What It Takes to Run Game Pass on Windows Server 2022

Prologue

I know you are puzzled, some FAQ first.

❓ Question

Why Game Pass?

TLDR: Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aegis -The Answer-, for free.1

Long Answer:

  • Why not? Everyone knows Atlus is greedy for asking for another purchase, either expensive DLC upgrade or even worse, a new version of game to improve nothing but a new (exclusive!) female character :)
  • While I’ve known that for a long time (hence holding hatred & bias for Atlus games in general2), many people are only offended recently by the notorious P3P port (read: inferior PPSSPP build w/o quick save/load & cheats) and Episode Aegis expansion.
  • The good thing is, every XGPU user can claim Episode Aegis for free (or at an entry price, YMMV) before 2025, and XGPU is even cheaper than buying a new deluxe edition P3R…

❓ Question

Why Windows Server 2022?

TLDR: Server 2025 is still preview, and Windows 11 24H23 largely sucks.

It’s a LTSC release, and while Server 2022 is based on older 21H2, with various tweaks, it runs almost perfectly on home PC (except Bluetooth…), without many (but not all) Windows garbage & telemetry.

I may switch to Server 2025 once it’s out of preview status. Nothing really exciting except Bluetooth support. Kerberos AES SHA256/SHA384, libarchive, various SMB changes are mostly for nerds/Sysadmins like me.

Ode to Windows 11

To expand a bit on Why Windows 11 Sucks, let me list my ideas based on Windows 11: Everything you need to know via XDA:

  • Copilot, region lock, regedit & ToS violation required to use in unsupported areas
  • Tabs in File Explorer and Notepad, this is indeed very good
  • Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA), dead already…
  • Central alignment for taskbar icon, maybe good, but many places are still in retro UI and thus inconsistent4
  • Touchscreen optimization, good, but Windows on ARM sucks generally
  • Snap Layouts and Snap Groups, just extended on Win11, this also exists on Win10
  • New Microsoft Store, probably a downgrade…I can’t even find official M$ apps, this is silly
  • Gaming: Game Bar (renamed), Game Pass & Direct Storage which made fun of overrated PS5 SSD by porting Ratchet & Clank onto PC🤣. Nice job, and P35 is mostly a good guy
  • Calculator, fairly good actually. But I always remove it by default since the only calculator I use is…Python interpreter! Surprise!
  • Task Manager, also good, you can search processes now BTW, no more sorting
  • Native support for RAR/TAR/ZSTD/… powered by Libarchive, life-saver, but Peazip is still useful sometimes
  • SuperTTC font support, you can only use TTC on Windows 10, but still better than plain TTF
  • Other downgrades
    • Title bar font customization is no longer possible
    • Running VBS is no longer possible out of box
    • Useless new Windows Backup app, which would NOT backup your data in Win32/UWP programs. And it’s even installed whilst NOT supported on Azure AD…
    • Many many others unlisted

So generally I like Windows 11,6 it just does NOT have enough improvements to be good. Things I care are just tabs in file explorer, direct storage, libarchive & SuperTTC. They are good, but not to the degree that I’d instantly make a upgrade, especially when I’m fed up by all other crashes/bugs/downgrades I can’t think up for the moment.

TLDR

I seem to talk too much on #Ode to Windows 11 so this section would be a tldr:

  1. Install Microsoft Store from any repo7 (not mandatory)
  2. Install the App Installer to easily install packages
    • direct download link: https://aka.ms/getwinget
    • Note this would install itself as system component, which means it’s impossible to uninstall after installation
    • Of course this is no longer a problem if you install Windows on a VHDX in the first place, since the complete system is just a hugo file you can backup/restore whenever you want. For details, check 借助 Ventoy vhdboot 实现更好的 Windows to Go.
  3. Get Xbox UWP from another repo, or rgadguard, see footnote#7
  4. Les déps, toujour les déps, encore les déps8
  5. As finding package names are boring, I’ll provide the ones used by UUPdump
    • Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay_8wekyb3d8bbwe (aka. Game Bar)
    • Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider_8wekyb3d8bbwe
    • Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay_8wekyb3d8bbwe (optional)
    • Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI_8wekyb3d8bbwe (probably Xbox Live in-game experience, not very sure)
    • Microsoft.StorePurchaseApp_8wekyb3d8bbwe
  6. With all deps in place, now you can sign in & install games. But as my winserver runs on VHDX, I take an extra step to set another partition as GamingRoot to avoid polluting system partition

From now on, I can enjoy game pass on Windows Server…until I reboot and discover that GamingRoot is no longer recognizable by Xbox UWP, and I have to install the gigantic P3R again, surprise!

Besides this absolute joke, there are also other issues I deal with, P3R specifically:

  1. DLC permission9 as I have more than one account and paying subscription more than once sounds silly
  2. Cloud save, cheat & sync does not work once my GamingRoot just boomed, so I take a different route, i.e. save edit
  3. Most glitches10 w/ the help of PCGW
  4. Apply fixes & mods via GameBanana
  5. The solemn absurdity of defunct GamingRoot :)

Postscript

While I don’t like the game, but Frostpunk has a famous quote that fits well here so let me end with it:

💬 Quote

The city survived, but was it worth it?

  1. Yeah, I call it free because game subscription service (Game Pass at least) to me is an entry ticket. You’re granted access and can enjoy as many games as you want/can while it lasts. You can, like me, play 53 PS+ games w/ 32 HKD in a month, or spare your ticket until it expires. Most importantly, you can still purchase games you like and keep it as long as the platform/yourself lives on (Stadia for one, and Steam WOULD die one day). It’s NOT their problem if you don’t want to buy the game simply because it would eventually show up in XGP/PS+/Ubisoft+/Amazon Prime/whatever. Similarly, you can’t really complain to the amusement park about a newer equipment they acquire right after you just came to it. Just go there again, the ticket is still cheap as long as you are not going to Sony or Disney. ↩︎

  2. The only two exception are Nora and the Time Studio: The Witch of the Misty Forest (ノーラと刻の工房 霧の森の魔女) on NDS and Tokyo Mirage ♯FE Encore (幻影異聞錄♯FE) on Switch. And even these suck in one way or the other: the former is basically unplayable w/o time freeze while the latter is censored compared with WiiU version. ↩︎

  3. As a Canary Insider (who are forced to switch channel cuz M$ likes bullying) for over two years, I believe I have enough knowledge and experience to say this… ↩︎

  4. By retro, I mean as early as Windows 2000, even older than classic XP… ↩︎

  5. Phil Spencer, in case you don’t know his hashtag/XboxID, i.e. @XboxP3 ↩︎

  6. I’m also one of the first to experience Windows 10 back in the old days, yet many promoted features either got abandoned or ported to Windows 7… ↩︎

  7. Just search Microsoft Store LTSC github, there are many repos doting this. Actually M$ store does not work on Windows Server 2022, so alternatively, you can generate download links dynamically with rgadguard, by searching Microsoft.WindowsStore_8wekyb3d8bbwe PackageFamilyName on the site. As the default channel is RP (Release Preview), you can change it to Retail if that’s too new for you. ↩︎

  8. Installing Xbox UWP per se is easy, but it would always complain about missing dependencies and you’d generate & install all those deps separately. ↩︎

  9. While it’s 100% legal and have ethical use case, I prefer to not discuss it publicly. ↩︎

  10. P3R menu runs at 30FPS even if I raise in-game frame limit to 120FPS. How dare you, Atlus? I’m not complaining about the notorious SSAO/SSR in Tartarus, let alone the $99.99 hefty price of Persona 3 Reload Digital Premium Edition WITHOUT Episode Aegis. I mean, my $100 27" FastIPS monitor is capable of 2K@180Hz, what’s your problem? ↩︎

Vinfall's Geekademy

Sine īrā et studiō

An ode to Windows 11, and satire on Windows 11.

Created 2024-09-15
Updated 2024-09-16
Contain 1299 words
GPG Key html asc

#dev #game #pkg #windows #xgp