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[CognitiveDissonance]

Good riddance. I've mostly had okay experiences with GFWL. But when it went bad, it went REALLY REALLY REALLY bad. It looks like dear ol' MS are still in full damage control mode, what with profit losses from Windows 8, tablets and XBONE fallout. Let's hope they hire real software engineers, and even splurge for real testers this time around.

[nenjin]

In GFWL's defense, it and its predecessor were both developed without a full appreciation of the impact Steam was going to have on the marketplace. GFWL wanted to be a platform for selling MS games and Marketplace content. They didn't account for the fact that Steam was doing all that and more, better, when they launched. So GFWL was seen as redundant and purely motivated by DRM.

And again, to be fair, no one else saw it coming either pretty much. Uplay, Origins....everyone dropped the ball when competing with Steam, even with ample time to understand why it's been successful. GFWL just kind of went out there, totally unprepared for what the market was going to become and unable to offer users a REASON not to hate it.

[CognitiveDissonance]

In GFWL's defense, it and its predecessor were both developed without a full appreciation of the impact Steam was going to have on the marketplace. GFWL wanted to be a platform for selling MS games and Marketplace content. They didn't account for the fact that Steam was doing all that and more, better, when they launched. So GFWL was seen as redundant and purely motivated by DRM.

And again, to be fair, no one else saw it coming either pretty much. Uplay, Origins....everyone dropped the ball when competing with Steam, even with ample time to understand why it's been successful. GFWL just kind of went out there, totally unprepared for what the market was going to become and unable to offer users a REASON not to hate it.

This is almost literally beating a dead horse, but... the problem for me with GFWL is that it had minimum support and a lot of issues. As of recently, I had to go through some fun times with GFWL to run Dark Souls on PC. The issue? Endless "wrong version"/"updating" errors. I contacted MS support, and they pretty much shrugged and said they have no idea. Too bad.

The problem was that a relatively recent update has broken installations. It was a common problem, and required a full clear(harder than it sounds)/redownload/reinstall of the software. In addition, a core legacy service needed to be disabled in services.msc that otherwise prevented the software from connecting. This is not something a regular user should be expected to do, and definitely something to be covered by windows update - or at least technical staff.

Origin and UPlay are meh; their main downsides is that their respective companies have not made a full investment in server infrastructure and they go down randomly under load. That's just people trying to save a buck, and gets a lot of contempt from me. An excellent example would be Origin code activation servers going down on the first day of their ongoing HumbleBundle. Given EA's budget, and the HumbleBundle being promo material for them, this shouldn't be happening.

But back to GFWL. It's fine in it's own, but it has had many catastrophic downtimes, severe hardware incompatabilities, faulty patches that caused extensive operating system failures and games erased from player records. That's not acceptable for any software publisher, let alone a giant like Microsoft.

[nenjin]

But back to GFWL. It's fine in it's own, but it has had many catastrophic downtimes, severe hardware incompatabilities, faulty patches that caused extensive operating system failures and games erased from player records. That's not acceptable for any software publisher, let alone a giant like Microsoft.

See, I almost never experienced those problems with GFWL. The worst I had was some service downtimes, and that my RE5 play data seemed to up and vanish. Otherwise GFWL rarely gave real problems...it just wasn't pleasant to use at all.

[10ebbor10]

Didn't Microsoft integrate the DRM systems into Windows 8/ metro?

Besides, Ex-valve employee joining Microsoft doesn't say much. Valve has a habit of hiring prominent people in the industry, so obviously they're wanted in other companies too.

[Aklyon]

Is that the old Age of Empires, or the recent one?

[nenjin]

Age of Empires of Online.

[BigD145]

Darn it, I want to play Universe at War now! I can't even play it even though I own it on Steam.

DRM only hurts legitimate users.

[Neonivek]

Darn it, I want to play Universe at War now! I can't even play it even though I own it on Steam.

DRM only hurts legitimate users.

That is the point of DRM.

The Piracy thing is just the red herring they created.

[Matz05]

True, the point of DRM is to prevent legitimate users from giving away games or reusing them after a hiatus/computer change/etc.
That's really the only way you can make money off of it in excess of what you would make from having a good product, so logically it's the only reason to use it.

[Graknorke]

Wooooooooooooooooo!

"Now announcing Windows ONE, now with biometric game locking! Note: Required retinal rectal scanner sold separately, MSRP $69.99"

FTFY.

"Smaller rectal probe sold separately"

"For only 199.99$ we can attach it to origin! Now you can have twice the frustration, because people don't want to play our games, right?"

"If you buy the whole pack we'll throw in some SPORTS and TELEVISION for a slightly reduced fee!"

[Gamerboy4life]

Dark Souls

Oh god, as much as I hate G4WL, the last thing I want is for this to shut down with it.

Dark Souls has been my ambrosia for the past couple months, and the second one isn't coming out until late 2014, if I recall? Maybe even a year or so later- I can't seem to find even an estimate for the date.

Just... ugh, I don't like it, but it was never really a problem for me when I got it set up. I'd rather it stay up and be able to play GTA IV, Dark Souls, etc, than lose those.



And if I recall, game saves are associated with your G4WL account. Not only would it shut down multiplayer and ruin most games, some games would be virtually UNPLAYABLE.

[BigD145]

Start finding those offline GFWL hacks. "Pirating" will likely save the day.

[Aklyon]

Start finding those offline GFWL hacks. "Pirating" will likely save the day.

As long as you've actually bought that game, its technically an unofficial patch. Potentially a official one later, but don't hold your breath waiting for that.

[Krevsin]

Well, according to this article, GFWL isn't dead. They only shut down the store, while the program itself will still run and mess with your fluid playing of the game. So, rejoice! Dark Souls won't stop working!

But the suck isn't dead entirely, so let us mourn.