
GameInputAPI 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.
8A75 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 GDK Update 8 Public Release
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:
- 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 7
Issue fixes
Tools
Fixed an issue that prevented users with work accounts from signing in to the Store Association Wizard in the Microsoft Game Config Editor.
Media
Fixed an issue where a thread object wasn't getting released correctly in the H264 decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT). This caused a memory leak.
Fixed an issue where pending decoder fence waits could cause memory corruption when the decoder Media Foundation Transform (MFT) or Source Reader was being released. The memory corruption could result in the title crashing when attempting to playback video.
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
XGameSaveRPC 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
XLaunchNewGamecombined with theXGameSaveFilesAPI 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
xCurlwhere crashes could occur when concurrent calls were made tocurl_multi_cleanupandcurl_multi_info_readfor the samemultihandle.
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_INFILESIZEon 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
GameInputlibraries.If you're targeting PC, add the
Microsoft.GameInputNuGet package (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.GameInput/) to your solution. Run the NuGet package'sGameInputredistributable 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 thatGameInputis 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]