Support for UWP games (and honestly better support for games outside Steam in general)

[CobraA1]

UWP games are a pain. And not just UWP games - there are many third party games that don't work well, especially games with launchers. I'd like to see more options for dealing with them, and I'd like to see some effort towards allowing Steam to recognize UWP games properly.

Here are my reasons why it should happen:

• Support for Steam overlays. For me personally, this isn't the biggest deal, but for others this might be important.
  
• Support for the Steam controller. The Steam controller is a great device, but right now there's no good way to do it. I've tried third party software even, and third party software hasn't been keeping up with changes to Steam and Windows 10. AFAIK, third party softy software is currently broken.
  
• Support for Steam link. This is the really big one for me personally. I've got a new TV, and I'm trying to play Forza Horizon 3 on it. But it stutters like crazy, while native Steam games run great. Not because of my PC! If I walk over to my PC, it's running fine. Opening up the performance overlay on my Steam Link makes it clear what is happening: It's using the desktop encoder instead of the game encoder. There doesn't seem to be a way to force it to switch encoders. So the game runs terribly.

At the very least, I'd like to see more options for dealing with third party games. Steam doesn't work well with them, often thinking you've closed the game when you haven't. There needs to be better ways of dealing with this. Ideally, I think that Steam should detect and support UWP games, and for other third party games have support for detecting that the actual game executable is running, and not just detecting the launcher.

[Pheace]

Why in the world would Steam support a Microsoft format. They're the competition. The last thing UWP needs is support, it needs to die off (for gaming at least)

[Satoru]

You do realize that UWP is the problem right? Microsoft expliclity created UWP and gimped it so much that things like overlays will never work on them. This isnt a steam problem. Its a microsoft problem. They have to enable things like vync and overlays because 'no one uses those' right?Do you honestly think MS is interested in makng UWP 'better'. They dont have to.

Why do I say that? One word

Xinput

Microsoft took direct input, decided "wow this is great, we should make a new standard that is 10000 time worse and is non-configurable and only had the number of buttons as the xbox controller and nothing else". The last and ONLY time xinput has ever been updated was to add 2 'new' paddles for supporting the xbox pro controller. Which is preciesly why valve created teh steam controller and steam input API system. Because Microsoft gave everyone the middle finger for any kind of controller customization.

[CobraA1]

Originally posted by Pheace:

Why in the world would Steam support a Microsoft format. They're the competition. The last thing UWP needs is support, it needs to die off (for gaming at least)

Some level of competition is always healthy, as it breeds innovation. The big issue with the Microsoft Store is that Microsoft could potentially turn off the ability for Windows to run non-store apps and games, which would be terrible. They tried this with Windows RT are trying it again in Windows 10 S. So in a way - yes a sucessful store would be bad for Steam - but not because of competition, but because of anti-competitive practices on Microsoft's part.

All of that said, the Steam Controller and the Steam Link are hardware that could be useful outside of Steam, but the way things are set up right now I have to resort to a third party controller and may need to get a 50 foot HDMI cable just to play some third party games acceptably on my TV, which basically defeats the purpose of the Steam Link.

. . . and I'm not just talking about UWP games either; Blizzard games and games bought in GoG can be problematic as well.

[CobraA1]

Originally posted by Satoru:

You do realize that UWP is the problem right? Microsoft expliclity created UWP and gimped it so much that things like overlays will never work on them. This isnt a steam problem. Its a microsoft problem. They have to enable things like vync and overlays because 'no one uses those' right?Do you honestly think MS is interested in makng UWP 'better'. They dont have to.

Why do I say that? One word

Xinput

Microsoft took direct input, decided "wow this is great, we should make a new standard that is 10000 time worse and is non-configurable and only had the number of buttons as the xbox controller and nothing else". The last and ONLY time xinput has ever been updated was to add 2 'new' paddles for supporting the xbox pro controller. Which is preciesly why valve created teh steam controller and steam input API system. Because Microsoft gave everyone the middle finger for any kind of controller customization.

Looking at the XInput API docs, XInput was terrible. So bad that Microsoft actually gimped themselves because the Xbox One controllers are more functional than the Xbox 360 controllers.

Going to the UWP API docs, it turns out that even Microsoft hated the limitations of XInput and has a new kid on the block for UWP: Windows.Gaming.Input[docs.microsoft.com]. Third party controllers can extend the IGameController[docs.microsoft.com] interface if they want to provide "rich" access to their controllers, and games can use RawGameController[docs.microsoft.com] to get raw controller input.

Here's what Microsoft has to say about XInput in their UWP API[docs.microsoft.com]:

When to use

If your game needs to support gampad input and you have existing XInput code, you can continue to make use of XInput. XInput has been replaced by Windows.Gaming.Input for UWP, and if you're writing new input code, you should use Windows.Gaming.Input instead of XInput.

. . . so yeah even Microsoft now officially wants everybody to stop using XInput.

But now if you're making a third party controller, you have to think about Windows.Gaming.Input if you want to support UWP apps.

[HLCinSC]

Have you tried using GloSC? It's how I play Titanfall 2, Forza, and Destiny with the steam controller and steam overlay.

[CobraA1]

Originally posted by CharlestONE:

Have you tried using GloSC? It's how I play Titanfall 2, Forza, and Destiny with the steam controller and steam overlay.

Yes. Unfortunately, it never really worked right when I was trying to get my Steam Controller working.

[Nomac55]

I agree... It kills me that o cant use my sc over my link wirh horizon 3. I mean u can but the studdering is unplayable... I just wanna sit on my couch and use my 4k tv for this soo bad. Dam uwp!