Forza Horizon 4, Microsoft’s hit racing game launched on Steam earlier this week, a little more than two years since its release on Xbox and the Windows 10 Store. The game made a big debut on Valve’s gaming platform where it quickly became one of the most-played racing games. As of this writing, Forza Horizon 4 remains the #5 top-selling game on Steam, which is impressive for a 2018 game.
Leave it to the Forza community to blow us away once again. Within our first 24 hours on Steam we are one of the most-played racing franchises on the platform. THANK YOU! pic.twitter.com/fg3KBBE2eo
— Forza Horizon (@ForzaHorizon) March 10, 2021
With a 88% score on Metacritic (92% for the Xbox One version), Forza Horizon 4 was one of the most critically-acclaimed Xbox Game Studios titles released during the Xbox One generation. The Steam user reviews, though, paint a different picture with many users complaining about performance issues and the lack of cross-save support.
“For returning players that have already played FH4 on Xbox or Windows PC, there’s no way to transfer over data from the last three years of gametime that we have, so unless you want to pay full price for a three year old game just to start again, I would recommend just going onto the Xbox app and downloading it with your old save there”, one user wrote.
The lack of support for cross-save is indeed really surprising, especially since the Steam versions of Halo: MCC or Gears 5 had it since launch. Forza Horizon 4 on Steam requires an Xbox Live account and supports cross-play with gamers on Windows 10 and Xbox, and it’s not clear why cross-save support is currently missing. We’ve reached out to Microsoft about this and we’ll let you know if we hear anything back.
Many negative reviews have also pointed out some performance issues compared to the Windows 10 version of the game. “The MS Store ran flawlessly for me but this one stutters like anything. The faster I go the worse it stutters and also encountered 2 random crashes to desktop without any error,” one user wrote. Others have also been unable to launch the game at all, and many user reviews also mentioned the lackluster support for steering wheels.
Considering that Forza Horizon 4 on Steam is launching at its same $59.99 launch price as in fall 2018, the bugs and lack of cross-save support are a bit hard to swallow for Forza fans. If you purchased the game on Steam, let us know in the comments if you also encountered some problems on your PC.
Update 2:30PM PT: We’ve received a statement from a Microsoft spokesperson confirming the issues in the Steam version of Forza Horizon 4, but the developer of the game is working on it. “The Forza team is aware of issues related to stuttering and wheel support and keeps players updated on progress via the Forza Support page. We’re always listening to the community and looking for ways to evolve the game but have nothing further to share at this time,” the Microsoft spokesperson said.
