[2019] Dear Wildcard: please use Store publishing options effectively

Tagging /u/wildcardced in case this can be passed along.

People on the Win10 Play Anywhere client (including those such as me who host a server with it) are in a sadly familiar position: the latest patch went live everywhere else, but is held up in cert for the Win10 version.

This means that Xbox users can't connect to any of the existing servers hosted that way and that people using that client are hosed with updated servers, too. This has happened several times in the past and has averaged a week or longer to be able to play again.

Stuff happens, I know--I'm an engineer myself. The thing is, if I'm understanding what's happening here, this problem is very easily prevented.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/publish/manage-submission-options#publishing-hold-options

The default in the store profile is "publish ASAP when cert finishes." If that's switched over to manual, you can wait until all of the endpoints are staged before rolling out a synchronized update.

There's even a store submission API if you want to fully automate the process:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/monetize/create-and-manage-submissions-using-windows-store-services

I'm at the tail end of a very long week (coincidentally with plenty of my own pain working with UWP and Store) and was looking forward to the little bit of unwind time in the game. The publish desync dashed that and, given history, likely dashed the weekend, too.

I understand that crap happens but this is a pretty easy one to fix. Please consider adding a manual hold option to your publishing step.

Also, complete aside, a bloom toggle on Xbox would be great. Plenty of room for another checkbox in the third column. Just sayin'.