Games for Windows Live Shutting down

[theclaw]

If only the gaming media would prod MS for transparency on this. 4 months yet I still haven't heard them admit to the shut down after retracting it.

[marurun]

I have the disc Bioshock 1, and that does require some GFWL crap. Wish I could trade it in for Steam...

[Fragems]

I have the disc Bioshock 1, and that does require some GFWL crap. Wish I could trade it in for Steam...

At least you can get Bioshock 1,2 and infinite for around $14 at Amazon whenever they are having sales. Seen that pack come up multiple times in the last few months.

Edit:
Talking about steam codes.

[emwearz]

Wish Bioshock and Bioshock 2 would finally get off GFWL.

They are off it aren't they?

Also you can activate your retail copy of BS2 on Steam.

EDIT: Just double checed.

Bioshock 2 is no longer GFWL on Steam, also they gave all the DLC for free to people who had registered before the change. As I said above you can activate retails keys. Full steamworks game now.

As said above Bioshock 1 never used it.

[isiolia]

I have the disc Bioshock 1, and that does require some GFWL crap. Wish I could trade it in for Steam...

I just pulled my copy off the shelf (Limited Edition that I preordered, so 1.0 on the disc), installed it, and started a game. Definitely no GFWL.

[o.pwuaioc]

I have Bioshock, too, and I've installed it without GFWL as well. Steam's Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection, however, has been ticking me off with its GFWL BS.

[Cronozilla]

It used Games for Windows, but it doesn't use Live.

If the game uses "Games for Windows", without Live, it usually just means it has integration for controller support and that game management program on Windows.

The only ones you need to worry about are the ones that use "Live".

And beyond that, the only ones you really need to worry about are the ones that require you to be signed in to do things like save. Outside of that, you can use a cracked Live file and it won't be an issue. LAN and things like that will still function.

It'd be nice if publishers got on getting rid of Live support in their PC games. I'm mostly worried about Capcom and Sega titles that still have them. They're not the most supportive publishers. I think people like Epic don't really care, and I doubt Gears of War will get patched. Which also means, unless you want to play it in one sitting, you're on a timeline for that title.

[Cronozilla]

This is just a personal suspicion, but I'll share it here.

I think that publishers get blatant bonus' from manufacturers for releasing certain games on certain platforms, or using certain libraries. It might be money, or it might be support, or it could even be a release deal promise, or a licensing fee reduction: who knows. But one pattern I have noticed is there seems to be specific support for devices and hardware from specific manufacturers, and not from others. I've noticed it with retailers also.

For example, why would GameStop push Xbox 360 so hard, when Wii was outselling it a few years ago? The games they'd push on 360 to people buying for families, were things like Kinect Sports, so, it wouldn't be entirely farfetched to think that Microsoft would give them some chunk of the 360s sold in their stores, beyond what they would get from normal retail operations. I don't know if they did that ... but it wouldn't surprise me, and it would make a lot of decisions in the video game industry make a lot more sense.

On the other hand, it's probably a lot like the mentality that studio film execs use when buying up film rights. We're going to make a movie based on Battleship ... because Toy movies are doing OK, and we already have this other movie in production that has some Battleships in it, and it can only give us extra people in seats. There's no planning, or care, for beyond that point. It's just the idea of getting a quick turn around. Who cares about profit margins in three years, or critical reception ... all that matters is opening weekend and if by the time the film finishes it's theatrical run, we've made X% more than the movie cost to make.

There's absolutely no thought of consumer interests in these things and I wouldn't be surprised if most businesses were ran that way. Just aiming at profit margins, rather than product goals and customer satisfaction. It's probably fairly rare that someone declared they would never watch a film distributed by Universal again after seeing that movie.

Note: I'm aware Battleship actually flopped and didn't even make 1/3rd of it's budget back, it was just for example purposes as it's one of the most blatant ones I can think of. Sometimes that formula works sometimes it fails. But, I think, more often than not, it works.

[isiolia]

I just don't understand why publishers decide on using services like Games for Windows Live in the first place. Don't they do any research before signing any deals with Microsoft? They should be demanding Microsoft to improve the client if it is having issues. Sometimes the big guys don't care.

Objectively speaking, they likely used GFWL in the same way that they used any number of other libraries that were available to them on Windows. DirectX, XInput, and so on. In that respect, GFWL is for online multiplayer. Integrating into that is simpler than rolling their own system, especially for cross-platform titles that were using Live on the 360 already.

While the system itself turned out to be annoying, the basic premise made sense. My suspicion is that MS would have supporting it more had it actually become the standard they presumably hoped it would.