Microsoft's DXGI Debugger: My Game Accidentally Made the Blacklist
2025-09-21
While porting Space Station 14 to ARM64 Windows, the developer encountered a bizarre crash. Debugging revealed the issue stemmed from a Microsoft DXGI optimization for windowed games, forcing "flip" mode, causing illegal instruction exceptions with GetDC() in specific circumstances (the game executable named SS14.Loader.exe). It turned out to be a bug in Microsoft's ARM64 DXGI optimization, enabled only for specific game names, and Space Station 14 was unfortunately on that list. The developer suspects this bug went unnoticed due to the limited number of native ARM64 Windows games. The issue has been reported to Microsoft, and ARM64 Windows support is temporarily postponed until the bug is fixed.
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Development
Windows Debugging