Redditor hayz00s' little brother never did find a match and called up the Windows 10 Store to refund the product. “It was very easy,” hayz00s told me in a private Reddit message. “He said they were very courteous and didn't give him any trouble trying to get the refund.”
The Redditor’s brother bought the game from the Windows 10 Store for two simple reasons: It was cheaper and he wanted to play with another sibling who’d bought the game on Xbox One.
Microsoft has spent the past six months pushing cross platform play between PC and Xbox One. High profile titles such as Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3 already support the feature, but Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare does not.
The price difference is pretty big. Steam users who want to play the remastered Modern Warfare have to drop $79.99 for Call of Duty’s Legacy Edition. The Windows 10 Store has the same product for $63.99.
hayz00s said he’d stick to Steam, but his brother would use the Windows 10 Store again, “If it’s cheaper than Steam’s version and won’t have separated online multiplayer.”
Call of Duty does have a single player campaign, but most fans buy the games to kill other people in multiplayer. Without that, it’s just not Call of Duty and it’s not worth the cash. The Redditor claimed he reached out to Microsoft and scored his little brother a refund, a heroic feat in these days of draconian digital return policies.
This probably isn't Microsoft's fault. Microsoft has been pushing cross platform play between the Xbox One and Windows 10 for the past year, even promising people who buy a game on one platform will get it on the other for free.
"We support cross-play between devices and platforms for partners who want to enable it,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Windows Central when it asked them about the recent Call of Duty problems. The statement implies Activision made the call to keep PC players who bought the game from different storefronts separate. Which, if true, is ridiculous.
Gamers are used to the separation of console and PC multiplayer communities. But PC players aren’t used to companies gating them off based on where they purchased their game. It’s a ludicrous policy that doesn’t serve anyone’s interest and it’s another black eye for a digital storefront that PC gamers already avoid like the plague.