Microsoft is opening up Xbox Game Pass for the PC to make it easy to mod files and install games wherever you’d like.
For now, the company is testing the change with beta users in the Xbox Insiders program. But the approach nixes Microsoft’s old system of storing the games in a locked, encrypted folder on your PC’s storage drive.
Instead, the company is going to let users pick and choose where games from Xbox Game Pass app get installed on a PC. “Soon Xbox Insiders can start testing out selecting what drive your game installs to, and select[ing] where your default folder goes within that drive,” said Jason Beaumont, Xbox partner director of game experience, in a video on Thursday.
According to Beaumont, the new approach also promises to increase the download speeds to install games from Xbox Game Pass for PC, which starts at $9.99 a month. In exchange, you get access to more than 100 PC games to download and install.
The other change being tested involves opening up the game install folders, so users can easily mod game files or move and share them. To find out if a game is moddable, Microsoft also plans on using a special icon within the Xbox Game Pass app.
According to The Verge, the company also plans on bringing the same changes to games bought from the Microsoft Store, opening the door for easy access to mod and back up game files like you can already do on Steam. We’ve reached out to Microsoft on when this might happen, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
