October 2025 GDK v2510.0.6194

October 2025 Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) release notes

Introduction

Welcome to the October 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:
  • October 2025 GDK
• Documentation

What's new in the October 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.

October 2025 GDK

Notifications

GDK tools

The /updatesubval flag has been added to MakePkg for checking for a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll. If this flag is used and a newer version of the SubmissionValidator.dll is available, MakePkg downloads and places the .dll file in the path for MakePkg.

The Touch Adaptation Kit Command Line Tool (TAK CLI) (tak.exe) has been removed from the GDK setup. For instructions about how to download this tool, go to TAK CLI on GitHub.

Documentation

Offline documentation for the October 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 https://aka.ms/gdkonline.

October 2024 GDK Update 5 v2410.5.1966

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:
  • October 2024 GDK Update 5
  • October 2024 GDK Update 4
  • October 2024 GDK Update 3
  • October 2024 GDK Update 2
  • October 2024 GDK Update 1
  • October 2024 GDK
  • Known issues
• 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 5

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where a crash was caused by a rare race condition during Real-Time Activity (RTA) disconnect and/or unsubscribe.

October 2024 GDK Update 4

Notifications

Networking

The XCurl default receive buffer size has been increased from 8 KB to 16 KB and improves the download speed of large requests. This new buffer size now matches that of LibCurl.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue that affected Unity where XStoreQueryGameLicenseAsync failed and returned the E_INVALIDARG error when the Xbox console language was set to one that used a comma (,) for decimals.

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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title.

The following error was previously displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed.

October 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where MultiplayerManager resources weren't cleaned up when XblCleanupAsync was 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, PFInventoryRedemptionSuccess and PFInventoryRedemptionFailure responses now return marketplaceAlternateId instead of offerId.

Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new marketplaceAlternateId field.

Notifications

Multiplayer

• Improved internal diagnostics.
• Updated PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicket to 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 PubSub notification 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 PubSub to establish a connection with the SignalR service wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequent Multiplayer API calls to subscribe to PubSub.

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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request 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 MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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 Update 4 v2504.4.4108

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:
  • April 2025 GDK Update 4
  • April 2025 GDK Update 3
  • April 2025 GDK Update 2
  • April 2025 GDK Update 1
  • April 2025 GDK
• Known issues
• 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 Update 4

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where a crash was caused by a rare race condition during Real-Time Activity (RTA) disconnect and/or unsubscribe.

April 2025 GDK Update 3

Notifications

Networking

The XCurl default receive buffer size has been increased from 8 KB to 16 KB and improves the download speed of large requests. This new buffer size now matches that of LibCurl.

GDK tools

The build ID and content ID are both now available in the output data when running wdapp.exe /list /d and wdapp.exe /listdlc /d on a PC.

April 2025 GDK Update 2

Notifications

GDK tools

The /updatesubval flag has been added to MakePkg for checking for a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll. If this flag is used and a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll is available, MakePkg downloads and places the .dll file in the path for MakePkg.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue that affected Unity where XStoreQueryGameLicenseAsync failed and returned the E_INVALIDARG error when the Xbox console language was set to one that used a comma (,) for decimals.

April 2025 GDK Update 1

Notifications

GDK tools

Display IDs are now available by running the list-displays command in wdCapture to specify which display to capture.

Media

The XAppCaptureCancelUserRecord API has been added. It allows recordings that were started by XAppCaptureStartUserRecord to be stopped without the recording being saved.

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused heap dumps to be only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error was previously displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Fixed an issue in makepkg.exe that will, in the future, allow developers to upload packages with localized display names.

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that could cause high service loads because of Real-Time Activity resyncs.

April 2025 GDK

Known issues

Heap dumps aren't written completely

Resolved: This issue is resolved in the April 2025 GDK Update 1.

Heap dumps are only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Applies to the following:

• April 2025 GDK
• October 2024 GDK Update 1 and October 2024 GDK Update 2

Workaround

You can use one of the following workarounds:

• When calling MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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.

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 https://aka.ms/gdkonline.

October 2024 GDK Update 4 v2410.4.1946

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:
  • October 2024 GDK Update 4
  • October 2024 GDK Update 3
  • October 2024 GDK Update 2
  • October 2024 GDK Update 1
  • October 2024 GDK
  • Known issues
• 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 4

Notifications

Networking

The XCurl default receive buffer size has been increased from 8 KB to 16 KB and improves the download speed of large requests. This new buffer size now matches that of LibCurl.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue that affected Unity where XStoreQueryGameLicenseAsync failed and returned the E_INVALIDARG error when the Xbox console language was set to one that used a comma (,) for decimals.

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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title.

The following error was previously displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed.

October 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where MultiplayerManager resources weren't cleaned up when XblCleanupAsync was 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, PFInventoryRedemptionSuccess and PFInventoryRedemptionFailure responses now return marketplaceAlternateId instead of offerId.

Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new marketplaceAlternateId field.

Notifications

Multiplayer

• Improved internal diagnostics.
• Updated PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicket to 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 PubSub notification 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 PubSub to establish a connection with the SignalR service wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequent Multiplayer API calls to subscribe to PubSub.

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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request 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 MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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 Update 3 v2504.3.4084

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:
  • April 2025 GDK Update 3
  • April 2025 GDK Update 2
  • April 2025 GDK Update 1
  • April 2025 GDK
• Known issues
• 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 Update 3

Notifications

Networking

The XCurl default receive buffer size has been increased from 8 KB to 16 KB and improves the download speed of large requests. This new buffer size now matches that of LibCurl.

GDK tools

The build ID and content ID are both now available in the output data when running wdapp.exe /list /d and wdapp.exe /listdlc /d on a PC.

April 2025 GDK Update 2

Notifications

GDK tools

The /updatesubval flag has been added to MakePkg for checking for a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll. If this flag is used and a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll is available, MakePkg downloads and places the .dll file in the path for MakePkg.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue that affected Unity where XStoreQueryGameLicenseAsync failed and returned the E_INVALIDARG error when the Xbox console language was set to one that used a comma (,) for decimals.

April 2025 GDK Update 1

Notifications

GDK tools

Display IDs are now available by running the list-displays command in wdCapture to specify which display to capture.

Media

The XAppCaptureCancelUserRecord API has been added. It allows recordings that were started by XAppCaptureStartUserRecord to be stopped without the recording being saved.

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused heap dumps to be only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error was previously displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Fixed an issue in makepkg.exe that will, in the future, allow developers to upload packages with localized display names.

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that could cause high service loads because of Real-Time Activity resyncs.

April 2025 GDK

Known issues

Heap dumps aren't written completely

Resolved: This issue is resolved in the April 2025 GDK Update 1.

Heap dumps are only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Applies to the following:

• April 2025 GDK
• October 2024 GDK Update 1 and October 2024 GDK Update 2

Workaround

You can use one of the following workarounds:

• When calling MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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.

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 https://aka.ms/gdkonline.

April 2025 GDK Update 2 v2504.2.4061

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:
  • April 2025 GDK Update 2
  • April 2025 GDK Update 1
  • April 2025 GDK
• Known issues
• 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 Update 2

Notifications

GDK tools

The /updatesubval flag has been added to MakePkg for checking for a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll. If this flag is used and a newer version of SubmissionValidator.dll is available, MakePkg downloads and places the .dll file in the path for MakePkg.

Issue fixes

System

Fixed an issue that affected Unity where XStoreQueryGameLicenseAsync failed and returned the E_INVALIDARG error when the Xbox console language was set to one that used a comma (,) for decimals.

April 2025 GDK Update 1

Notifications

GDK tools

Display IDs are now available by running the list-displays command in wdCapture to specify which display to capture.

Media

The XAppCaptureCancelUserRecord API has been added. It allows recordings that were started by XAppCaptureStartUserRecord to be stopped without the recording being saved.

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused heap dumps to be only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error was previously displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Fixed an issue in makepkg.exe that will, in the future, allow developers to upload packages with localized display names.

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that could cause high service loads because of Real-Time Activity resyncs.

April 2025 GDK

Known issues

Heap dumps aren't written completely

Resolved: This issue is resolved in the April 2025 GDK Update 1.

Heap dumps are only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Applies to the following:

• April 2025 GDK
• October 2024 GDK Update 1 and October 2024 GDK Update 2

Workaround

You can use one of the following workarounds:

• When calling MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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.

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 https://aka.ms/gdkonline.

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:
  • October 2024 GDK Update 3
  • October 2024 GDK Update 2
  • October 2024 GDK Update 1
  • October 2024 GDK
  • Known issues
• 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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title.

The following error was previously displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed.

October 2024 GDK Update 2

Issue fixes

Xbox services

Fixed an issue where MultiplayerManager resources weren't cleaned up when XblCleanupAsync was 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, PFInventoryRedemptionSuccess and PFInventoryRedemptionFailure responses now return marketplaceAlternateId instead of offerId.

Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new marketplaceAlternateId field.

Notifications

Multiplayer

• Improved internal diagnostics.
• Updated PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicket to 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 PubSub notification 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 PubSub to establish a connection with the SignalR service wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequent Multiplayer API calls to subscribe to PubSub.

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 MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request 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 MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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:
  • April 2025 GDK
• 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.

April 2025 GDK Update 1 v2504.1.4046

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:
  • April 2025 GDK Update 1
  • April 2025 GDK
• Known issues
• 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 Update 1

Notifications

GDK tools

Display IDs are now available by running the list-displays command in wdCapture to specify which display to capture.

Media

The XAppCaptureCancelUserRecord API has been added. It allows recordings that were started by XAppCaptureStartUserRecord to be stopped without the recording being saved.

Issue fixes

GDK tools

Fixed an issue that caused heap dumps to be only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error was previously displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Fixed an issue in makepkg.exe that will, in the future, allow developers to upload packages with localized display names.

Xbox services

Fixed an issue that could cause high service loads because of Real-Time Activity resyncs.

April 2025 GDK

Known issues

Heap dumps aren't written completely

Resolved: This issue is resolved in the April 2025 GDK Update 1.

Heap dumps are only partially written when using Visual Studio or when calling MiniDumpWriteDump from within the title. The following error is displayed.

"Failed with error (0x8007012B): Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessMemory request was completed."

Applies to the following:

• April 2025 GDK
• October 2024 GDK Update 1 and October 2024 GDK Update 2

Workaround

You can use one of the following workarounds:

• When calling MiniDumpWriteDump directly, add the MiniDumpIgnoreInaccessibleMemory flag to the DumpType parameter.
• 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.

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:
  • October 2024 GDK Update 2
  • October 2024 GDK Update 1
  • October 2024 GDK
  • Known issues
• 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 MultiplayerManager resources weren't cleaned up when XblCleanupAsync was 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, PFInventoryRedemptionSuccess and PFInventoryRedemptionFailure responses now return marketplaceAlternateId instead of offerId.

Customers who use these APIs must update their code to use the new marketplaceAlternateId field.

Notifications

Multiplayer

• Improved internal diagnostics.
• Updated PFMultiplayerCreateServerBackfillTicket to 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 PubSub notification 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 PubSub to establish a connection with the SignalR service wouldn't trigger a failed state change and wouldn't allow subsequent Multiplayer API calls to subscribe to PubSub.

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.