By John Walker on January 27th, 2009 at 12:54 pm.
Fallout 3 has released its first batch of downloadable newness. The DLC, called Operation Anchorage, is apparently available now. You’re trying to gain access to a shelter, which requires you complete a military simulation of the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska, set between 2076 and 2077. Once it’s installed, it’s announced on the radio, and you can hot-leap to its location. There’s a smattering of new content, including a new perk: Covert Ops. What follows is my attempt to get it.
You need to know that I’ve not read previews of this, nor indeed about the DLC for the game at all. I am now aware that it’s a Games For Windows Live affair, but this wasn’t a piece of information I’d picked up before today. I’ve not touched GFWL since its redesign. None of this may be relevant to you, or happen to anyone else. This is what happened to me.
My first instinct, and you’ll laugh, was to launch the game. I have the Steam version, and wondered if it would auto-update to let me choose to buy the new content. It costs 800 Microsoft Points, it seems, and while I’m not sure how one would spend those on a PC, I was confident I’d find out.
There was first a hefty update. I hadn’t tried to run the game since before Christmas, and the patch has appeared since then. The game opens. Sadly, the “DOWNLOADS” option was greyed out. Never mind, I thought, I’ll look on the Fallout 3 website for details. With the announcement of the launch today, it must surely be the big news story… Um, no. Instead the patch from the 13th presided. (Steam Update News? Last entry, October 31st.) In fact, if there’s a clue about it on Bethesda’s site, I can’t find it. There’s nothing under Downloads either.
Looking in the comments on the ShackNews story, I saw that it requires Games For Windows Live. Aha! Back into the game, and the “LIVE” option. Down pops the slick new interface, and asks me to log in or create an account. I have one, of course, so popped in the details. It needed to update. Good old Windows. Without asking my permission it quit out the game and downloaded its updates, then vanished without telling me it was done. Nice.
So I restart Fallout 3 and DOWNLOADS is still greyed out. Go into Live, tell it my account details again, and this time it downloads my account. Ta-da! The DOWNLOADS option is there! I’m surely almost there. I click it.
“No new content available.”
I see.
Back to the ShackNews comments. Ah, it seems you need to run GFWL. Quick search of my hard drive, as I’m sure I installed it once. Maybe not. Let’s screw that, I thought, and just download it again. I find the download on the site, get it, run it, and it’s installed. No option for a shortcut on the desktop, etc, but it’s there in the Start Menu. Any second now!
Run it. I require a hotfix for Windows XP to install GFWL. Apparently this couldn’t be included in any of the four hundred thousand updates Windows XP likes to install each week. So I click the option to get it, and find myself on this page, which eventually has the link after discussing error codes I haven’t seen. Download it, run it, and I have successfully completed the KB938759 Setup Wizard! It now requires a restart. Oh good Lord.
Restarted. Run GFWL. Log in. And there it is. The evidence that Operation Anchorage exists. My MS points balance is empty, which means it needs to launch IE (dust flying everywhere) and asks me to log in again 30 seconds after logging in. You can’t buy 800 points, obviously. You have to buy 500 or 1000. I don’t want 500 or 1000, I want 800. £8.50 for 1000. Of course it requires a credit card, there’s no option for Paypal or Google Checkout. Nor even a Switch card. It’s gotta be about those credit cards! Fortunately mine’s already registered from 360 excursions, so that will save time.
No it won’t! Of course it won’t! It was funny when I said it would save time, wasn’t it? The valid, working card is greyed out, the radio button next to it unavailable for checking. “You have no valid cards on file.” Apart from THE ONE YOU’VE GOT LISTED THERE. Ah well, there’s an “Edit” button next to the card entry – I’ll reassure it that it’s fine. Oh no, silly me. The “Edit” button doesn’t do anything, does it. Nor does “Add a new Credit Card”. I click on another link to another page of the site. Click the link back to the “buy” page. Re-enter my password, because it’s been over a minute. This time I’m allowed to add a new card. Well, exactly the same card. Money spent.
It’s a 352MB download, which begins.
Thank goodness the uncontrolled madness of being able to buy the content from the publisher’s website, or worse, from inside the game, has come to an end. I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’ve run out of time. However, there’s lots of info here on this unofficial page.
PS. If I’m logged into Live I can’t access my save games. Sign out and they come back, but I get this message:
Edit: Eurogamer have given the DLC 5/10. Also, solutions for this savegame bullshit are in the comments below – thanks guys.
This is wrong.
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GFWL has Steam beat for sure now!
I’m so glad that i can spend 80% of £8.50 (£6.80 is more than i paid for mount and blade just the other day) on a sex-spansion for fallout 3, sex-clusively on GFWL as buying things on Steam is such a chore.
So, as the first piece of DLC, i need to ask is it horse armor? Instead of sand do i now get snow?
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The manager of Games for Windows was fired today or yesterday. I suspect things like this are part of the reason.
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I’m not using Live precisely because of the savegame issue. If anybody knows how to solve that, I would appreciate it.
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GFWL is the sole reason why i cannot play DoW 2 beta, simply because the hotfix everyone who has english windows XP can install without a problem DOESNT F***ING WORK with other languages and reinstalling your windows in english just so it can find the default install path is something that lies aproximately billion miles past the “Scre it!” point.
So yeah, another DLC the obviously don’t want people to buy.
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Yay for content that should be a free patch. Thanks Microsoft for the wonder that is DLC!
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Leave it to Microsoft to mess up the first real offering they have for GFWL. Like an obscure, undocumented, arcane offering attempting to tie in to their hardware offerings isn’t worthless to a PC Gamer who probably has at least 3 other like services already installed and running. At least it doesn’t take 50 bucks a year anymore (or whatever it was that was more than free).
I found this for those trying to find their saves – “Thanks Toms Hardware!”
-snip-
The way it works is simple. There are 2 sets of save files. If you are connected to live and save a game it is saved in username/documents/My Games/Fallout3/saves/. BUT if you are not using live then when you save the files are just in username/documents/My Games/Fallout3/saves/. There are both live saves and non-live saves.
-snip-
I’ve been looking forward to playing this DLC, but not playing the metagame to get them… I’d love a backuppable standalone executable I give Bethesda money for, but cest la vie.
-EDIT- Heliocentric sounds like he’s listening to GWAR this morning…
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John, you need to copy the savegame files from your offline profile to the GFW profile name folder. You’ll find all of this under your Documents->Games->Fallout3 directory. Once you do this, you’ll get access to your saves while logged in to GFW Live when in-game.
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What is it Valve said about offering a better service than piracy? And why has neither of these two listened?
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Three cheers for the wonders of Microsoft design =) Horrible stuff this, I wonder if they even understand how much money they lose by scaring away customers like this? A quick easy process that leads a potential customer into the buying process right away is what makes any web-based shopping a success.
Anyways, you can solve the issue with savegames dissapearing by copying the saved files in My Documents\My Games\Fallout 3 (I think that was the correct path… the folder all your saves are stored in, put simply) to the subfolder that should have been created there with the name of your Live account. Log in to live in-game and you should now be able to access your old copied saves. Worked for me when I had to do it a few months ago =)
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GWAR?
*Gooh gles*
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gwar/timefordeath.html
Buh?
Anyone wondering about the point of buying this exclusive GWFL DOWNLOADABLE entertainment expansion Know this, it WILL end up on a retail disk (est 15 quid) with all the other horse armor and fetch quests they want you to buy.
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I had a quick glance at this before lunch and whilst my journey hasn’t been as epic as John’s it was still painfully obtuse.
: (
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Personally I haven’t had a problem with GFWL in the two years I’ve owned it and I find it loads about a bajillion times faster than Steam (well steam takes a good twenty seconds just to get to the my games page) but I guess that doesn’t matter when there’s something to get AIM frothing.
To those of you talking about not having a Live account. So you’ve never played Viva Pinata? You get the hell out of my internet.
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I guess I won’t be buying this expansion then. I’m enjoying my leisurely trek through the wasteland but I already have one online games account (Steam) and I’m certainly not getting one that requires you to preload it with funny money instead of letting you buy stuff up front.
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DRM.
This is another problem. The day Microsoft stop distributing this patch, that day you will be unable to buy or install it. Is DLC, so is suppose to be downloaded.
BLOAT.
Microsoft horrible bloat.
SCAM.
Pay for things that use to be random. Pay 1000 points to buy 800 points.
POORLY CODED.
Strange error messages that only make sense on a 8 bits console. I suppose in this day and age all consoles have hard disk. This stuff about “your storage device” is bullshit.
WAREZ
I suppose you will get this faster downloading from usenet / pando / dc++ / emule or other p2p network. If you pay this, Microsoft will get his money and this why dont let dev’s to give stuff for free.
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It could be far worse! Bethesda or Microsoft (possibly both) in their infinite wisdom have decided not to sell the DLC for PC gamers in Japan – despite selling Fallout 3 to us in English over Steam. Guess I’ll just have to enjoy the screen shots, I think that’s probably the closest I’m going to get to the DLC for the forseeable future =/ It’s time’s like this that make me wish I still living in the UK. This and cornish pasties, anyhow.
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I got around the GFWL save game problem like this:
* Log out of GFWL
* Load a saved game
* Go back to the menu and log in to GFWL
* Save the game
Now, the new games are available when logged in, the ond ones are available when you aren’t.
Note: You don’t get any achievements from your old saves. You have to manually unlock them once you’ve signed in.
Note also: You’d think with all of the above behaviour, it would at least work like steamcloud so that the saves became available on other machines. It doesn’t.
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Yes, i need to mae a point of this, keep yout fucking intergalactic space bucks. Charge me in either USD or GBP if you want, but i’m not wasting extra money on the provision i might want things in the future.
ie
pack 1 800
pack 2 800
pack 3 500
Means i have 900 spare points worth 7.65 gbp, thats more than any one of the expansions and you wont let me have it back.
Nah, i’m holding out for the retail, if that.
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Heh. I was more going for this song – “Sexecutioner”
I’d also wager for collected DLC on a disc sooner or later. Maybe if we can prove we spend 2400 MS points on the 3 DLCs then we get it free, right? Am I Right? Bethesda? Zenimax? (I know better than to ask Microsoft. In their own words that make me spit venom and bile “Well, I think you know the answer to that.”)
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To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll get all I can from Fallout 3 as it is. Only just got to the Pentagon, and I’ve been playing in pretty much all my free time for the past week.
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http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/01/26/fallout-3-operation-anchorage-dlc.aspx
I thought the DLC was meant to be free for PC, obviously not…
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“Personally I haven’t had a problem with GFWL in the two years I’ve owned it and I find it loads about a bajillion times faster than Steam (well steam takes a good twenty seconds just to get to the my games page) but I guess that doesn’t matter when there’s something to get AIM frothing.”
My games takes a few seconds here, still a bit odd though idd. Steam has a faster login time, at least has a proper seperate executable and friends chat and is so smart as not to direct the overlay shortcut to a single button like Live does with the Home key. Live has some cool stuff but in practical terms it’s still lightyears away from being decent or even a good matchmaking solution on PC. Just play the DoW II beta and you’ll know why…
More competition is good so I’d love to see it succeed but then MS needs to get rid of the many issues and their stupid idea to get a link to their own console platform.
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Yikes. A silly question, because I know the answer, but it’s still somewhat remarkable – how can they get it so right on 360 and so wrong on PC?
What’s wrong with the old way of doing things where the installer for extra content just sees your current game and patches it instead of trying to emulate 360 functionality – which is very, very bad idea because the PC isn’t a single closed platform with one path to all content and treating it as such is wrong-headed and bad. Bad Microsoft, BAD.
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DEAR MICROSOFT:
PC Gamers have spoken. GFWL is a big pile of leathery old cunt. Please abort it now. I’ll bring the stirrups.
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I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again (in a moment in fact, although technically I’m not saying it…except in my own head…I dunno if that counts..erm – where was I?): Microsoft Games for Windows is ruining gaming on Windows. I’ve got several titles that use Windows live and with every single one I’ve had problems with Windows Live. Please stick to making buggy spreadsheet software and poorly optimised OS’ and keep away from my games.
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Reply to SwiftRanger
Well personally I can’t stand front ends as it slows everything right down. As it is Steam takes upto a minute just to start up even when I’m offline. Steam makes me have to jump through far too many hoops to get into a single player game, especially when it refuses to start until you’ve fully updated it. Live may take as long to start but crucially it loads while the game is loading.
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*Launches XBox 360*
*Downloads Content*
*Plays Fallout 3*
Thank christ I have yet to run into the GFW system…
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Epic tale indeed. In my case it starts with Step 0. – “Games for Windows Live is not available in your territory”. Well played, MS.
As Ofoug said, just copy your saves manually, they reside in the My Documents/Crap/Other Crap/Fallout 3/Saves (or something; why do games insist on putting data in the “My Documents” folder anyway? What’s wrong with “Program Files”?).
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Fucking Lol, Walker. I laughed a lot here with this article. Microsoft really should improve this.
And do you know what is it the most fun thing here? The DLC is only some files in the form of a mod for Fallout 3/Oblivion: the normal bsa, esm, esp format files from Bethesda. It seems you can copy and paste the files in the correct carpet and it will work. So a normal user will have to go this hell, and the pirate user will unzip a file downloaded from a rapidshare link.
Sigh.
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I’m astonished they’ve ported their utterly abhorrent points system over onto PC. Hopefully no one will stand for it, and they’ll abandon it like they did requiring an Xbox Live gold account to play PC games online.
Microsoft: stupid stupid stupid.
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Oh gosh , are there people that are playing games using the pc instead of buying or xbox 360?
I know, GFWL!
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Wow, what an experience. Thanks for going into such detail, John. That’s embarrassingly bad.
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I’ll wait until all three DLCs are released and hope for an expansion disc like they did for Oblivion.
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Heh. And there are people who complain that Linux wouldn’t be a viable gaming platform because of esoteric configuration/patching/install requirements.
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Nice article – the familiar pain of pissing about with Windows..
This is why console players are such smart gits all the time.
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Enjoy your horse armour. I, on the other hand, welcome our new modding overlords.
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Yeah, I’ll wait for the “DLC” pack on CD, or for them to put it on Impulse or Steam, both of which work quite straightforwardly without mucking around with stupid points scams.
And I really, really like Fallout 3.
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“(or something; why do games insist on putting data in the “My Documents” folder anyway? What’s wrong with “Program Files”?).”
because dealing with a UAC escalation prompt when you wanted to save would get old, really fast.
you need admin rights to write to program files; you don’t need them to write to your userspace. All tools that migrate profiles will copy the files if they are in your userspace, but they won’t if they are in program files.
the gfwl interface itself is a lot better than it used to be (it doesn’t ask you to press joypad buttons anymore) but evidently interacting with other tentacles of microsoft is still a problem
(like: any site that doesn’t use a universal payment system like paypal and operates in the uk really should support switch.)
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Seeing as I have it for the PS3, this makes me feel slightly better for not being able to get any of the DLC at all.
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@ Jockel
That’s exactly what I’m waiting for.
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It’s a pity they didn’t fire the complete GfWL team. And the IE team. They are the worst of the worst at Microsoft. And that’s saying a lot.
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seriously… so wrong the pirates win again. I’ll torrent this and send Bethesda the money in the post.
Note to Microsoft GfW isn’t going to work… stop it already your just making yourself look stupid.
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John Walker = ‘Lord Of Persevere’.
Lol.
Christ… I think I’ll wait for a full disk too. There is no way I’m going to have the patience for that..
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Buy our dlc buy our dlc buy our dlc buy our dlcbuy our dlc buy our dlcbuy our dlc buy our dlc
Fuck your shitty dlc, wankers.
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Oh, so this “DLC” costs money? Yeah, that’s a turn off. I get that GFWL is a chore, and I wouldn’t want to go through all those hoops either. But, like Walker, I bought Fallout3 through Steam, and I’ll only buy their expansions and whatnot when Steam offers them, if they ever do. Or otherwise I’ll find a standalone service that will let me install them into my Steam copy.
If this is going to be GFWL exclusive, then fuck that. I won’t pay to have my game hosted by one online service and then pay to have a separate part of it, however large or small, hosted by another. Especially not another that I nor many others plan to ever use again.
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How much did Bethesda get payed to use GFWL? Seriously, if I were a developer I’d never pay or receive money to include such a restricting and complicated piece of software into my own.
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So does anybody have knowledge of what the modders have achieved yet?
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Considering the official process seems so utterly hateful, I’ll wait for one click install pirate version. Admitedly, that one click will probably also install the black death on my machine, but anything is better than GFWL.
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@Frymaster:
UAC? That’s this hilarious Vista feature that asks your for permission if you as much as look at your files in a funny way, right? I’m one of those users that prefer XP, antique as it may be.
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I resolve the issue of saved games disappearing by copying the saved files in My Documents\My Games\Fallout 3. All of the saved files are stored in and later put to the subfolder that should have been created there with your active account.
——————–
- – vigilon security
.
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LOL. Reading through GAF and this part had me laughing.
“Then on the main menu, under LIVE, there’s Downloads. Click it.
It’ll say no new content. CLICK THAT.
Then it’ll open a program.”
Oh yeah! Why didn’t I think to click on the link that says No New Content when I was looking for New Content?
I much prefer Mr. Walker’s telling though…
Nothing better than your consumers who WANT to give you money but, instead, they are forced to multiple third party message boards to try to figure out how to give you money. Idiots. Sometimes I wonder just how Microsoft made so much money. It boggles my mind the ineptitude and bungling that goes on there some times. It’s almost like they have a competing hardware service (competing with themselves naturally) that offers a similar experience that they get more money from so they are intentionally sabotaging the larger mind and market share they already have a hold over that they could make more money from if leveraged correctly. /sigh
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Sounds like this will be far easier to donload someplace else…
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Hasn’t anyone executed Microsoft for crimes against humanity yet? Throw the whole lot of them into a deep blue pool (of death), I say.
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This is in no way a defence of Microsoft, but GFWL does seem to work a hell of a lot better with Vista.
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“You don’t get any achievements from your old saves. You have to manually unlock them once you’ve signed in.”
What do you mean with “manually unlock them”? Nor that they are worth a lot, but I would like to unlock all the things I did before moving my saves to the Live acount.
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I never thought I’d see the day when I would prefer playing and downloading stuff on a console to a PC.
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The guy who ran GFWL was sacked recently http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22009 , so should partially satiate the bloodlust people (rightly) have over the balls up it is.
My anger at GFWL is due to having to spend about half an hour creating mutliple accounts for the Dawn of War 2 beta, and trying to coax it into linking them all together, or linking them to my PC, or some-such.
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so after all that rigamarole, the dlc is also mediocre?
garsh.
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Now isn’t that terrific, I’ve just read that Games for Windows will only let me buy the German version of Operation Anchorage. Not because of legal/censorship issues, mind, but because I have a German account. It will allegedly work with my English version of the game, but it’ll be a language mix-up.
Just let me buy it for *real money* in the version I prefer, eh? Fools.
Oh, and have you ever tried to find a Games for Windows support number? It’s a wasteland – as opposed to the Xbox Live website (where you at least find a number).
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I think… this is a first time I RAGED about something written by John Walker.
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John this is exactly the kind of thing we need to see more attention paid to by journalists. Far too often difficulties are swept under the rug.
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@pauleyc:
> UAC? That’s this hilarious Vista feature that asks your for
> permission if you as much as look at your files in a funny
> way, right? I’m one of those users that prefer XP, antique
> as it may be.
That problem’s got nothing to do with Vista, its the same in XP, Windows 2000 and NT. The idea to have your save games in your “My Documents” folder substructure is simple: they are *your* save games, not your wife’s or your dad’s, who might share the PC (and game) with you.
Of course, game companies have since the dawn of time (DOS, no concept of a different users) used their own program folder to store save game data and many still do that today. They won’t be able to save if they are run by a non-administrator account, because NT and later OS simply refuse an ‘ordinary user’ to change anything in the “Program Files” subdirectory for security reasons. That’s why apparently most users are using an administrator account on their XP boxes.
It only became apparent in Vista due to some additional protection mechanisms that give even an administrator account limited authorization from the start. So finally the programs that didn’t really work for a ‘normal user’ since the start of XP (now 8 years in the past) don’t even work under Vista.
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Thanks for the explanation. Apparently I’m firmly stuck in the old DOS days then. Those were simpler times, one had only to battle the config.sys, EMM and IRQ dragons instead of this GfWL abomination.
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Wow, just wow. I really like Fallout 3 and was looking forward to the DLC, but after reading this I think I’ll pass. The sad thing is, within 6 months there will be dozens of fan-made mods that will be infinitely easier to install than this.
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This sounds horribly familiar, now replace it all with Windows Vista and Visual C++ 2008…
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@Jp1138
You have to do whatever you did to unlock them in the first place. (i.e. take the GOAT) – Achievements aren’t recorded at all until you’re signed in.
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It’s how an operating system should be written – The only reason 90% of the viruses written for XP & its predecessors work is because they can write to core system files because they do it as the user, who is often an administrator because they have to be to do anything. Linux distros and Mac OS X have had process elevation from the beginning, requiring permission to change any critical OS subsystem. UAC is so much bearable in Windows 7 because you can tell it to stop prompting unless altering major ‘i’ll crash if you all this’ system files
So wait, you found working out how EMS worked EASIER than getting GFW running? Having to micromanage everything over 640k is one part of DOS I don’t miss :)
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One of the NMA chaps has been running a mod showcase, with some promising results so far. The Enclave Commander mod looks particularly impressive although it does remind me that I haven’t actually seen a vertibird in action yet, I guess that’s what I get for fast travelling around the map at the end of the game.
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*Remembers installing Vista*
*Remembers installing VC2008*
*Squints a lot*
*Gives up*
VC2005 though, now that was a pain. Dependencies everywhere.
On the other hand, malware didn’t really exist and your little sister couldn’t work out how to install things. :-p
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@GibletHead2000
That´s what I though. Thx
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My review article on The Reticule has gone from “Operation: Anchorage Review” to “Operation : Anchorage Review and Buyers Guide”, knowing full well that getting this thing was going to be tough even before it came out today. I’m almost certain it’s going to become “Operation : Anchorage Farce Avoidance Guide” within the next hour or so.
I’ve already established my disdain for GFWL in no short order here: http://thereticule.com/2009/01/25/various-games-for-windows-live-thoughts/
I’ve managed to wrestle A:O to the ground today. It seems though, that the content itself is as buggy as the distribution method, and crashes just as the VR Sim loads.
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The problem with save games going into a folder in My Documents is that pretty much every game under the sun offers the option to choose a character profile in game. If for example your brother wants to play his character for a bit you have to exit the game, log off, log him on to windows, restart the game then he can select his character profile from within the game anyway.
When the character profile system is already in place within the games, and when using it is much less hassle than the alternative, trying to force all save games into your own personal folder is annoying and unnescessary.
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Although I was frustrated to find that the DoW II beta wouldn’t just work with Steam and that I’d have to add a whole new bunch of friends just to play a beta for a week, I must say I seem to have avoided most of the proplems people have experienced with GfWL. I don’t know if this is down to running the Windows 7 beta (which is, incidentally, rather good) or just co-incidence, but I’m not complaining on that front.
I do think it’s bloody stupid to charge for DLC like this though, double stupid to pay for it via MS points, quadruple stupid to force you to get it through GfWL and octuple stupid that there are all these problems when you finally succomb to the temptation.
I got Fallout 3 on PS3 though, so my wife could try it. Oh well!
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Another problem is Windows doesn’t ask where you’d like your user directories to be, it just rams everything on the system drive.
And doesn’t always play nicely with its special magical directories on a reinstall, either. Happily, the one I lost was Program Files, so mostly easily replaced.
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I never thought I’d see the day when I would prefer playing and downloading stuff on a console to a PC.
The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe I’m looking too far into it, but paying $50 for Fallout 3 is telling Bethesda that buggy games, DLC!!!1, and GFWL are okay.
I’ll buy Fallout 3 once the platinum collection hits the bargain bin in three years. In the meantime, I’ll support devs who don’t piss all over PC gamers.
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And lo, the Public folder dist shine forth with a brilliant light!
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Fallout 3 has proven to be an enormous headache for me too; so much so that I believe I might just leave the DLC well enough alone because I’ve already had my fill of Live issues, incompatibilities, driver issues and general buggerments. Did I tell everyone that the game flat out refused to work until they released the last patch? It just seems ludicrous that until January it was (literally) impossible for me to play a game that had been out since October.
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Tei:
My 360 doesn’t have a hard disk. Still, that error message definitely shouldn’t be appearing on a PC game.
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Perhaps the content download could replace the Fallout 3 hacking minigame!
GfWL is the most bizarrely confusing piece of abortware I’ve seen in
some timeever. It’s just so unfathomable why they decided to ignore all of the things that have worked in the PC games online space, and produce something that PC gamers can’t use and don’t want.All they had to do was copy Steam, but link into the XBL back end, and offer platform support for matchmaking. (Which is something L4D could use, Quick Match is not real matchmaking)
I just don’t get it.
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Dear Bethesda,
I do hope that when you signed your contract with Microsoft to ‘provide’ this DLC you included a clause or two specifying that they must do it with a certain level of competency etc, because right now they’re just bringing your name into disrepute by making a massive cock up of the whole thing.
Of course if you did put a clause like that in then you can probably get out of the rest of the contract and tell the prats at GFWL to sod off.
love phuzz
Personally I try and remember that M$ is a massive company, and that bits of it are really quite good. As pointed out above, UAC is the equivalent of trying to make people come in and out using the door rather than just jumping through the windows like they’d got used to of old. ie it’s annoying but they’re just trying to make us do things the ‘right’ way.
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I’ll either wait for the “big ol’ pack of DLC” like they did with Oblivion, or bum some “lunch money” off my mum to spend on a Microsoft Points card. I ain’t paying for the privilege of using this GFWL bullcrap.
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1) Make it really hard for users to buy your product.
2) …
3) Profit!
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Oh no, Why would Microsoft do ANYTHING competant? After the Vista fiasco and their quick covering of their arses, I thought they had outgrown this sort of bull. BUT NO! I WAS NOT DISSAPOINTED! Microsoft fails to succeed at failing to disapoint.
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I thought Tycho had a really interesting take on GfWLive and it’s inability to work with xbox live at the same time. His final bit really summed up the mentality that obviously goes on in microsoft (from http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/1/26/)
I spoke to someone from Microsoft about this very thing, and they said it was interesting, but asked how it would work mechanically. Where would messages be sent? Would one take precedent over the other? I told him that figuring out shit like that wasn’t my job.
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True, but with the security in Windows as it is you don’t have much choice. Games do not as a rule have write privileges in any shared folders, and so either end up using virtualisation (which goes in your documents and settings anyway), or need to run as administrator (which is disruptive, and destroys the whole point of application privileges.) Plus, sticking all documents, data, and settings within your documents and settings folder (or Users in vista) ultimately means that if all developers play ball, you should only have to back up a single directory.
What would be cool is if applications could switch user mid flow, so someone could log themselves on mid-game and it would begin using their settings. Alternatively, I don’t know if there is a way to allow developers to use the Shared folder instead of the individual user folder, this may be what Theory was alluding to.
Also, I can’t help thinking that for compatibility reasons, MS should have give applications write privileges in their own directories. This wouldn’t have been a significant drop in security, and would have removed a lot of confusion.
While the super naggy UAC in Vista was a bit of a mistake, it is a necessary step forward in OS security. From the sounds of it things are a lot better in Windows 7, but I’m afraid that the separation of programs and settings/docs/saves is here to stay.
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I had my first experience with games for windows live recently, with the DoW beta, and I have to say it worked fine, I didn’t really have a problem with it.
Mind you, I’m using it on vista, and I’m only using it for the playing online, downloading looks like a nightmare.
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I’ve just read that gamers with the Austrian version are particularly happy. Now the Austrian version is a rather special one, as it has the German voice-acting, but isn’t cut – which is why it also sold well in Germany. They can download Operation Anchorage, but it won’t work, because Betehsda hasn’t released the latest patch for the Austrian version. Oh dear.
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Actually, speaking of how useless M$ are, did anyone watch that Bill Gates love-in on BBC last night?
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One of the first things I did after installing Fallout 3 was to uninstall GFWL whose install I wasn’t allowed to skip. Since I didn’t have a live account all it did was waste time talking to some Microsoft server about nothing useful. Telling my firewall to block it didn’t help either, being a Microsoft special it wouldn’t take no for an answer and just held things up even longer.
So, with quite a few others it seems, I’ll be taking a pass on this. Steam is by no means perfect but Valve seem to have found out that giving away additional content extends the life of a game and encourages new buyers. After all what would rather buy, something like TF2/L4D where there’s a good prospect of new maps etc. appearing at regular intervals for no extra cost or F3 and its ilk where you’ll be gouged for a few extra quid until the law of diminishing returns means the publisher to turn off the tap?
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Write there. There’s nothing stopping you. It’s called Public because every bugger has access to it.
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While we’re talking about writing to the user folder, could developers please start using Vista’s Saved Games folder?
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terribly sorry, It would seem no Operation Anchorage torrents are available yet ;-)
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At least John was able to download the thing, if you are using GfWL instead of the XBox360 LIVE thing then it’s still not available in Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Holland and Japan. Maybe in more territories, I’m trying to find out.
Epic fail for Microsoft.
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Thanks for the heads up. I guess I’ll be waiting a couple days, stabbing my Steve Ballmer voodo doll with an icepick, and then hopefull I can run the expansion with GetFuckedWithoutLube taking over my saves.
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(sorry for double post, no edit to day it seems)
I suspect a lot of the decisions behind gfwl (like compulsory sign in, live points etc.) is because m$ looked at how well Live had worked on the XBox (at least as well as Steam on PC I’d say) and just decided to try and port the whole thing over (then proceeded to do it badly natch).
Also, for everyone moaning about UAC, you realise you can just turn it off right? First thing I did when I installed vista.
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So wait, you found working out how EMS worked EASIER than getting GFW running? Having to micromanage everything over 640k is one part of DOS I don’t miss :)
Actually it doesn’t work for me at all. But anyhow, yes – getting to a good configuration under DOS was not that easy but once it was stable it worked for pretty much everything.
GfWL on the other hand…an error out of the box, it doesn’t connect. Installed the newest version, downloaded the automatic hotf- uh-oh, hotfix won’t work, wrong language version of the OS. Changed the locale in the registry, installed the hotfix without problems, changed the locale back to original one. Still doesn’t connect but now it displays a different message. Turns out I’m in the wrong country, you see.
Fun in a box. And don’t get me even started on Bethesda’s FO3 quality control…! ;-)
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That’s astoundingly poor.
Oddly, I’ve only had one experience with GFWL, and that’s the DoW2 beta. Being an English speaker who uses Vista, getting that going was smoother than a greased piglet. I had to log onto the Xbox website to agree to the new Ts and Cs as I’d not used my GFW account for so long, but that was it.
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And let’s add Canada to the mix. Epic, epic fail MS.
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(Disclaimer: I haven’t read all comments, and I’m probably not the first to say this, but anyway…)
Huzzah for easy downloadable content! That sure will get the pirates to reform their ways. And when you add the 2 hours for installing/downloading all the required software, you easily get FOUR hours of fun for your money.
Well done. I salute you GFWL and Bethesda.
Or maybe not…
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It has very little to do with him, though. Most of the problems with GFWL are the result of the Microsoft E&D level strategic decision to try to export the XBox Live model to PC, which was incredibly stupid. Now clearly the implementation of GFWL is even worse than it had to be given that decision, but still, it was fundamentally flawed from the beginning. Online gaming on the PC is fundamentally different from online gaming on consoles, and for good reason.
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Suddenly I wish I’d picked the Nerd Rage perk to properly enjoy this discussion, but no, I had to go for stupid ‘animal friend’ even though I love shooting mole rats.
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100 space bucks cost US (citizens) $1.25
due to exchange rate crashes the amount we pay £0.85 is worth $1.20 a bargin!
Clearly, before the pound crashed Microsoft point punished the UK, but now we get a slight “discount”.
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I would’ve given up long before success I think, if there were that many obstacles to getting it I’d just assume they didn’t actually want my cash. I bet you can download it from a naughty site with less hassle…
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Might i add, 1 British pounds = 1.417100 U.S. dollars
Worse than 1.5, it was 2.~ last year. No wonder the steam prices seem to obscene… BUT wait, localised prices ARRRGHGHGH!
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I’m not planning on extolling the craptacularities of GFWL to people who already know far better than I how blowful it is.
I just have a need to insert myself into any discussion where GWAR arises, relevant or no.
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Also, for the record, you can turn UAC off.
Just sayin’.
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Have so far managed to avoid owning any GfW titles – am starting to consider turning this happy accident into a deliberate policy. The thing looks positively cancerous! RPS readers: are there no upsides?
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Upside: you can press ‘Home’ at any time to to view your GFWL profile.
That is all.
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GfW is only mildly irritating with a few of its criteria, like having to use Vista’s game explorer. Mostly it’s just a pointless label on the box.
GfWL seems to be the main problem, but I happily played Fallout 3 for ~60h without using it once, so that’s OK.
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Let’s all just pirate it and paypal Bethesda the money. That’s really the most elegant and convenient solution.
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I first ran into GFWL with Viva Pinata whilst recovering from a compound fracture and subsequent metal pin surgery. At the time I couldn’t decide which was more painful.
The arm is fine now.
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Agree with Espy.
Please, NOBODY buy this. Microsoft must be forced to see the losses GFWL on the PC will give them so hopefully they will either drastically improve it and make it a more open application or abandon it completely.
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Someone asked what modders have accomplished in Fallout 3.
Stuff like this is why I play games on the PC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbyhpsv-6sM
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I want to play fallout 3 on ice but I wont be dealing with this bullshit. This is one of the main reasons p2p exist.
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SHIT GAME
SHIT DLC
SHIT BETH
SHIT MS
SHIT GFWL
SHIT COMMENTS
Walker, I feel your pain.
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Thats why Linux failed, getting a game is too hard:
$ apt-get install openarena
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*looks up*
Looks like I’ll be part of the crowd waiting to buy it when it comes out on a retail disk, then.
I suppose I could always pirate it in the meantime… I’ll probably just wait until it goes retail, buy it, *then* pirate it. No messing around with silly GfWL schema or DRM systems for me, and Bethesda still get their money.
*sighs*
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HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! nice read John, thanks for telling me not to buy it :)
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If you could quite possibly need any more convincing not to buy it, I’ve reviewed it here:
http://thereticule.com/2009/01/27/fallout-3-operationanchorage-review/
And talked about how awful buying/downloading it is here:
http://thereticule.com/2009/01/27/fallout-3-operation-anchorage-so-you-still-want-to-buy-it/
Do
Not
Buy.
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And after all that, it’s rubbish.
I think Bethesda are sort of using this as a proof of concept of GfWL – they’re big PC fans and they really want to help get this sort of things off the ground. Unfortunately Microsoft haven’t held up their end of the bargain – maybe Bethesda should reconsider their PC as a legit gaming platform partners…
I’m going to be annoyed if I had to miss out on the next two DLCs because of this, mind.
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Did you try to loadhigh your mouse.exe?
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Gfwl worked without problems for me in the Dow II beta. The consoley interface of Gfwl’s website made physically ill, though. If Microsoft splashes x amount of millions of dollars to get devs to use the damn thing, you’d think they’d spend a few thousand to get a proper website for it.
Regardings this DLC though, imho Fallout 3 was the most mediocre of mediocrity, so I’ll save me some pain and money, and ignore this.
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If they could port over Microsoft Points to buy things, how could they not port over the simple system of logging in once and everything working as it should. Everyone in GFWL should be fired and the AIM team should be hired.
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I doff my hat to your pithiness, sir.
I don’t see any point buying this either; I’m quite happy to wait until Bethesda release the inevitable collection on disk. And while I enjoyed Fallout 3, I haven’t gone back to it since I finished the game (as opposed to Oblivion where I ended up creating another character to finish the remaining quest lines.
P.
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man I feel for you. I just went through the same bs process to get it as well. now I’ve been waiting 40 minutes to download and only at 18% (yeah slow internet!) I also like how the dlc costs 800 points but you only have the option to add 500 or 1000 points, so now I have 200 useless points that will most likely never be used.
Also, is anyone here having trouble with the GFW browser in the game. it seems to have trouble recognizing which button my mouse is over and i have to press a to actually activate the button rather than recognizing a left mouse click.
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“Everyone in GFWL should be fired ”
I think your wish has been granted.
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In other news, Scott Jones of Crispy Gamer admits to secretly liking the Operation Anchorage content but felt compelled to write negatively about it due to peer pressure from other games reviewers.
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Couple comments about points – one, they actually make sense if you hear the reasoning explained. It’s things like being able to have one unified price for everyone, regardless of vagaries in exchange rates and make any necessary changes on a case by case basis rather than recode/reprice things all the time. Allowing kids to buy content – they can’t have a credit card, but they can buy the points prepaid cards. Making micropayments feasible. That sort of thing.
Also – the point amounts that you can buy online through Microsoft are dumb and will inevitably leave you with random bits of stray points. Indisputable, and it would be very nice if they would go and damn well fix that. However, the prepaid points cards come in sensible increments like 1600.
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I’m going to be annoyed if I had to miss out on the next two DLCs because of this, mind.
Fuck ‘em.
Do we know why Bethesda went with GFWL? Did MS hand them a bag of money? Was Steam simply too convenient and widely-used? Or is this part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to make playing PC games needlessly difficult?
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Have to use GFWL to get new DLC?
Nah… I’ll pass.
It’s hard enough to get GTA 4 up and running. F U GFWL.
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haha this article is rofl material. microsoft, fail.
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i HATE games for windows, is specially hate how it uses the region setting of you windows to do crap without even asking, i sometimes set my region to japanese because i sometimes use files/dirs with unicode and some old programs wont work right unless you are in that region, the rest of the time im on a spanish region for the office tools language crap, since GFW started i find games that give me the option to choose language during install (of which i always choose english) but then go install the game in spanish/japanese anyway (that options is for the installer lang apparently), or they just dont give you the option needing a reinstall after changing regions (devil may cry 4 is the first one to come to mind but there are others), or they make it so small and impossible to see you miss it (Condemned in the stupid spash screen before you click install, they are so freaking tiny), some dont even keep the install language after you change regions, and the behavior of each game with this is completely random
oh, and most new games no longer have ingame language option, wth ? they used to have it, they have to extra languages in the dvd so why not give us an option ?, but NO. you have to reinstall it to change it
the only good thing i can say about it is that because they have many language subtitles into games (and probably because there are so many game releases month) now they no longer do those DREADFUL dubs they used to do, man, i had to pirate games to avoid them, it was just … terrible, imagine monkey island 3 or grim fandango exceptional voice acting ruined by the cheapest jrpg dubs you ever heard, you guys in the us and other English speaking countries have it easy, its been hell for us having to endure horrible localizations … they are just … horrible, i still have nightmares about Myth .. it didnt even say in the box it was dubbed, i bought it only because of that ……… the horror ….
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I actually don’t mind being force-fed the GFW overlay on my Steam bought copy of the game. I also don’t mind having to download the GFWL client just to access the store (And nothing else, since it serves no other purpose at all). Hell, I don’t even mind having to pay for this extra mission.
But there’s no way in hell I’m gonna buy 1000 Microsoft funbucks in order to get something that costs 800. Let me pay the exact amount required to get the DLC, charge me in dollars instead of “points” and give me the option to do it either through Steam or Bethesda’s site like the Oblivion DLC did or no deal.
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@Gorgeras:
No. What needs to happen – if we want GfWL to improve (rather than flushing it down the toilet, which seems to be the pevailing sentiment and one I happen to agree with) – is for DLC like O:A to have mediocre sales.
If it’s a huge success, then Microsoft will think everything is humming along just fine and do nothing to improve the service. If it sells poorly, then Microsoft will decide it’s no longer worth bothering with and pull the plug entirely.
If it sells okay, but not great, then Microsoft will wonder why it didn’t sell better and look for ways to improve GfWL and earn greater returns next time.
Again, that’s if you want GfWL to survive and continue to improve. I’m sure most of us would be happier if Microsoft just pissed off and chucked the whole effort in the rubbish bin.
MS always want to be a part of the action in every market segment, even if it’s just a token effort on their part. They don’t want to give up entirely on PC Gaming; yet, they’re also clearly not willing to put in the neecessary effort to make a real difference. Instead, they’re willing to embarass themselves utterly. (Just like they have with the Zune, for example.)
And to think they had PC Gaming completely sewn up years ago. Their own studios with great PC titles, DirectX which became a standard and resulted in virtually all games moving to Windows (let’s face it, the Mac never was and still is not a good gaming platform), a great gaming peripherals division that made top-notch joysticks and gamepads . . . and they threw all that away.
For what? A console that they’ve lost billions of dollars on, and where they have yet to fully recover their expenditures? Their earlier PC game titles and peripherals all made money. Pure profit! The mind truly boggles.
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GFWL touched me in a bad place, when all I wanted to do was DL Dawn of War II.
I miss the old days when you went through the arcane process of clicking on a link and hitting “OK” to save.
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I’d really like to play a FO3 expansion, negative external review aside. It’s just that GFWL has proven, over and over and over again, to be the absolute worst piece of unreal garbage ever visited upon my machine. It’s completely unnecessary, and it’s implementation actually seems to get worse with each iteration. It’s like a Pavlovian experiment that rewards mass salivation with faulty electric cockrings implanted directly under the foreskin. I have no idea why we keep signing up for this experiment, and yet I still want to download this expansion. The hell with this, I’m going outside.
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[i]*Remembers installing Vista*
*Remembers installing VC2008*
*Squints a lot*
*Gives up*[/]
Well, i baught a laptop, all clean without any bulllshit installed(well, a trial of office, first thing i got rid off). And then i tried to install Visual studio 2008 series with the SP1. Turned out this installation is bugged as hell, for what reason i dont know, it has something to do with the .net 3.5 distro which is embedded into VISTA, thus solving this problem is nighly impossible, since any attempt at removing it requires a lot of patience and trying to trick VISTA to believe you can remove it. the MS dev team also knows about the problem only they have no way of solving it, i tried every possible solution found on google and on the MSDN forum.
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Games For Windows Live is an abomination. If I gave a wet slap about stupid achievements, I would buy another xbox. (yes, mine red-ringed years ago)
I’m a PC gamer. I have no desire to jump through hoops, login to Microsoft just to save my games, or be prevented from using a trainer or modding my SINGLE PLAYER GAME.
It’s intrusive, extremely bothersome, time-consuming, and insulting. DO NOT WANT! Microsoft’s blithering arrogance is on display here.
GFWL used to just be a label on retail games, presumably stuck there in some deal with Microsoft so they could stroke their brand name by attaching it to the work of others. Now, apparently, it’s a label to watch out for. It has rendered my purchase of GTA IV for PC a complete waste of money.
I was looking forward to the official Bethsoft DLC for F3, but in light of this GFWL twist, I’ll pass.
I’m never buying another game with the GFWL label on the box, now that I know what sort of invasive hassle it has come to be. Hell, plain-old criminal EA root-kit is a ray of sunshine compared with GFWL.
Thanks a lot, assholes. Whoda thunkit? Microsoft ruins PC gaming. Brilliant!
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I have chosen to comment on this simply because it’s nice to know you’re not alone staring frustratedly at your computer with your head seconds away from exploding after having been forced at knife point to install GFWL for a game that in no way needs, benefits or in any conceivable way is enhanced by its awfulness… and then proceeds not to work because of the very software that they’ve made it mandatory for you to install. Ahhhh…. that feels better already.
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£8.50 for this? Have they not learned from the Horse Armour Incident and have they not learned from previous Windows Live mistakes?
No option for switch, that is really good. I think i’ll wait until the next bit of DLC comes out and see what it’s like then.
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Get this story published on gaming sites, like kotaku for example.
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@Stalin’sGhost
If you could quite possibly need any more convincing not to buy it, I’ve reviewed it here:
http://thereticule.com/2009/01/27/fallout-3-operationanchorage-review/
Surely Operation:Anchorage is O:A not A:O ?
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Well spotted. By the time I’d finished writing I’d had all but enough of the whole thing. My proof read was consequently a bit sloppy! :D
Thanks mate!
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My steam copy of Fallout 3 seems to be updating itself with a fair sized update. There is no update news, but could it be that it’s fixing the GFWL problem?
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No problem ;)
I have just ended a marathon 120 hour first-time play-through so I am having a bit of a break.
I am going to wait until the other DLC is released and see if they do a bundle.
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If they get mediocre sales Redrain, they’ll just blame piracy; it’s the scape-goat publishers can’t seem to stop anally pleasuring themselves with.
They are unlikely to pull out of GFWL because publishers they have a deal with won’t put up with it.
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Theory:
Ah, you haven’t tried installing MS SQL Server then?
That made me long for the VS2k8 installer.
By the way, fun fact: Running out of diskspace while installing VS *hangs* the process. It doesn’t report an error, it doesn’t terminate or roll back. It just hangs. Have to kill it through Task Manager.
As for gfwl, thanks for the warning. I thought I had low expectations for it after playing DoW2 (my first gfwl experience), but I didn’t realize how much worse it could get.
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You get the hell out of my internet.
Make me, punk.
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I was extremely disappointed to find that GfWL was a necessary part of playing the DoW 2 beta. True, I had no real ‘issues’ installing it (on Windows 7 64-bit and Vista 64-bit), other than the irritation at having to go through a registration process for a piece of software I didn’t especially want, on an incredibly annoying website.
My main issue with it is that it’s simply.. pointless? What is it bringing to the table? How is it enhancing my gaming experience other than adding another overlay to my game? Even for non-Steam users, why must it be compulsory?
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Why must it be compulsory?
Because Microsoft would just love to own you ?
its their dream to microcharge you to death, check about “Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), formerly known as Palladium” in wikipedia and weep, luckily the vista failure was a nice kick to the crotch of their plans.
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Jaysus.
I read all this, then hopped onto a BT site, and about 10 minutes later had the raw data files on my hard drive, with a text file including instructions to copy them into a subdirectory of Fallout 3, and then launch the game.
If the genuine purchase method is hilariously bad, why would we ever bother with it? Poor Bethesda, I hope they realise this, and don’t just think all PC users simply hate paying for stuff..
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Funny how I bought the DLC, and ten minutes later the fan melted off my graphics card…
CONSPIRACY!
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I ripped F3 off, enjoyed it so much and despite the curse of DRM I went out and bought a retail copy. Played it non-stop for 5 weeks solid now, I am in desperate need of sleep. MS hear this now! I’m buggered if I am going to pay in “funny-money” for you to dick about with my carefully crafted set up. The F3 standalone crashes enough on me, without having you balls up my system32 dir with all your crap DRM gear.
I will wait for the DLCs to be hacked loaded onto my local torrent server. I will then wait for Bethesda to see some f**king sense and release the trio on hard media. Then I can at least still play it in a few years time in VM if necessary, without MS shafting me for 30 quid!
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GFWL made me spent two hours trying to run the DoW II beta yesterday. It is hellish. It is the opposite of Steam.
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I got your story mentioned on Slashdot:
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F29%2F0840207&from=rss
Hope it did hit your server too hard,
P.
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Its funny really when you think of it. The pirates will be done playing with the DLC before the people who paid for it have it installed.
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You sound like a mega-noob. From start to finish I had no troubles at all. Maybe you should go back to console gaming, probably the Wii would be best for you.
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Hey look, it’s available on the pirate bay! It works, no need to install games for windows live, no credit card hassle, no having to pay for extra credits you’ll never use…. All in all, a better offering from pirate bay. I think I’ll send Bethesda a letter in the mail with an 8$ check and a note explaining my reasoning. It just seems smarter to pirate this… Not just cheaper, that’s moot when it comes to an 8$ game… but literally, smarter.
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Bought it, played it, finished it. Playing the expansion was no more fun than trying to buy it. It’s riddled with bugs, from trivial up to CTD severity. It’s also not much fun. I can’t even recommend pirating it, it’s that bad.
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I’m one of those few people left in the world who still tries every day not to hate MS, because the alternative seems to be unconditionally loving apple. I am a PC gamer, and as a PC gamer, I am forced to use windows. I try to like it. I try to see the good side of Microsoft.
But how can I when they pull shit like this? How is it that a company with so much f**king money to throw at a problem manages to churn out a wave of bullshit unparalleled in pc gaming? How can they get it SO WRONG?
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Funnily enough, I just installed my review copy of the DLC and it all went rosy… Downloaded it through the pretty poor (but better than EADM) GFW:Live program after putting in my review code, patched F3 and it was sitting there, ready and waiting…
Strange really.
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Figures that it would take Microsoft a while to screw this whole DLC thing up, and only a day or two for internet pirates to pick up the ball. I have to use piracy to watch movies I own because I have to go to hades itself to get Windows Media player to work on legit DVD’s, I’m not surprised GFWL is driving people to piracy to get a trouble free download of Anchorage.
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What does GFWL stand for?
Someone told me it was Get Fucked Windows Live…
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Games For Windows Live.
Like XBox Live, only without the charm. Or quality. Or stability. Or fun.
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I have to say, I’m a big fan of Betheseda, and I picked up most of the Oblivion offerings when they were released, but that was a gloriously painless process.. (And yes, I payed for the horse armour. And you know what? My horse looked FLY bitches! *gives the world the finger*) But all this malarky? The temptation to just go grab one tiny easy little .esp file is rising rapidly, and this is for a game from one of my favourite developers!
I’m ashamed to admit it, but were it a developer I had less love for, I would have pirating this quicker than you can say “GFWL sucks balls, burn it, BUUUUUUURN IT!!!!!”
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I was more than happy to pay for the game, in fact I was happy to pay for the add-on till I saw this. Well done Microsoft for losing business. THANKYOU Mr Torrentmaker :)
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My confession:
I bought F3 over Steam. Caused me quite a grief because it took a while to figure out which version I really get in my country (you know, those english/german translation woes). Anyway. Happy that I bought it, has it quirks, but I’m fine how I spent my money.
The DLC? Over “what”? GWFL? Yet Another account? Steam updates lately and suddenly silently installs me this *thing*? I uninstalled it and F3 didn’t start again? Didn’t auto install it again, had to seek and download from M$ site (first took the wrong version, how should I know?). Later discovered that the right installer files are inside the Steam application directory. How should I know? Read the frightening stories about DLC O:A only available in translated version in those German countries. Wtf? I took great length to assure I do not get such a @#$@& versoin, now this is it? Other issue: I need to buy “points”, but more I need to spend anyway? Ok, nice price probably. But, M$/Bethsoft “I AM NOT INTERESTED!” in yet another account/registration/whatthe%&&#soever.
I downloaded some torrent with the data files, copied them into the right place, voila. No hassle, quick, works and it’s not @#$@#% translated into a language I don’t want (even I’m speaking it native).
I would, but I could not pay. I’m not interesting in yet another account thing, especially not something connected to Microsoft. I made something illegal because there’s basically no other way to get it.
As soon as there’s a sane way I’m happy to spend my money for O:A, consider it paid already.
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Totally excited for OpAnch, I kept trying to dl it on release day. The “Live” option took me repeatedly to xbox.com. I mistakenly decided, finally, that I guess I’m supposed to download it here… after matching the instructions from the GFW website (and considering the goddamn game and bethesda website directed me straight to xbox.com), I guess I figured, who the hell dl’s xbox games from their PC? Purchased the 1000pts, spent the 800 on OpAnch, entered my DL queue. I don’t own an Xbox, so I didn’t know wtf was going on, and after trying multiple times to get it to dl, FO3 finally began updating. I thought it was finally nabbing my DL content. No, it was giving me the new GFWL client. Then it showed me I could dl OpAnch for the PC. Of course Xbox Live wouldn’t refund my MSPoints (after spending a week to get back to me about it), even though the GFW customer support is the number for Xbox support, even though the goddamned game consistently took me to xbox.com, even though my username and pass for GFW logged me into xbox.com. Now I’m glad I don’t own an xbox, considering (after tax and $1.00 credit check) they want me to now buy more points at $12.50 and spend approx. $30 on the $10 expansion.
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i atleast thought the DLC would be free because its on a fuckin PC (i bought this game for my PS3 no DLC means fuck you!) i pirated the game yesterday it works perfectly then im wonder oh wait isnt a DLC out for it i go and click on downloads oh shit windows live so im like okay ill download the shit downloaded it went onto add on’s what do you know its not there im like okay so i check on google and oh shit microsoft want me too pay for a 3 hour DLC the cost’s a retarded amount and i also cant pay for it up front oh no i have to buy some shitty micro fuckin soft points im going to and search on google for the DLC thank you microsoft for making me waste more of my shitty youth!
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Seriously you’ve never played Viva Pinata?
Reallys?
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Had it downloaded and running — relatively painlessly — in about 6 minutes.
…Now what the heck is this “Games for Windows Live” thing everyone is talking about? :P
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I did the same thing “Idiot” did. I followed Bethesda’s instructions to a “T” and ended up buying the X-Box file, but after GfW:L patched itself, it wouldn’t run at all. It ran long enough to take my money and patch Fallout 3 to attenuate itself to GfW:L and patch itself to not run on my computer. After talking to some LIVE fanboys on the LIVE forum, I figured that I either have to update to Vista, update with SP3, rendering some expensive legacy programs unusable (Windows Explorer/XP SP3 plug some ports for no good reason that my legacy programs need to use), or update Java Console to 3.5. Every time I try to install Java 3.5, it fails to downloading, giving me errors from MS’s servers. I guess I need to torrent Java 3.5, since I torrented FA3 O:A the day after they suckered me into buying more points than I needed. One of my buddies is going to buy my LIVE account so he can download O:A for his X-Box, so I’ll get my money back.
When the Pitt comes out, just wait a few hours and it will be on pir8bay, I promise. I had enough asshattery today when I discovered that my saved games don’t load unless I’m logged into LIVE, even though it’s a stand alone game..
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Get F**ked We’re Laughing :D
screw viva pinata, by that name i seriously doubt it has a:
ESRB: M (Mature) BLOOD AND GORE,INTENSE VIOLENCE,SEXUAL THEMES,STRONG LANGUAGE,USE OF DRUGS.
I just started playing Fallout 3 with tons of mods installed, and read on the tweakguides FO3 pages that GFWL actually causes lag and some crash issues on some peoples machines:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_3.html
I dont even use it, i mean THIS IS AN OFFLINE GAME!!!!
wtf is the point. achievements? what are they? DLC? you DL it off PB!!
I mean Bethesda should take a leaf out of CDProjekt Reds book in regards to downloading game content (see what i did there :) they made a complete overhaul of the Witcher – which kicked ass to begin with – and put it out for free. Free mods in Oblivion like FCOM actually add more content than any of its DLC!!!
I paid something like 40 quid for the games collector edition box – just the box mind, the wee model broke and i cant find the manual – and now they want more money from me for DLC and putting up with Microshaft!!
I have just deleted the whole GFWL heap of steaming slag, from my puter bot. Now I have to find work arounds for games like dow 2 and gears….
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@woobles: “screw viva pinata, by that name i seriously doubt it has a:
ESRB: M (Mature) BLOOD AND GORE,INTENSE VIOLENCE,SEXUAL THEMES,STRONG LANGUAGE,USE OF DRUGS.”
You are deadly wrong:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/03/17/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/3/17/
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AHHAHAH
ok hmm, the from the gamespot review:
“If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to attract pairs of the same breed, who’ll take a shine to each other, as denoted by the universal sign of floating hearts above their heads, and head off into a habitat and…dance. Once their jig, which plays out in an in-game cinematic, is over, a stork will pop by and drop an egg that will contain the fruit of their boogying, a baby piñata.”
Thats the sexual themes i take it.
and:
“You can hire some help to ward them off or handle the job yourself. While you may be thinking your shovel would be the ideal way to deal with the malcontents–piñatas being made for a good bashing and all–you’ll have to be careful, as breaking a sour open in your garden leaves behind bits of corrupting material that could seriously mess up your population. These bad-seed piñatas are led by the antisocial Dastardos, who, with a name like that, is obviously looking to stir up trouble.”
So thats the Gore and intense violence. Great and I guess Rare where off their dial on drugs while making it too… I’ll have to buy it ;D
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Well thats just dandy for all of you guys but now the GOTY is out. News time for me: its been many weeks and the word on the street is that Bethesda has an agreement with GFWL and Steam won’t get the GOTY for months. So I think ” I’ll buy it of GFWL “. First, my version of GFWL is out dated so I go online and reinstall it. Then, GFWL wont accept me log in attempts. On my games, it lets me in. On line it lets me in. But the stupid &*%$#$ piece of crap that is the downloadable version of GFWL wont!!! Then I read this and figure those %#%#@ holes at GWFL probably don’t have the balls or the care to fix tha problem. THis leaves me royally screwed.
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hey
games for windows live you like
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