While Microsoft has made strides with Game Pass PC and Microsoft Store versions of PC games, there’s still a lot to do in this area, as testified by the recent release of Still Wakes the Deep.
The Chinese Room’s first-person survival horror adventure game is only the latest game to launch on Game Pass PC with several missing features, including NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, both of which are available on Steam and Epic Games Store. The same happened with Neon Giant’s The Ascent in 2021 (that game also lacked ray tracing) and Gunfire’s Remnant II in 2023.
Interestingly, The Chinese Room provided a detailed explanation on the Steam community forums.
To add more information, we have some technical limitations due to the difference between how the Game Pass and Steam / Epic Store versions are built. Unfortunately, this means that other upscaling options aren’t available in the Game Pass version.
The PS5, Xbox X|S, and WinGDK (Game Pass PC) versions all have the same options. While we added extra upscaling options to the Steam and Epic Store versions. Adding them to WinGDK would require a custom coded solution.
Thank you for your feedback. We are a small team and we want to help as many people play on a wide range of hardware so we will let everyone know if it’s possible for us to create an update to add this feature in the future.
Thankfully, the studio has now shared a new update, revealing that NVIDIA DLSS will be added to the Game Pass PC version of Still Wakes the Deep in an update scheduled to launch in July alongside other fixes, such as:
- crash/performance bugs
- settings reverting to default status
- deactivated subtitles reappearing
- on-screen button prompt visibility
- the Mud Handling progression bug
- Yellow Marker toggle, which enables players to deactivate navigation aids in the form of yellow paint spills
The Chinese Room is also investigating the possibility of adding AMD FSR. The developers promised to get back to the community once a decision has been reached.
For our detailed review of Still Wakes the Deep, head to this article.
