Game mode sucks, and Microsoft have finally admitted it.

Back when Game Mode was first announced for Windows 10, I predicted that it would have very little impact, if any, on Steam gamers, who were not playing native-UWP versions of their games via the Windows Store. I was wrong about that; rather than having little-to-no impact, it turned out that Game Mode actually hurt game performance. Microsoft, naturally, reacted by denying that anything was wrong, and then doing the PR equivalent of covering their ears and saying, "LA LA LA LA LA," as loudly as possible.

That was back in January. It is now September, and Microsoft are finally admitting the problems with the Creators Update, which included Game Mode.

As reported by Usama Jawad at NeoWin:

For the past few months, hundreds of users have lamented the stuttering issues and FPS drops in various games after installing the Windows 10 Creators Update. Users also reported that clean installing drivers, and enabling or disabling Game DVR and Game Mode does not fix the issue.

Now, Microsoft has finally acknowledged the problem, stating that it is looking into the factors that can potentially be causing games to stutter.

[...]

A Microsoft engineer has acknowledged the issue on Feedback Hub, saying that:

Thank you everyone for providing feedback and submitting traces. We have been analyzing the traces from your feedback and have identified several different problem sources surfacing as stutter in games. We have a fix for one of them in the Windows Insider build that flighted to the “Fast” ring (build 16273 and above). You can find instructions on joining the Windows 10 Insider Program here: https://insider.windows.com/en-us/how-to-pc/. We are actively investigating the remaining stutter causes and appreciate your patience on this issue.

So, +1 to Microsoft for finally admitting that the problem exists, but -1 for denying it originally, -1 for spending months stonewalling while customers complained, and -1 more for not having actually fixed the problem yet (the end-of-August patch fixed one potential issue which might be contributing to the problem, but it hasn't addressed the entirety of the issue, which they're still "investigating"). Again, this is seven months after the problem was reported to them by their customers.

The Steam software survey has showed Windows 10's usage share faltering among Steam users over the last couple of months, a perplexing trend that ran counter to the movement in the OS market at large. At the time, those monthly shifts among Steam users didn't make much sense, but that's because I'm a Windows 7 gamer, who isn't affected by Microsoft's Game Mode and who had (blissfully) forgotten all about its existence. Now that I've been reminded of these game-specific issues, though, everything makes so much more sense.

I keep waiting for Microsoft to show some sign that they're learning from their mistakes. I don't know whether to be entertained or depressed by their continued failure to do so.