Comments on: Boycott Games For Windows Live

By: The Colonel

The Colonel — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:17:14 +0000

What is this achievement business all about? Since when were cheap gimmicks like that of any interest to PC gamers?

By: august

august — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:29:59 +0000

im not much of a PC gamer but for DoW2 i’d make an exception. and for a chance to avoid MS’ shit, id make an exception to that exception, so now im stuck with a wonderful game that i want to play, but was totally ruined by GFWL.
I wasnt even interested in multiplayer, i was perfectly happy to do singleplayer and move on, but no, i couldnt even do that without fuckin GFWL.
what a load of shit, i hope it dies and burns in hell.

By: daniel

daniel — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:11:19 +0000

hi guy it is my opinion that gfwl is the wortt thing you cane put on a game iv recently bought gta4 and becase of live i cant use normal trainers and i cant use a save games and considering iv bought every gta game out there this is the worst of all because of live i say microsoft sould keep it nose out of gamers buisness and get lost i say down with live and microsoft( bunch of thivin gits)

By: Colin

Colin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:39:29 +0000

I don’t even see why we should tolerate this kind of behavior. Being able to play and save your game has been a standard of PCs since the beginning. What right does Microsoft have to remove this basic functionality?

This calls for a petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/StopGFWL/

By: some guy

some guy — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:56:14 +0000

GFWL is (mostly) free for the pc to pc right now, but thats only because microsoft isnt stupid. MS is hoping to reach a certain level of market adoption on the pc front with GFWL in order to sell their live format as the one all pc devs should use. Once/if they reach that point, then we will see monthly fees for pc gaming. Avoiding GFWL as much as possible is not a bad idea in this regard.

As an example, I own Gears of War for my pc, and while it is a great game, the whole GFWL is an annoying clusterfuck. It isnt as bad as STEAM, since it doesnt require you to be online to play the single player component of a game, but the whole format is terrible regardless.

Multiplayer is where it gets really sick. Due to the fact that Ms has splintered the playerbase. There are a total of 4 different multiplayer versus lobbys (gold ranked, gold unranked, silver unranked, and live list) and all do the same thing. I rarely see more than 5 games going at any given time because of this splintering. Co-op is also absurd, as you require a gold account to set up a private room for you and your friend to start a game in (game invites are no allowed for non-gold). If you run with silver, you are forced to make a “list” game and hope your friend is the first to get in your game as anyone can join, and the host cannot kick once the co-op has started. Thus you have to quit the game and restart and remake the room, etc etc.

By: TickledBlue

TickledBlue — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:08:10 +0000

Does DRM and GFWL really piss off the consumer? I think a lot of us, who are hardcore gamers and PC aficionados, tend to forget that we are often not the greatest sample of the consumer market. If we were the PC wouldn’t be seeing declining game sales and the Wii wouldn’t be the runaway success that it is.

Your everyday consumer wants it simple and fun, they don’t want to struggle with server lists, having to open ports in their firewall or spend 3 hours with a config file to squeeze all the performance juice out. Nowadays they don’t even want to have to install. Put in the game and play it, anything else is too much trouble.

My understanding of GFW was to try to emulate the console experience on a windows machine – in that sense GFWL follows that model as XBox 360 gamers cough up the extra cash to be ‘allowed’ to play their games online. Will the average consumer give a damn or just see it as the same as World of Warcraft – you need to pay to play?

By: MeestaNob!

MeestaNob! — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:13:08 +0000

Well, I only have one title with GFW Live on it, Gears of War, and I wont be buying another one.
GoW is great (if shallow) fun, but the GFWL system is bloody awful.

- Depending on whether I run the Vista->Games->GoW link or autoplay off the DVD it doesn’t always log me in to GFWL.
- Once logged in I’ve never seen it grab a patch for GoW or GFWL even though I know there are ones available. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to force it to look/download either.
- It isn’t counting my achievements. I have no idea if I need a Gold account to do this (I’m on the free Silver one and will most certainly not be upgrading), and I cant for the life of me find ANYTHING that tells me which enables what.
- I’m not even certain I’m logged in properly, or maybe just using a local profile. I HAVE NO IDEA WHATSOEVER which is certainly not good enough.
- Multiplayer match making through GFWL Gold only. Get fucked. I’d rather get reamed by good players than pay $80 to play n00bs.
- And further more if I need to read the manual to figure out anything then its SHIT. Even at 1900×1200 GFWL cant they find some screen real estate for some helpful advice on whats going on?

I dont mean to turn this into a Steam admiration session, but it does all of the above so much better (even when it was shit 2 years ago) that its not funny. If it had multiplayer match making based on stats (which you had better believe must be coming) then it would be fantastic.

As above, if Mass Effect has ANYTHING to do with GFW Live I just wont be buying it. I wouldn’t even pirate it, its just too awful and painful to use.

By: RichPowers

RichPowers — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:04:26 +0000

Good point, Shawny, but consumers shouldn’t have to differentiate between the two; PC gaming is confusing enough already. When the only difference between a marketing scheme (GFW) and a horrible matchmaking service (GFWL) is one letter, there’s a problem.

Seriously, a hearty “FU!” to Redmond.

By: Shawny D

Shawny D — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:21:45 +0000

I’m not going to read every response, and I have to clarify something:

MASS EFFECT IS NOT GFW LIVE

MASS EFFECT WILL OFFER IT’S OWN ONLINE ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM

“GFW LIVE” and “GFW” Branded Games are NOT the same. Almost all PC Games offer the GFW brand, they just aren’t “Live” enabled.

By: Toad

Toad — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:00:03 +0000

Just reading through the article and the comments and am a bit worried about this (not sure if i should be thou). I actually like the concept of G4WL but not sure about not having a choice and needing to have a gold membership for game access.

If MS / Developers are tying in basic single or multi player aspects of the game that you purchase shouldn’t this be part of the minimum requirements on the retail box or terms & conditions for online purchase. Also shouldn’t that limitation be obvious to the customer?

Does anyone know anything about the above?

By: TreeFrog

TreeFrog — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:52:21 +0000

@Tak
Xbox is predicted to make its first profit this year, I believe. They’ll have those 4 BILLION dollars back in no time.
Har.

Steam DRM: I seem to be more suspicious of this than most. The bit in the Steamworks announcement about regional control irked me. People buy multiregion DVD players for a good reason.

I have a pitchfork and a flaming brand within reach, Powers-That-Be. WITHIN REACH.

By: Tak

Tak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:03:56 +0000

Just because something fails from MSFT doesn’t mean they pull it. See XBox (the first one). They’re now a serious contender in the home console market, but will never recover those costs since they’re still operating at a loss to the best of my knowledge.

@sigma:
Steam is very much a DRM system as much as content delivery. It’s the fact that Valve is up-front about it and provides lots of extra value-added stuff (hardware surveys, steamfriends, in-game overlay that works with most games, etc) that keeps gamers from waving pitchforks. And, it generally works without breaking all your other stuff. That’s always a plus.