FindPackagesByPackageFamily is unable to find wasdk 1.8 packages

[HO-COOH]

Describe the bug

I found out that all my packaged app that has been upgraded to wasdk 1.8 all stops working on older windows 10 (windows 10 17763 to be exact). After some debugging, it seems that it did not find the package, causing the DeploymentManager initializer to fail (which is by default enabled for some reason).

However, I can confirm the package DO exist.

and the same call is able to find the package under windows 11.

A temporary solution I found is just disable auto-initializer in the vcxproj, and I am not sure about what is is affecting from this documentation

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Create a winui3 project using the C++ winui3 packaged project template in Visual Studio 2026.
2. Run and debug under windows 10.

Expected behavior

No response

Screenshots

No response

NuGet package version

Windows App SDK 1.8.3: 1.8.251106002

Packaging type

Packaged (MSIX)

Windows version

Windows 10 version 1809 (17763, October 2018 Update)

IDE

No response

Additional context

Visual Studio 2026