Seems like that process is fully occupying your CPU. If the process is visible for a moment after you open the task manager, press Print Screen before it disappears and CTRL+V into Paint for a screenshot.

What happens if you kill the process? Does it restart itself immediately? If so, press WIN+R, type in "services.msc" and see if it's in the list. If yes, right click it, go to properties and change its startup type to "Disabled". Then stop the service.

But it's strange, because this process does not exist in my Task Manager, neither in the services.msc list.

Yes it restarts immediately. Funny thing is, once I switch to sort by name (so I could find "Gaming Services"), it always shows "Gaming Services(2)", does that mean two of them are running? I end process, but when I close task manager and open it back up, it's restarted and top of the cpu usage list again.

Yes. Bracket numbers mean there is more than one instance of it running. Try checking if you can disable it, I added how in my previous post.

I didn't try what you said yet, before I do I wanted to know if you would look at the screenshot and see if it's supposed to be listed twice.

I had the same thing happen on my Windows 10 work(!!) laptop where I have no games installed.
Never could figure out what it was, but at some point it just stopped. It never happened on my Window 11 personal PC.

Press Win+G, to open the XBox gamebar. Check the options if you maybe have some background screen recording service active.

If you don't need it, deactivate the service completely, that should do it.

Malware?

Here is screenshot showing it in my task manager

w/e

I already have X-Box Game bar turned off. I had done that before. MMMmmmm, I wonder if the update restarted it even though it still shows as off? I'm gonna try turning it on and then off again.

Nope. Turned it on, then back off again, and those two gaming services still on, still show up as orange taking up a huge chunk of CPU when first opened. Guess I'll just have to leave task manager open all the time.

Unbelievable.

Yeah, if you don't play any games relying on XBOX service related stuff, you should be able to safely disable it.

You can also open Settings in Windows, type in "Game Bar" and disable that. I have it enabled because I occasionally use it without issues to record my screen in games, but you can try disabling it to check if it does anything.

That looks as it should, so no worries. Although I have no idea why it's not present for me :P

It won't let me change it from "Automatic"??? It's greyed out and unchangeable. (I'm talking about when opening up msservices and right clicking properties....etc.)

I just now realized why I don't have it there. I am on Windows 10 Education, which most likely doesn't even have those in the first place. Seems that on regular consumer editions, it can't be disabled by the user.

This article I found has some good general info on it. Try going through the "Potential issues and solutions" section and if all fails, it also offers a method for completely removing it through Power Shell, which should with a 100% certainty remove the issue if it's indeed the cause.

https://www.windowsdigitals.com/what-is-gaming-services-exe-in-windows-11-10/

Thank you.

Can disable it perhaps in the registry and do a google search with a cross reference to Task Scheduler. Scheduler probably has it listed to turn on at some point.

[i]I also had the same issue, but it happened after I paused one game downloaded, seems the XGP using service as "Delivery Optimization". It means the Microsoft use peer to peer method for others XGP users.

To fix this issue, some people suggest install SSD device to prevent this problem or disable the "Delivery Optimization" service.[/i]

https://www.reddit.com/r/XboxGamePass/comments/dvqdjx/every_20_minutes_gamingservices_service_spikes_my/?rdt=38828

Try it^.

edit: also, this: disable background apps.