"Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version)

I got a response from Support, basically saying the issue has been passed onto the team for testing. Hopefully they can figure it out.

It's a weird one, and appears to be only affecting Sea of Thieves.

I tested some other games on Steam and they all worked fine and I was able to record clips - Lightyear Frontier, Portal 2, Escape Academy, Party Animals, Fall Guys.

With the exception of Lightyear Frontier, they were all automatically recognised as games and Gaming Features was turned on by default.

With Lightyear Frontier, I had to click on the option to get Game Bar to recognise it as a game but the setting saved correctly (unlike with Sea of Thieves) and everything worked after that - but that's an Early Access game so may have something to do with that.

Fall Guys even uses Easy Anti-Cheat, and that did not have any problems whatsoever being picked up. Notifications even popped up to say the clips were recorded. So we can't even blame EAC on this one.

Hello
I've the same issue
did all the reset and stuff nothing is working ..

I've already put in a bug report for this issue, so Rare are aware of it. But I suggest anyone else with the problem to also submit a ticket. The more people do it, the more likely it will be looked at.

It may be Game Bar needs an update or it could be to do with the game. If it's Game Bar, I am hoping Rare will get in touch with their Microsoft colleagues to see what's happening there. While EAC is not directly to blame, it could be all the configuration Rare did to get that functioning has messed up the game's ID or something.

So, yeah, if you can't record clips or use LFG on Game Bar, Gaming Features not being available is the reason.

@realstyli game bar is mostly broken for me. Has been for months. No amount of updates or reinstalls fixes any of the issues. Microsoft needs to sort it out.

@qu1etone said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@realstyli game bar is mostly broken for me. Has been for months. No amount of updates or reinstalls fixes any of the issues. Microsoft needs to sort it out.

It's been broken for me and my friend since the March 21st Game Bar update specifically. So it is most likely a Microsoft issue but, as it's only affecting Sea of Thieves (as others have also noted), Rare need to communicate that there is a problem there with their colleagues at MS to get it sorted.

Can confirm this is only an issue with seas and not other games. Will send a report ticket.

@kostuchh Not yet. It DOES work if you simply record but it wont work if you want to grab a clip. So now when I game if I see an enemy ship coming for example I click record and 5 minutes later or whatever I stop the recording and it works fine that way. I prefer the clip way of doing things though. I have background recording active and set to 3 minutes so after something cool/funny/odd/whatever happens I could just click windows and G together and boom. Clip Captured. That wont work now.

@atlass1337 said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

The reason game bar doesn't work is Easy Anti-cheat. It either has something to do with EAC launching after SOT and thus Game bar doesn't recognize it as a game OR the fact that EAC detects Game bar as a third party program.

Just to point it out, Game bar doesn't work on any other EAC games either.

Incorrect. It works on Fall Guys.

And it also worked on Sea of Thieves up to the March 21st Game Bar update. There were a few weeks where there was no issue with SOT, EAC and Game Bar.

@majkon13 said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@realstyli yes he is correct, just because it works for Fall Guys doesn't mean it is made properly for Sea Of Thieves. EAC is different for most of the games (in fact in many games these are individual updates of EAC just for certain game) and it doesn't work the same way in all games, that doesn't even make sense cause each game has different aspects and probably uses different rendering tools etc. So stop trh talking when you have no idea about the thing. And yes I can confirm that when I launch the game and EAC appears I press win+G for game bar and it shows everything as it should but as soon as actual game launches it breaks and everything related to game is gone.

The issue is with Game Bar NOT EAC.

Fact 1: it was working fine after EAC was introduced, for several weeks, and ONLY broke on March 21st when Game Bar updated.

Fact 2: It works with Fall Guys, which uses EAC (albeit the standard EAC and not EOS). In FG, I can record clips and take screenshots using Game Bar. It even gives the notification from Game Bar that it is doing it.

Yes, games have to be configured correctly for EAC, and that is another issue. But this problem has been caused by an update to Game Bar, not EAC.

I would like to add, that this is what I said a month ago:

While EAC is not directly to blame, it could be all the configuration Rare did to get that functioning has messed up the game's ID or something.

And I still believe that to be the issue here.

@majkon13

I didn't update Game Bar either. It did it automatically on March 21st, and again on March 27th. It's an autoupdate in the MS Store. If you check MS Store and go to your library, you will see the March 27th update.

I find it INCREDIBLY unlikely that this feature breaking on March 21st and an update to Game Bar happening the exact same day are unrelated (again, this was weeks after EAC was implemented).

And I'm not going to mess around with anything that may interfere with EAC running correctly, as that can lead to Hazelnutbeards. Not all "fixes" are safe to do.

All this shows is that there is a misconfiguration issue with SOT and EAC, which is what I have been saying all along. Rare have somehow messed up the game's ID to get EAC to function, and that is why Game Bar no longer sees Sea of Thieves correctly.

@majkon13

Happy Sailing.

Also having this issue. :(

@majkon13

Far too tedious. It should properly work. Hopefully there's a fix soon.

@atlass1337 said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@realstyli Game bar doesn't work on Fortnite either so that debunks your theory about it only not working for SoT. But hey, since you know everything I'm obviously incorrect, mini mod.

I never claimed to know everything, nor am I a "mini mod". But I've laid out the information as I've seen it.

EAC is not directly to blame for this (though I've said misconfiguration may be) and games like Fall Guys show that EAC and Game Bar can play nicely together.

Fortnite is not on Steam, and may never have been supported by Game Bar - I honestly don't know. It also uses the standard EAC and not EAC EOS, which both Sea of Thieves and Fall Guys use(s) (correction here: Fall Guys actually uses the standard EAC).

But, to test, I've just installed Dead by Daylight on Steam, which also uses the standard Easy Anti-Cheat - and just like Fall Guys, no issues at all with recording clips on Game Bar. It shows up like any other game and clips appear in my Captures folder.

If EAC is to blame for blocking Game Bar's Gaming Features with Sea of Thieves then it's still up to Rare and Microsoft to sort this out, as games using EAC are configured on a per-game basis.

And to reinterate what I said in my OP, Sea of Thieves on Steam supported Gaming Features with Game Bar up until March 21st - this was after EAC was added and just happened to be the exact day that Game Bar received an update? That seems like a bit too much of a coincidence.

EDIT:
Here's a list of other games on Steam using Easy Anti-Cheat, if you want to test more.
https://steamdb.info/tech/AntiCheat/EasyAntiCheat/

EDIT 2:
I just tested Rust, which also uses EAC EOS (confirmed as it creates the .sys log file in the EasyAntiCheat_EOS folder). This game meets the same criteria as Sea of Thieves and works fine with Game Bar. It's recognised as a game, Gaming Features are enabled, and clips can be created.

@majkon13 You are a saint, everyone should know about this fix, idk whats the problem with the other guy, this fix is 100% safe.

Yeaaaaah Game bar background recording on but the 'Record last 3 minutes' doesnt work for me either. I can record normally via the Game bar just not the 'Record last X Minutes' which is the setting I find most useful.

If there's a proper fix, please keep me posted.

Thanks guys for the post, glad its not just me with this issue.

@mobius-juann said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@majkon13 You are a saint, everyone should know about this fix, idk whats the problem with the other guy, this fix is 100% safe.

The "problem with the other guy" is that it's not a fix, it's a temporary workaround. Saying it's "100% safe" without knowing why it works and any potential issues it could cause, is not enough for me to risk it. But go ahead.

I've already gone into detail on testing it being broken for sure and it not being related to the game being on Steam or using EAC. It needs to be fixed by Rare or Microsoft.

In addition, I've gone back to playing on the MS Store version the last few weeks and it works there now without any issues. Both the Steam and MS Store versions use the exact same install of EAC EOS, so it's extremely unlikely that EAC is blocking it by design (again, not ruling out that Rare somehow messed up the configuration).

@realstyli

I can now look for a crew using Game Bar with the steam version, it works; as for risking anything, there is no risk at all, if you think you would be risking something, go back to console were you can't mess anything up.

Give me solutions, not problems, you did not deliver, the other guy did; deal with it.

@mobius-juann said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@realstyli

I can now look for a crew using Game Bar with the steam version, it works; as for risking anything, there is no risk at all, if you think you would be risking something, go back to console were you can't mess anything up.

Give me solutions, not problems, you did not deliver, the other guy did; deal with it.

Firstly, it's not a solution, it's a workaround. I've come up with many, many workarounds for common software issues in my over two decades working with DAWs in audio engineering, but they're not "fixes". They don't solve the core issue, only a developer update can do that.

Secondly, I don't think you understand exactly why I am saying it's risky in this case.

EAC is kernel-level anti-cheat and it looks for any changes to the game code while the game is in memory, and this workaround does that. While it's possible it won't be an issue and it just fixes the configuration issue I was talking about, there's also still a risk that EAC sees it as as interferring with the game code.

You won't always get kicked from the game immediately for doing this and there may be no indication the tampering was detected, as often anti-cheat just flags an account to be looked at and banwaves from inforcers in games typically happen in 3-6 month cadences in order to not tip their hat.

While nothing may happen, I'm not going to risk my day one account on this, but go ahead.

And I don't need to "go back to console [where] you can't mess anything up", I can just play on the MS Store version, which works perfectly with Gaming Features enabled.

@kostuchh said in "Gaming Features Not Available" In Game Bar Now (Steam Version):

@realstyli its been 6 months and nothing.

I'm well aware. And I switched back to the MS Store version because of the issue.

still cant record last action. how can u report toxic players or hackers when i cant record last 3 minutes of my gameplay to have evidence

Hopefully, the in-built Steam DVR feature will come out of beta soon. I don't have much faith in them fixing Game Bar Gaming Features issue any time soon.

have you tried to write to rare at some support page and open ticket?

Yes. They passed it onto their team and closed it.

@realstyli Steelseries gg software is what I use now.

I recommend 10/10

I wish this would get fixed already... It worked fine for years until they broke it..