Forza Horizons 4 Buyers Can’t Download Game Thanks to Windows Store Bug
Microsoft rolled out the Windows Store about six years ago, but it doesn’t seem like that long ago, does it? We’ve all gotten accustomed to ignoring it — once it’s unpinned from your taskbar, you never need to think of it again. Well, unless there’s an exclusive game launch in the Windows Store like the new Forza Horizon 4. Fans of the racing franchise have, however, been dismayed to learn that after six years Microsoft still can’t get the store working right.
The Windows Store often has issues with app and game downloads. Sometimes apps fail to install, and other times they fail to download. That’s if you even manage to find apps you want to install. Even after years of enticing developers, the Windows Store is still woefully lacking in popular apps.
According to numerous reports on the Forza forums, users say everything looks good until the game reached the advertised 67GB download size. Hey, you need a lot of textures for all those fancy cars. However, the Store just keeps downloading more data. Some dedicated gamers have waited through 80-90GB of downloading before they gave up. This same bug also popped up with the Forza demo, which was around 28GB. Players reported blowing through twice as many bytes there before throwing in the towel.
Wasting data like that can be a real problem, even with faster internet speeds. Many ISPs have implemented monthly data caps, and going over can be costly. Comcast charges $10 for each 50GB block past the cap. If you’re bumping up against your monthly cap, blowing another 90GB trying to download a game from the Windows Store
Not everyone is affected by the “infinite download” bug, but it’s widespread enough that there are tutorials all over the internet that aim to fix it. The proposed fixes include resetting the Windows Store cache with the WSRESET command, deleting the Windows SoftwareDistribution folder, and just re-installing Windows.
The fixes seem to work for most people, but no one should have to go to this much trouble. After six years, the Windows Store is still so broken that you have to muck around renaming folders and running system executables just to get a download to finish. If it weren’t for the exclusives, we can’t imagine anyone would be using the Windows Store.
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