What is the Xbox Creators Program?
Published July 2021
The Xbox Live Creators Program went live in August 2017. Not to be confused with the ID@Xbox program, which spotlights more high-profile indie games, the Creators Program will allow potentially anybody to publish a title in the store and allowing for more small-scale titles to hit the market. Games released through the Creators Program lack many features in standard Xbox titles, including no achievements and lack of online support. Even if a developer uses a workaround to allow for online play, it's going to be difficult to find populated games in such obscure titles. If it sounds similar to the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) section on the Xbox 360, that's because it is...
There was a sense of déjà vu when the Creators Program launched, bringing back memories of how the XBLIG were buried within the storefront, making them difficult to stumble upon by accident. The Creators Program storefront was only accessible from the front page of the store, which sounds good at first until you realize that this isn't necessarily a frequently navigated page. Most users will check the new games and the deals, neither of which feature Creators Program games. With the Creators Program service being so similar to what XBLIG was offering, it's a bit of a bummer that they didn't just carry those games over to the Xbox One rather than just close that storefront and ditch the thousands of games that had been submitted on the service.
Personal Experience
It's easy to just dismiss the Creators Program and while it's true that most of the stuff posted on there is rubbish (in my personal experience at least), if you dig deep enough there are at least a few cool games worth a look. My time spent playing games from the Creators Program has been rather limited, so if you know some gems hiding in there then please do let me know. I've probably sampled around 20 or so games on the service, several of which were so bad I couldn't bring myself to play them long enough to warrant writing a review on them. At the time of this writing (July 2021), I've reviewed 11 games on the site and out of those 11 I'd say 4 of them are possibly worth checking out. Space Cat! was one of the earliest titles released for the Creators Collection and it was more fun than I thought it would be. Gun-Pile is a fun caravan-style shmup that's fun to kill a few minutes with. Coconut Farm 3D is a fun Pac-Man inspired maze game. Brutal Chase was the first title that compelled me to actually pay money for and if you're a fan of the old Chase HQ games this one is worth a look.
Saved Games Issue
One other thing I'd like to note in regards to the Creators Program games is that your saves don't carry over in the cloud like they do with traditional Xbox One titles. Let me provide you with my example and how I discovered this: one of the few Creators Collection games I've encountered that I actually had the desire to return to was Brutal Chase. When I originally purchased Brutal Chase, I was still playing on my Xbox One S. Fast-forward some time down the road and I upgraded to an Xbox One X. I found myself surprised by how easy the transition was with all of my game saves being found in the cloud. However, Brutal Chase was the one exception to this and when I got around to booting it up on my new system I found that all of my progress had been lost, forcing me to restart as I no longer had the old system that had the save file on it. As far as I can tell, when viewing the contents there's no actual save file, so I'd assume your data is stored within the game file itself. Due to this I'm uncertain if a save file transfer is actually even possible with Creators Program titles (please do confirm if you have any knowledge on this!).
Where To Find the Creators Program Games
When the Xbox Creators Program was first introduced, there was a designated spot called the Creators Collection that listed the games which could be found on the front games page in the store. Similar to XBLIG on the Xbox 360, this means that you'd typically have to click through a few screens before being able to access the Creators Collection store, meaning that the majority of Xbox One users were likely never even aware of its existence.
Later on down the road, around Aug/Sept 2020, Microsoft released an update to the Xbox Store which actually removed the Creators Collection area on the games page. The games are all still available, though there's not a designated section you can find them all, which means you'll have to manually search for them and are unable to just browse through what's available. Occasionally you'll see a few of the Creators Program titles make it into the general games listing, though it's inconsistent and far from every title released gets showcased in the games section. These should have been kept in their own section of the store, since listing them alongside the standard Xbox One releases leaves many players disappointed when they unknowingly purchase a game with no achievements (you'll always find players lamenting their purchase due to this down in the user reviews). One way to find some of them is to plug-in the query "xbox creators collection site:www.microsoft.com" into your search bar and browse through the results. It really sucks that there's no way to just properly browse through them in the store and I can imagine it must be frustrating for those who have submitted games onto the service.
Quick Closing
The Xbox Creators Program is awesome for the fact it lets anybody realize their dream of creating and releasing a video game. This means there will be tons of amateur and subpar projects on the service, but like anything of this nature if you're willing to dig around you can find some gems buried amongst the rubbish. The Xbox Creators Program doesn't feel near as lively as the Xbox Live Indie Games service was on the 360 and removing the designated area in the store certainly didn't help make it more popular. I'll continue to dabble with games released to the service, so make sure to check back for more reviews in the future.
Related Reviews:
Xbox Creators Program Games - Xbox Overview
Space Cat! - Xbox Overview
Gun-Pile - Xbox Overview
Coconut Farm 3D - Xbox Overview
Brutal Chase - Xbox Overview
Related Links:
Creators Program Game Search Query - Bing
Xbox Live Creators Program - Xbox
Xbox Live Creators Program Debuts - Slash Gear
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