They still use EXEs but they’ve heavily obfuscated and restricted the file access. Games are definitely not UWP.
If you go and look into a directory you’ll see more or less the same thing you’d see in the Steamapps directory, but it requires admin access and other funky stuff to even view, let alone touch.
Functionally the difference is basically just MS has heavier DRM which causes problems for things like mods. Starfield on Gamepass is already worse than Starfield on Steam because it’s incompatible with a bunch of mods without weird shit like running Cheat Engine.
They still use EXEs but they’ve heavily obfuscated and restricted the file access. Games are definitely not UWP.
If you go and look into a directory you’ll see more or less the same thing you’d see in the Steamapps directory, but it requires admin access and other funky stuff to even view, let alone touch.
Functionally the difference is basically just MS has heavier DRM which causes problems for things like mods. Starfield on Gamepass is already worse than Starfield on Steam because it’s incompatible with a bunch of mods without weird shit like running Cheat Engine.
not user admin access, their admin access