No bro, Xbox isn't evil anymore. Phil Spencer is a good guy and Gamepass is the "best deal in gaming"./s
On serious note there is some legit reason to do something like this. Things like the Cronos Max or Rapid fire controllers are a legit problem in multiplayer games because they are hardware cheats essentially.
But they could have created an API that allows games to check if a unoffical device is detected if that is the reason.
The problem seems to revolve around brands that haven't acquired this licensing
It seems to just be rent seeking? Since it’s retroactive there probably isn’t a security change and malicious hardware can spoof being licensed, though this is unclear. So it probably only hurts legitimate small brands.
absolutely, hence why I put forward the idea of an API that would allow games to stop people from joining multiplayer matches or flag their highscores if sketchy hardware is involved! For Single Player games, who cares!
But deep down we all know that this first and formost is a money grabbing scheme from micro$oft
As an avid modder I can tell you that'll make it harder but not impossible, I was halfway to hotwiring an xbox controller so I could run my xbox over parsec
fun fact, whenever a game has crossplay - and has a big enough player base that i can do this, i will turn it off 100% of the time purely because I have experienced sooo many cheaters from the pc side of the crossplay.
a very common complaint about crossplay over on the consoles side of thing is "let us do just-console crossplay"
it is what it is, but it's also funny to see someone say what you said there. One of the great things about pc gaming is the freedom you have to do what you want, which unfortunately makes it 1000000x easier to cheat.
I don't think cross play for competitive is worthwhile because either PC players have an advantage in the form of mouse aim, or console players have a wagon-dick-sized advantage in the form of aim assist. Competitive cross play only makes sense if you have input based match making.
What's frustrating for me is when the PC side cripples mixed-input entirely even though I just want mouse-look, gyro aim, and analog movement from my controller without any aim assist. (Looking at you, Destiny 2 and Halo.)