What is Gaming Services?
Gaming Services is a background component Microsoft ships with Windows 10 and 11. It acts as a bridge between the Microsoft Store, Game Pass, and PC games that use the Microsoft Store or Xbox infrastructure for things like save syncing, achievements, multiplayer invites, and DRM verification. Modern Xbox-published titles - Forza Horizon 5, Forza Horizon 6, Halo Infinite, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020/2024, and most Game Pass PC titles - all depend on it being installed and healthy. It runs as a Windows service and as a packaged app (Microsoft.GamingServices) that lives in the Microsoft Store.
When Gaming Services is broken, games that depend on it fail in very specific ways. You’ll usually see one of these errors:
- “Invalid Gaming Services detected” when launching Forza Horizon or another Xbox title.
- “Something went wrong starting Gaming Services” with a hex error code.
- Game launches and immediately closes to desktop, or never gets past the splash screen.
- Achievements don’t unlock, multiplayer matchmaking fails, or save syncing silently breaks.
If a game that worked yesterday suddenly refuses to launch with one of these messages, Gaming Services is the first place to look.
Prerequisites
Before reinstalling, work through this quick checklist - most “the fix didn’t work” cases are actually a prerequisite issue:
- Make sure Windows is up to date. Some older Windows 10 builds have a known broken Gaming Services that requires a feature update to repair cleanly.
- Confirm the Microsoft Store itself is up to date. Open the Store, click your profile icon, and pick Downloads and updates → Get updates. If the Store won’t open, that’s a separate problem to fix first.
- Sign in to the Microsoft Store with the account you use for gaming. The Store app must be signed in to install Gaming Services; otherwise the install button just spins.
- Make sure your date and time are correct. Store installs fail cryptically when the system clock is far off.
Updating
Updating is the easiest way to get things working again. Head to the Microsoft Store app, followed by Downloads and use the Check for updates button.
Reinstalling
If you don’t see Gaming Services on the list, and you don’t think it’s installed; you can download it from here: Gaming Services - Microsoft Store App
.
If you want to uninstall the existing version, if there is one, open a PowerShell window as Administrator and paste in the following command:
| |
Then open the link above and reinstall the Gaming Services pacakge.
Once reinstallation is complete you should be able to use it, and get through errors like Forza Horizon 6’s “Invalid Gaming Services Detected”.
Troubleshooting: the fix didn’t work
If you’ve reinstalled Gaming Services and the game still refuses to launch, work through these in order:
- Reboot. Yes, really. Gaming Services registers itself as a startup service; the reinstall doesn’t always pick up a running session correctly.
- Run the Microsoft Store troubleshooter. Settings → System → Troubleshoot → Other troubleshooters → Windows Store Apps. Let it finish, then reboot.
- Repair the Store cache. Open
wsreset.exefrom the Start menu. This clears and re-registers the Store’s local cache, which sometimes unblocks Gaming Services installs that hang. - Re-register the Gaming Services app manually. Open an elevated PowerShell and run:This re-registers the package without needing to redownload it, which is faster and works around broken store installs.
1Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.GamingServices -AllUsers | foreach { Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml" } - Check the Gaming Services services. Press Win+R, type
services.msc, and confirm Gaming Services and Xbox Live Auth Manager are running and set to Automatic. If either is disabled, set it back to Automatic and start it. - Check your region and language settings. The Microsoft Store and Gaming Services behave strangely with mismatched region settings - the Store thinks the app isn’t available in your region and silently fails to install it.
- Disable any third-party “Windows debloaters” or store mods. Tools that “fix” the Microsoft Store by removing bloat can break Gaming Services alongside it. If you used one, run its restore option or reinstall Windows components.
- In-place repair install. As a last resort, an in-place Windows install (reinstalling Windows over the existing install) refreshes every system component including Gaming Services and is often the only thing that works on heavily-customized systems.
If the error is specifically 0x80073D26 or 0x80073CF9, those are package integrity errors and almost always mean the reinstall was incomplete. Run the manual Add-AppxPackage command above and try again.
