Gaming Updates

Microsoft knows that gaming is still a big part of the PC experience, and also that gaming is one of the strongest markets for the PC, so they always dedicate some effort to improving gaming on the PC with each update.

Game Mode

Game Mode was added a while back, which grants exclusive, or priority access, to hardware resources for games that have it enabled. The idea is to provide a more consistent experience for the user, without any work required. Game Mode can now be toggled easily for each game right in the Game Bar interface.

GPU Monitor

For those that love more information, you can now monitor the GPU usage right in task manager, and it provides a surprising amount of detail including video decode, encode, and memory usage. It’s a feature that, when you think about it, is long overdue.

Mixer Updates

For those that want to perform game streaming, Microsoft’s Mixer service has been updated to provide better load times, and when broadcasting, you can now see audio stream sources.

TruePlay Anti-Cheating

The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update also comes with a new anit-cheating API built right into Windows, called TruePlay. Cheating in online games can be a big problem, and often require the developer to put invasive code on the machine, which has its own host of security and privacy concerns. TruePlay is an API available for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) games which allow limited interaction between games and the game monitoring system.

This is likely going to be controversial, but TruePlay is an opt-in system for the end user, and TruePlay is not a “block on launch” experience, which means it’s not an all or nothing. You can opt out of TruePlay, and the game can still function, if the developer allows it.

A game with TruePlay runs in a protected process, which inhibits many common cheating attacks. In addition, Windows will monitor the gaming process for behaviours and manipulations that indicate cheating, and alerts will be generated for the game to notify it of this. Privacy is going to be a big concern here, and data is only shared with developers of the game after “processing has deteremined cheating is likely to have occurred” to quote MSDN.

Being opt-in by the user is the right play here, since this can be invasive, but for UWP games it should be a better situation than the developer writing their own anti-cheating code, which could easily have far more privacy and security concerns than a system built into Windows.

Bundled App Updates Security Updates
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  • prophet001 - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link

    *em
  • ddrіver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link

    Facebook, Google, or Amazon also do it but lets be real, how can they monetize on my data? Will a company just suddenly guess what I like and dislike on FB? Do I find search results "adjusted" to my preference? Does Amazon give me different prices and offers than others? Idiocy!

    Plus, there's no sensitive data about me on my phone but I have all kinds of stuff in my computer like scans of important documents, CVs, etc. No way I let M$ have that.
  • Screw you - Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - link

    As if the average customer will actually ever check certificate information. Most don't even know what a certificate is...And your request concerning firewall protection would be for a very small minority of paranoid techno-geeks who represent an insignificant and small portion of the Windows using population... Enacting a default firewall rule to block everything would make the Windows experience cumbersome and inefficient for MOST users. Things work just fine as they are right now... You really need to get over yourself Mr. Fort Knox.
  • edzieba - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link

    It's not going to make it 'less safe' either. Two and a half years after release, and not a single shred of evidence has been uncovered of Microsoft sending your files to themselves. And you can bet security researchers have been looking very closely too.
  • shaikhsimraan - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link

    FRP Bypass APK: https://www.yourtechnocrat.com/frp-bypass-apk/
  • Mo3tasm - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link

    Fall creator update is certainly the best Win10 update, features are reasonably polished and the build is just a lot more stable...
    That being said, Win10 itself is bad.. slower than Win7 or even Win8.1 (and an order of magnitude than any Linux distro), you're forced to use the system in a way that you don't necessarily like, and updates are just shoved up the ass...
  • ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link

    Yeah, good old w7 is still the best, as long as you keep close attention to what updates you are installing.

    Unfortunately, m$ took measures against the selective installation of updates, and recently releases those "update bundles", each of which contains all the updates and you definitely don't want on your machine, such as telemetry.

    Additionally, m$ colluded with hardware vendors to omit support for w7 from their latest hardware driver packages. Granted, some might actually work, but it is usually hacky and not 100% operational.

    Really revolting, heinous, despicable behavior. Grade A scumbags...
  • Ratman6161 - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link

    Here is the other side of the coin. The vast majority of exploits which make it into the news are exploiting know things that only work on systems that have not installed updates. Wannacry was a perfect example.
  • Bullwinkle-J-Moose - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link

    Bad example Ratman!

    Wannacry had no effect on Windows XP-SP2 with no Microsoft Updates, only SP3 was affected

    Once Microsoft updates yer box, NSA exploits work again like magic
  • Mo3tasm - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link

    I suspect it also has to do with frequent updates, developers can get lazy all they want when they must fix bugs or optimize performance, because they can always do it "next month"..
    Back in the days when you could push major code changes only once per version they had to work really hard to perfect every line of code.

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