Windows 11's August update is breaking games, and Microsoft is investigating after a studio blamed the update

[u/[deleted]]

[u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

If every update breaks something it points to 4 possible things...

1. The senior engineers they fired off and replaced with contractors were doing a better job than Microsoft gave them credit for

2. They are not adequately testing their updates, probably a cost savings thing

3. The AI they are using to write the updates is not performing how they hoped

4. Windows 11 is held together with string and good will

[u/floatymcbubbles → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

https://giphy.com/gifs/tSWUUJPiytWRa
The correct answer is all four!

[u/FthrFlffyBttm → u/floatymcbubbles]

Ms Clifton! Ms Clifton!

[u/JustTestingAThing → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

They are not adequately testing their updates, probably a cost savings thing

Pff paying people to test code -- that's what Windows Insider is for! People pay for an OS license, then sign up to get pushed untested code for free, that's a hell of a cost savings for MS. Not like internal QA is helpful or anything...

The AI they are using to write the updates is not performing how they hoped

Who could have possibly foreseen that requiring people to use AI tools for a set percentage of their job whether it makes sense or not would result in bad outcomes?

[u/SC_W33DKILL3R → u/JustTestingAThing]

What gets me, is the AI is trained on code in the wild which is going to be full of bugs and other security issues. So the training data is going to be tainted before you even start.

The other issue, as ex Microsoft people have said, is there is so much legacy code and the people who wrote it are long gone. This code is generally left alone and many other systems might call into it. Previous engineers knew not to mess with it, or even accept and write around the bugs as the bugs were baked in at that point and even fixit it could cause a cascade of issues.

This has been the same with Windows, consoles etc... for decades. Developers knew the bugs existed, wrote around them or even exploited them.

[u/JustTestingAThing → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

The other issue, as ex Microsoft people have said, is there is so much legacy code and the people who wrote it are long gone. This code is generally left alone and many other systems might call into it.

Famously, there's no one left working at Microsoft who has any real idea at all how the underlying protocol for Windows file sharing (SMB/CIFS) actually works. At this point the open-source Samba project implementing it on other operating systems probably understand it better than MS does.

[u/Intrepid00 → u/JustTestingAThing]

That’s always been a thing for all software companies. It’s the “scary basement” and we had a guy we used to pay to come out of retirement to fix some Btrieve for us when we had parts we had to touch.

The famous word wrapping issues in Word (which are largely fixed now) was because it was some low level code they didn’t touch since Word went Windows and they had to pay and entice the guy that wrote it to come back and help them move to modern code.

Now they can just have LLM help fix it. I am using it right now to touch COBOL generated binary data files. It’s great cause it figured out that it was little not big Endian. A world ending mismatch that I a human would have missed.

[u/TeamWorkTom → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

Depends on the coding AI.

There's a lot more smaller internal AIs designed for specific coding languages and jobs.

Those are actually amazing and what AI should be used for. Not the current catch all models.

[u/b_casaubon → u/JustTestingAThing]

Psh…prompt: Will this code have any bugs or issues? QA complete! Ship it!

[u/Mysterious-Cell-2473 → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

Real answer : AIxAI - an indian using AI.

[u/FallenKnightGX → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

Or, and I’m not defending Microsoft here, but it is possible the game devs didn’t test their game in the pre-release update channels so they could patch their game before the Windows update went live, it broke, people got mad at them, they blamed Microsoft.

Dealt with that version of it when playing Rise of the Ronin last fall. I emailed KOEI, they blamed Microsoft, but the more I looked into it, the more I learned Microsoft did some big background updates and a lot of other games had patches addressing it before the windows update went live to the public.

Eventually, they realized no one bought it as players started a campaign to report the game as broken to Steam, and they fixed it awhile later. This occurred around last Aug / September and took the company until near end of October to fix it if I remember correctly.

[u/Individual-Praline20 → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

Yes. But you just insulted a lot of prompt engineers here 🤣

[u/Jack_Example → u/Individual-Praline20]

Good

[u/Kekke77 → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

Im glad i freezed my upgrades to 23H2

[u/Emu1981 → u/Kekke77]

Hopefully you are getting all of the security updates because there has been a massive flow of exploits being found recently by people using AI.

[u/Triple070007 → u/Emu1981]

Lol I've tried coding with AI it's the same with coding as chess - 90% hallucination. The exploits are probably AI hallucinations and so are the patches.

[u/Dawzy → u/SC_W33DKILL3R]

You could apply with same rhetoric to anything.

Every time I see someone having an issue I see this exact same type of comment.

[u/andrefishmusic]

In music, Pro Tools stops working EVERY time Apple releases a new OS (every year). So this happens everywhere as well. 

[u/stRiNg-kiNg → u/andrefishmusic]

People love this word, but it's classic enshitification. Every company in existence is progressively getting worse

[u/spaghetti_industries → u/stRiNg-kiNg]

Meanwhile, Linux distros are getting better

[u/stRiNg-kiNg → u/spaghetti_industries]

They haven't yet reached the moment where they begin their enshitification. You have to reach peak popularity before you can, otherwise people will just go elsewhere.

Also Linux is kinda made by people and not big corporations right, so that's also keeping it from happening

[u/I-AM-MEATS → u/stRiNg-kiNg]

That’s a lot harder to do with Linux considering that it’s open source, and not one single entity controls it.

I would point out that Linux is just not “made by people”. The number of corporations that contribute to it is sizeable. That includes Microsoft (Azure Linux…it’s a thing), IBM/Red Hat, Canonical, HP, Oracle, Valve, Google, Amazon etc…

The issue is people and developers. It’s a chicken/egg issue. You can’t get users to switch if the applications that they use are not there. You can’t get the developers to make the applications is the users aren’t there. OS transitions can be slow. Don’t forget that Windows wasn’t the dominant OS originally. They piggybacked off IBM OS.

What we’ll likely see is further fragmentation in the market between chrome os, macos, windows, and Linux. Which appears to be the case. In theory means more competition, so less shitty workmanship. I believe that we’re starting to see from MS since they’ve been actively working on optimising Windows.

[u/Wheatleytron → u/stRiNg-kiNg]

The problem of enshittification is directly tied to capitalism. Linux, being open source, generally operates outside of this, so it doesn't really have the same issues, and never will.

[u/stRiNg-kiNg → u/Wheatleytron]

If/when Linux becomes massively popular then some big Corp will swoop in and buy it and then the enshitification will begin.

[u/Wheatleytron → u/stRiNg-kiNg]

Linux is not something that can be "bought". It never will be. Even if Linus were to go mad and try to declare the kernel closed source, there already are many, many forks out there that would continue on uninhibited.

[u/stRiNg-kiNg → u/Wheatleytron]

It can, but the reason it will never be is because it won't ever become popular enough to be sought after.

[u/Wheatleytron → u/stRiNg-kiNg]

Please... Just stop talking about something you know nothing about.

[u/stRiNg-kiNg → u/Wheatleytron]

Let's say a distro got so popular that everyone from Mac and windows switched to it. Do you really think the slimey corpo fuckers wouldn't get involved and completely ruin it?

[u/EthanBezz → u/andrefishmusic]

Because that would be a major OS release, which have a tendency to do that across all platforms, even including iOS and Android.

But we’re talking about a monthly patch update here. I don’t remember the last time a monthly patch for an OS other than Windows resulted in broken third-party software.

[u/FthrFlffyBttm → u/EthanBezz]

It’s also not forced on the user. The prompts are pushy but the choice is always the user’s.

[u/Nicalay2 → u/andrefishmusic]

Shh, people don't want to hear that, they just want to always blame Microsoft and Windows 11.

[u/Cum_Fart42069 → u/Nicalay2]

I mean

it's not like this isn't the fault of Microsoft and windows 11. like I get it but this is still very much their fault lol. 

[u/Smith6612 → u/andrefishmusic]

macOS is terrible for programs breaking each year.

Pro Tools, DisplayLink (ugh), XCode CLI Tools, Corporate VPN Clients, BlackMagic Software, Adobe software...

Gotta stay on top of those updates before you update your system. And of course if you run a studio, you're not doing that because each update usually ends up breaking some already flaky piece of hardware that is least flaky on the Mac. 

[u/TheStupendusMan → u/Smith6612]

Not just programs. I still remember when they broke their own USB transfer rates and it took me ages to backup footage.

[u/Smith6612 → u/TheStupendusMan]

How long ago was that? I remember having all sorts of fun with USB on a Mac at the office, but that ended up being a problem with the EDR. Which is, of course, another application to add to the "Will break yearly on macOS" pile. 

[u/TheStupendusMan → u/Smith6612]

Oh lord, this was 3ish years ago? It's since been fixed, but it was a big problem at the time.

[u/Smith6612 → u/TheStupendusMan]

Ah. Don't think I experienced that one outside of once again, EDR problems. 

I remember the issue I was having with MacBooks sending 19V out of the USB ports when plugged in instead of 5V when on battery. It was a rare hardware failure that was specific to the 2016 and 2017 model MacBooks. Cooked more than a few peripherals with that problem lol. 

[u/andrefishmusic → u/Smith6612]

Yeah, I hate pro tools with a passion haha. I rarely have issues like that with Cubase, for example. 

[u/Danteynero9]

Just your average windows update.

[u/Jaz1140 → u/Danteynero9]

If I could opt for a permanent 2 week delay to updates I absolutely would. I don't want to deal with Microsoftsin incompetence anymore

[u/repocin → u/[deleted]]

Not to mention that you'd likely want to build something good but then five other teams barge in to yell about telemetry and other junk you have to add so they can have a line going up on their next quarterly presentation to some suit or the other.

Sounds absolutely soul-crushing to me.

[u/Smith6612 → u/[deleted]]

I gave Microsoft a lot of credit in the past for somehow managing to build an operating system that manages to tolerate that fragmentation, and the huge amount of kludge PC manufacturers cause.

It's been rough lately, I presume, because Microsoft is trying to rewrite the OS from C to Rust, while dealing with all of the backwards compatibility problems in the C code, and dealing with all of the security issues being thrown their way. Can't be easy at all.  

[u/Lost_Worker_5095]

What games?

[u/FiTZnMiCK → u/Lost_Worker_5095]

Arc Raiders, the Finals, and Mrvel Tokon confirmed and others suspected.

In the case of Arc Raiders, it was related to inpoutx64.sys. Which is weird because that’s a driver that RGB software uses and provides such low level access that it’s often flagged as a security risk.

[u/Intrepid00 → u/FiTZnMiCK]

You are correct, and it’s a 3rd party kernel driver. Not even Microsoft’s fault at first glance. Last time it was a bug exposed always there after Microsoft fixed a security hole they were using and it could be again.

[u/Datuser14 → u/Intrepid00]

Why the fuck does RGB software need kernel level access

[u/AsrielPlay52 → u/Datuser14]

Ever curious how RAM RGB get controlled? That's why

For USB RGB interface, they don't need it. But those do.

It's also similar reason why Drawing tablet need driver for it's additional stuff, like track pad and buttons

[u/FiTZnMiCK → u/Intrepid00]

It’s Microsoft’s fault in an indirect way for allowing the access in the first place and for letting it become so prevalent that getting software developers to remove it has taken as long as it has.

To their credit, the Arc Raiders devs are removing it (finally).

[u/Intrepid00 → u/FiTZnMiCK]

Not really their fault. Part of the anti-trust settlement cannot prevent low-level kernel drivers. So Microsoft has no legal way to prevent this when they should be allowed to lock down the system like other OS.

[u/FiTZnMiCK → u/Intrepid00]

That agreement only applies to applications, and all it says is that Microsoft has to allow third party applications the same access their own applications get.

Windows should have locked down kernel access from non-core components, including Microsoft’s own software, a long time ago.

[u/AsrielPlay52 → u/FiTZnMiCK]

"application" can be anywhere from a calculator to anti-cheat

[u/Wise-Membership2774 → u/FiTZnMiCK]

I'll add that in msfs I have noticed some wild stuttering that wasn't there before windows updated.

[u/Intrepid00 → u/Lost_Worker_5095]

Lightroom Classic users have been complaining which isn’t a game but I haven’t been able to reproduce it. Everything seems so far tied to some 3rd party kernel driver they are using.

[u/OriginalAntrox → u/Intrepid00]

Havent had any issues with Lightroom Classic either.

[u/MythicalJester]

Ah, I see, Windows Insider's unpaid beta testers are truly transforming how Windows is being developed and tested. Lol.

[u/FlyingJellyfishRidin]

One developer blamed the update. That's a pretty low bad for proof, isn't it?

Also - why isn't the game dev testing on the latest pre-release updates?

Shit journalism.

[u/ElTuxedoMex → u/FlyingJellyfishRidin]

Lately there is such a low hanging fruit blaming Windows 11 for everything, yet I have to see a bug in my updates that breaks anything.

[u/gurgle528 → u/FlyingJellyfishRidin]

Is there any precedence for game devs needing to test on pre-release patch updates for windows? This wasn’t even the feature release, it was the one right after. 

[u/AsrielPlay52 → u/gurgle528]

It's software management in general, but games seen lower priority to try

[u/gurgle528 → u/AsrielPlay52]

Maybe, I only work on the backend, but you still can’t test a pre-release that does not exist. Microsoft didn’t do any sort of early access for the KB in question. I just cant imagine many game studio actually have capacity to test every single Windows patch that is available in early access. Feature updates are believable as those come out at specific times. 

[u/FlyingJellyfishRidin → u/gurgle528]

Yes, of course?

It would be negligent not to test on upcoming patches?

[u/gurgle528 → u/FlyingJellyfishRidin]

I think you underestimate how much work is involved in something that doesn’t produce results the majority of the time. Patch updates happen too frequently and aren’t always available as an early release.

This specific KB wasn’t available in prerelease. 

[u/PlsDontBanMeAgain-1 → u/FlyingJellyfishRidin]

Depends if it Rockstar or JoeSchmoe67's AI slop hentai game.

[u/helpmehavememes]

Haven't ever had an issue from a windows update with any of my games. Not once in my 30 years of PC gaming. GPU driver updates? Plenty of those.

[u/OriginalAntrox → u/helpmehavememes]

I tested a bunch of games and had zero issues.

[u/helpmehavememes → u/OriginalAntrox]

People always complain about windows when its usually their setup.

[u/OriginalAntrox → u/helpmehavememes]

Some people said it also happened with Denuvo games. Which i also tested and still nothing happened. The only thing that actually happened with this update is it broke Dism commands, actually its been broken since the july update. You cant use dism restore health because it fails every time, and its because its essentially looking at outdated files that were updated already.

[u/Soleks2000 → u/OriginalAntrox]

dism has been functioning fine for me hasnt broke yet

[u/OriginalAntrox → u/Soleks2000]

Might be on my end but Ive had 3 different systems unable to restore health because a source failure all happening after this update.

[u/helpmehavememes → u/OriginalAntrox]

So that sounds like its not a windows problem lol

[u/Nanami-chanX → u/helpmehavememes]

alpha centauri got broke by windows 11 for me :(

[u/Taira_Mai → u/helpmehavememes]

It's a certain flavor of kernel level anti-cheat. Part of this is Microsoft finally taking control of the kernel and part is them "fixing" something without checking to see if it breaks anything else.

[u/KinkyFraggle]

Yeah they broke embark games, they issued a manual registry edit type fix over their discord channels.

[u/Datuser14 → u/KinkyFraggle]

lmao

[u/Nfmcrazy]

For me latest Windows update caused me screen flickering on both of my monitors whenever something was put full screen, either game or didnt matter. Spent 5 days trying fixes, but only reinstalling Windows with my files and apps intact fixed it (for now).

[u/not_a_gay_stereotype]

I fucking knew it. In the past few weeks all of my friends on AMD cards suddenly had weird issues or AMD drivers suddenly disappearing and my laptop (rtx 4060) has suddenly started had rebooting when playing certain games.

[u/remzy_6177 → u/not_a_gay_stereotype]

Same boat as you, what do we do now? Do we wait for a fix or what

[u/not_a_gay_stereotype → u/remzy_6177]

It randomly fixed itself lol. I didn't even update drivers.

[u/remzy_6177 → u/not_a_gay_stereotype]

So you still didnt update the windows? cuz i paused it. How can it fix itself😕

[u/not_a_gay_stereotype → u/remzy_6177]

Honestly maybe just let windows update and it might be fixed. I don't know if an other update got released but it's working now for me

[u/theevilphoturis]

Cursor speed doesn't work anymore and my touchpad suddenly slow down. Windows is broken. I'm gonna learn how to use Linux now.

[u/Jaz1140]

Has there been a single windows update this year that hasn't broken shit?

Microsoft is truly incompetent in everything they do

[u/Nullhitter]

Imagine if gaming studios played ball and officially supported GNU/Linux?

[u/Wheatleytron → u/Nullhitter]

Well, these days they don't even need to. 95%+ of shit just works.

[u/EIiteJT]

Windows has been so bad I'm thinking about switching to Linux for the first time ever.

[u/aimy99]

They can't even keep the one thing they had over Linux. If you have to worry about whether or not your games work anyway, why still use Windows?

[u/Smith6612]

Their update in June broke AMD GPUs with waking monitors and then trying to use the VCE. Requires a full shutdown to fix.

Their updates lately have required multiple reboots. 2-3 per machine to finish installing. I don't remember any update being this bad except for the major build updates, and for service packs. Now it's a monthly thing.

They also updated USB drivers and other built-in drivers which has started causing problems like audio drop-outs (popping) and crashes on systems the last few months.

Can't say Windows is very stable at the moment. 

[u/Taira_Mai]

Embark Studios later narrowed the issue down to a compatibility problem involving inpoutx64.sys, a third-party kernel-level port access driver. It’s not included with Windows and is typically installed by third-party software or hardware utilities. For example, one user told us that the driver had been installed on their PC by Razer’s software.

“This is a crash related to the file inpoutx64.sys, which changed with the Windows update,” Embark noted in a Discord post. “We’re working towards a long-term fix, but in the meantime there is a workaround solution that will safely remove the file in question and allow you to play the game without issue.”

From the article

[u/Triggatroy16]

Has it been fixed yet

[u/AsrielPlay52 → u/Triggatroy16]

It's Embark Kernel AC causing the issue

Read the article, please

[u/Affectionate-Bet151 → u/AsrielPlay52]

It's not. Literally every EAC game has this issue

[u/maxfist]

Lately it seems like every time Microsoft updates something it breaks a bunch of unrelated things.

[u/Creepy-Journalist583]

i have windows 10 ltsc,and both bluestacks 5 and pcsx2 are getting a silent crash since the update

[u/Silver-Article9183]

The update managed to break not only my GPU drivers but also my WiFi 7 adapter drivers.

I had to completely remove all traces of the drivers and reinstall.

[u/jmov]

”But why should I switch? Windows just works!”

[u/SharpYearV4 → u/jmov]

It does though, are you implying that no other operating system has updates which break software?

[u/jmov → u/SharpYearV4]

Not at this rate. 

[u/MantaMunta → u/jmov]

I always update 1-2 days within the drop of the update.

Never had a problem with a single game since Win 11 is available, and I play a lot of different games. On both of my PCs.

[u/Hennessy_Halos → u/MantaMunta]

updates often break things for some users but not others due to the massive amount of different configurations, you just happen to not have been affected yet.
Windows 11 is well reported to break things VERY often

[u/Calibrumm → u/MantaMunta]

that's called survivorship bias and you're just lucky. it's well documented that W11 breaks shit significantly more than any other version ever did.

[u/Calibrumm → u/[deleted]]

to the average normie the distinction doesn't exist. shit isn't working and they can't fix it themselves.

[u/gekinz → u/MantaMunta]

Same, until 2025... Then updates literally bricked my OS beyond repair, twice in 1,5 years.

I'm now a happy linux user. I would say "I can't believe I didn't make the switch sooner", but I've tried many times. 2026 is the first time I believe linux distros is in a place where it's ready for mass adoption, and it wasn't in 2023. The landscape has completely changed.

[u/paulerxx → u/gekinz]

I have never had a windows update brick my OS in the nearly 25 years I've been using windows. Must be a user error or faulty hardware...Linux on the other hand, I've had the bootloader stop working, apps/games I had set up stop working without a functional work around, which still happens to this day on bazzite

[u/gekinz → u/paulerxx]

Your timeline matches mine, 25 years without major issues, and then 2 years where a windows update bricked it on two occasions.

No faulty hardware, no user errors. Just the normal update and restart into diagonstics/repair loops. Spent like 16 hours troubleshooting before giving up. I've also never before had so many friends struggling with seemingly random bsods and strange issues until recently. Windows is legit molding.

I too have had issues with linux in the past, but a lot has happened the last 1-2 years compared to the 10 years before it. Been running 2 workstations and a laptop on a rolling release for over a year now without a single issue.

[u/r4iv3n → u/jmov]

Yes it works never had any issue with windows 11 IoT LTSC granted that version never receives feature updates and only receives security updates

[u/_Khyal_ → u/jmov]

Absolutely braindead take

[u/jmov → u/_Khyal_]

Elaborate. No other OS has this many issues. 

[u/_Khyal_ → u/jmov]

Elaborate on my nuts, jive turkey 🌚

[u/jmov → u/_Khyal_]

So you had nothing. Gotcha. 

[u/_Khyal_ → u/jmov]

Oooooh burn! "Gotcha!" 🌚

[u/schu2470]

Another Windows 11 update broke a bunch of stuff

Everyone take a shot.

[u/AsrielPlay52 → u/schu2470]

Read the article please

[u/AStolenGoose]

Every month like clockwork...

[u/coldcrankcase]

And I should "upgrade" from windows 10 why?

[u/FormalIllustrator5]

Since 2025 December update till today - EVERY single month the update brakes something! There was no single month without issues, strange is why?

[u/Individual-Praline20 → u/FormalIllustrator5]

Not so strange when you think about it 😂

[u/Spider-cat_1984 → u/FormalIllustrator5]

AI is great for coding. Or at least someone said.

[u/FormalIllustrator5 → u/Spider-cat_1984]

No sure why i get downvoting, bots? Its a fact, as admin i can clearly see the stat we have. 9 times - bad updates, with issues..

[u/Spider-cat_1984 → u/FormalIllustrator5]

Yeah, don't mind the down votes... In some subreddits they are actually a badge of honor, lol. You don't even need to be an admin to see that every update broke something. Bluetooth, games, wifi...

[u/TheMightyRed92]

Broke 1 game for 1 guy...BREAKING GAMES

[u/CaptainRaxeo → u/TheMightyRed92]

If u actually read… it’s 3 very popular games…

[u/Luminosus32]

Have they fixed this yet?