By Jim Rossignol on October 1st, 2009 at 7:13 pm.
Speaking to Shacknews, Brad Wardell says:
“I started out as a big Games for Windows Live advocate. I intended for Elemental to be on Games for Windows Live, but then as we got closer, the Xbox group took it over more and more. And they have things where, oh, if you want to use Games for Windows Live to update your game, you have to go through [their] certification. And if you do it more than X number of times, you have to pay money. It’s like, “My friends, you can’t do that on the PC.” … If Games for Windows Live maintains that strategy and they take over, I’m done. I’m not making PC games. I would be done.”
I hereby declare this slagging thread for GFWL open!
01/10/2009 at 19:18 ZIGS says:
GFWL sucks. I don’t even need to state any reasons why, at this point it’s pretty much common sense
01/10/2009 at 19:19 Larington says:
Wheres my pitchfo… Aha!
BURN ‘EM!
BUUUUUUURN ‘EM!
01/10/2009 at 19:34 Tei says:
Share the sentiment.
So Microsoft want dev’s to pay to update games more than N times? cool way to kill old games.
01/10/2009 at 19:57 Davee says:
*Picks up a pickaxe and torch and joins Larington*
DIE GFWL, DIE! *mauls GFWL*
01/10/2009 at 19:21 James G says:
Ahh, GFWL! The one subject on which we can all be AIMs.
That said, I haven’t had the misfortune of falling foul of it yet, but that may be because I only have two GFWL games. Although, come to think of it, I had a bit of trouble with the first one when the update wouldn’t install, and I had to do it manually. I also think I’ve got issues with it at the moment, but haven’t played either game recently to find out for sure.
01/10/2009 at 19:21 Gabanski83 says:
GfWL is a bag of counter-intuitive shite.
It’s the new Gamespy, as far as I’m concerned; useless crap that hinders, spoils and interrupts my enjoyment of a game, rather than streamlining it.
I hate having to sign in everytime, I hate it not working with Xfire, I hate the fact that it interferes with savegames (it really pissed me off in Fallout 3, creating separate save files depending on whether I was signed in or not), I hate the rigmarole needed to join in a friend’s game of GTA4 or SF4.
Seriously, I’d prefer it if developer’s just didn’t bother with it. It doesn’t benefit me, the player, in any way having it in a game. If it was as simple and smooth as Steam (i.e. unobtrusive, doesn’t pester me telling me it needs an update, or that I’ve signed in, or that I can easily join a friend in a game), then it’d be ok, but as it is, it’s the antithesis of Steam.
01/10/2009 at 22:11 ascagnel says:
The GfW in Fallout 3 actually hurt it. After venturing around the Capitol Wastelands for nearly 70 hours, I decided I needed some changes. Many mods require the Fallout Script Extender, which you can’t use with GfW, since GfW doesn’t let you sign in if you’re using an app that’s been unofficially patched.
I’ve since given up on FO3, and gone back to oblivion. My OBMM list is nearing 100, and it survives between installations if I have Steam =)
01/10/2009 at 19:21 Krondonian says:
I actually quite liked GFWL on GTA IV.
AND I WILL BURN IN HELL.
01/10/2009 at 19:25 Dinger says:
60 anecdotes? You get 60 anecdotes about bad Steam experiences. For GFWL, I’m betting 300, minimum. Myself, I don’t have any bad GFWL experiences, unless you count finding out that some game I was interested in is going to be released through GFWL.
I ain’t gonna buy something that’s broken. I ain’t buying GFWL.
01/10/2009 at 19:26 Po0py says:
I just headbutted my Samsung Syncmaster 22″ in anticipation of forthcoming rage.
I’ll say this. Games For Windows live is an attempt of Microsft to sabotage the pc games market and steal all the customers over to their little box ‘o drm. There.
01/10/2009 at 20:00 Nerd Rage says:
Why would they intentionally sabotage a platform where they already manufacture the dominant operating system and supply the dominant gaming API’s? I think they’re just trying to leverage their position in the PC market to have more control over PC games, and are doing a brilliant (sarcasm) job of it. If their goal is to make money, and I believe it is, then “standardizing” the PC as a platform is something that A) only they are in a position to attempt and B) will earn them a small amount of currency for every game that is released on windows.
I don’t mind the concept of GFWL in and of itself, as long as it’s optional. Which, *gasp*, it always will be. Even if they go so far as to alter Windows such that only GFWL certified applications can access the DirectX libraries, there’s still OpenGL/OpenAL and quite a few more API’s that would allow PC gaming to continue.
01/10/2009 at 20:17 lumpi says:
Don’t think it’s deliberate to sabotage the PC. But they sure want to take total control of the windows games market, as they have over the XBox.
Where is the operating system equivalent of Firefox? We desperately need an alternative…
01/10/2009 at 20:56 Tei says:
“Why would they intentionally sabotage a platform where they already manufacture the dominant operating system and supply the dominant gaming API’s? ”
Is that news for you? DX10 is released only for Vista just to savotage XP as a gamming platform. All the Home versions of Windows are savotaged to support less network conexions, one of the latest Service Packs savotaged windows, so If you have programs that need to create more conexions, you have to move to a *Server version.
In a future date (the next year maybe) Microsoft will do more moves to savotage XP as a gamming platform in a way that will force gamers to move. DX10 was designed for that, but the lack of hardware that move DX10 and the relax of the polycount race has made this thing unefective, so gamers still use XP.
01/10/2009 at 21:12 Po0py says:
Well, so long as Steam exists, I don’t think it has a chance in hell of taking control. It’s sad that games like Batman Arkham Asylum has to resort to GFWL to compliment something as simple as online leaderboards. As far as I can see, that is the only reason Batman AA is using GFWL Does Steam have anything similar? If not then itshould be their top priority.
01/10/2009 at 21:14 bookwormat says:
(copy&paste-ing my response from the old forum’s “No Alan Wake for PC” post in here)
Microsoft is and has always been a platform provider. In the past, analysts often accused Microsoft of being too defensive in their attempts to protect Windows and as a result are not prepared if technology shifts to other platforms.
And Analysts were right: After Netscape was defeated, Microsoft practically disbanded the whole Internet Explorer team and missed their unique chance to kill the open web movement in its early stage.
In the 90ties, people bought a computer to run Microsoft Word. Now they buy a Computer to run Google and Facebook. Enterprise software has shifted to web applications as well, often these are even written on platforms that are independent from the operating system running on the server.
While Windows will probably still be the main operating system for the next decades, it has become less relevant as a platform for new software.
So what I’m trying to say is that Microsoft is really just doing what many people suggested they do since the 90ties: They aggressively try to spread new proprietary software solutions other that Windows. Build themselves a new home for the future. Even at the expense of Windows. Most notably attempts are Microsoft Silverlight and their proprietary home appliance, the xbox.
And I’m sure there is a “Games for Windows” team at Microsoft that’s trying to make kick ass software. It’s just that they have a smaller budget than the xbox live team, and they are most likely not the greatest talents the company has to offer.
And for the main games division at Microsoft, releasing Alan Wake for Windows makes as much sense as for Nintendo to release Mario Kart for Windows.
01/10/2009 at 21:17 Jad says:
Where is the operating system equivalent of Firefox? We desperately need an alternative…
Well that would be Linux. Which has native clients for some games (I know UT99 & 2004 had them at least) , but for most its a hassle because of DirectX. And ATI has had a history of releasing really poor drivers for Linux (which is one reason why I still stick to nVidia, although I don’t actually use Linux anymore).
Macs are another alternative, although if you’re using web browsers as your analogy, they’d be more like Opera or something.
02/10/2009 at 01:20 Nerd Rage says:
@Tei
Apparently you completely missed and/or ignored my point that even if MS does go into full blown lockdown mode regarding GFWL and DX## – there’s still OpenGL and such to keep developers going on windows without MS’s certification BS. This was really directed at what seems to me like a crybaby response from Wardell, threatening to take his ball and go home if Microsoft doesn’t start playing nice.
Now if you want to argue the semantics of whether or not a poor business decision is self-sabotage, go right ahead. That’s always been my favorite indicator of a strong argument. From my perspective, sabotage is intentional, and while I would agree they’ve made some missteps as they attempt to get a handle on the PC gaming market, I’m not cynical enough to believe that these missteps were intentional. Whatever incidental, indirect advantage the 360 may have, hypothetically and for the sake of argument, gained due to this self-sabotage in the PC market – I’m sure they’d be much happier if developers were flocking to GFWL. Two healthy platforms would certainly bring them more money than having one healthy and having one intentionally put down so the other can get more attention.
01/10/2009 at 19:26 Smokingkipper says:
Excuse my utter ignorance, but from a users’ point of view, what exactly is wrong with GFWL? Is it the concept? Or just the poor implementation of an idea? Or maybe because Micorsoft has a hand in it?
01/10/2009 at 19:30 Smokingkipper says:
Ok, that will really not do…It was my valiant attempt at being inpartial.
I have to recount the time when me and my brother tried to get a game of DOW2 Co-op going together with the GFWL chat. I ended up ringing him up and putting the mobile on hands free.
01/10/2009 at 19:35 Larington says:
The answer to that question is apparent in the text of this article – Games for Windows Live was originally intended as a way of bringing PC gamers together, IE GAMES FOR WINDOWS, but over time it seems to have been hijacked for use in the XBOX and its ability to be a service for use in PC Gaming was damaged as a result.
Basically, instead of being something sitting quietly in the background – there only when you want it – it instead chooses to interfere, it gets in the way, if I were to play fallout 3 for example (This may have been fixed since) theres this wierd wall where I can’t load save games saved whilst logged into GFWL if I’m logged out of it (And vice versa), then theres the programs insistence on you logging into it even when you don’t need or want to, etc. etc.
01/10/2009 at 19:30 Nick says:
It really is just a pointless load of shit though isn’t it?
01/10/2009 at 19:31 Railick says:
I'm sorry why is Stardock concerned about GFWL ? WTF Is Impulse for now?
01/10/2009 at 19:41 Jeremy says:
It just came up in the course of the interview, so he made a response towards how GFWL has really messed up with their overall strategy. I agree, if GFWL managed to take over as a whole, I think that is something that could really put PC gaming at the bottom for a long time.
01/10/2009 at 19:32 Heliosicle says:
SCREW YOU GFWL!
01/10/2009 at 19:35 interesting says:
Isn’t this the guy that was going to boycott UPS because they were going to boycott Faux News?
I think this announcement was made just to overshadow that.
01/10/2009 at 19:36 RobF says:
I caught an article earlier in my semi-slumber state headlined “GFWL: Now easier than ever for Indies to use” or similar.
My only thought was “why in Gods name would I want to do that?” I’ve got some code-stuff here a friend did porting one of my games across to the 360 and for local testing the PC version uses GFWL. It took me half a day to work out how to set up a local profile, and not much longer to realise that it’s a completely unnecessary piece of horrid user unfriendly kit that I’d *never* inflict on the public given a choice.
Rotten total point missing stuff it is.
01/10/2009 at 19:58 ZamFear says:
If it’s like the article I saw, it’s just Games for Windows certification, which lets you stick a big-ass Games for Windows logo on the box. Not the coincidentally named Games for Windows Live “service.”
Though GfWL likely requires the GfW certification, there are some developers/publisher who get the certification on their games for marketing reasons (eg Mini Ninjas is GfW certified, but does not use GfWL).
Link to Joystiq article.
01/10/2009 at 20:09 RobF says:
Cheers ZamFear, as I said – I was in a bit of a coma and skipped on by it to find something more interesting so the link is much appreciated.
Seems I was in even more of a coma than I thought :)
01/10/2009 at 19:36 subversus says:
I hate this service.
When I bought Gears of War this year and tried to run it, it was impossible because of this stupid 2009 error. The only way to fix tha bug t was to download patch through Live (no stand-alone fix foe my localised edition). But when I tried to do this in-game (by setting my windows clock to 2008 just to run Gears), I wasn’t able to enter Live because it found my current date wrong and barred me from entering the service.
I HAD to enter Live because I wasn’t abe to save my progress without it. So I alt-tab’ed to Windows, set the date back to 2009, alt-tab’ed back to game (usually it crashes after that, so I was lucky) and then finally got to Live (with screen overriden with strange graphic artefacts).
But It was only after I spend two hours approx. trying TO REGISTER in it properly, because it’s not supported in my country (I had to setup xbox live site to US and only after that my registration has become active).
Steam is much, much better system, creating friendly PSN and console Live-like experience. Microsoft should stick to its box instead of ruining PC experience, but that’s a dream.
01/10/2009 at 19:37 Irish Al says:
I saw GFWL punch a baby.
Of course, all it is is a MS attempt to ultimately charge you for multi-player like on the 360.
01/10/2009 at 19:40 Jon says:
I only encountered GFWL once; the Dawn of War II Beta on Steam.
This was a multiplayer beta, and so I was forced to:
- Create a live account. Naturally, the website didn’t work in Firefox. The signup process was generally just long and painful (maybe because I was trying to use a non-microsoft email address.)
- Open up the live interface. Now I’m not sure why, but this dragged my framerate down to a crawl, and I started to see glitchy black boxes.
- Login, and then create some kind of sub-account thing. More forms! Yay!
- Find people to play with. This just took stupidly long. Give me a proper server browser any day over the mindless automatic matchmaking – I don’t mind a quickplay button, but at least give me the choice.
- Connect to these people. Naturally, the lag was horrible, connection issues disrupted the game, and whenever I managed to click anything some shiny notification would pop up to cover the button I was trying to click.
To cut the story short, I quickly uninstalled the beta (thank god I didn’t pay for this) and now avoid anything with GFWL on the box like the plague.
01/10/2009 at 19:42 Alec Meer says:
Games For Windows Ate My Hamster gags are all well and good, but genuine reasons why it’s bad news are more likely to convince any devs/pubs who happen to be reading that they should steer clear of the thing.
It did mug my cat, however. More importantly, its tendency to not work has briefly prevented me from saving my game in both Dawn of War II and Batman Arkham Asylum, ultimately requiring me to start the games over once I’d finally got the awful thing running.
01/10/2009 at 22:24 nutterguy says:
I would like to point out here the MAJOR difference between Games for Windows and Games for Windows Live(GFWL).
Games for windows is one of VERY good things that has been done for PC gaming.
Among other things it is just a set of standards that games carrying the label have to comply with, things like:
* An “Easy Install” option
* Games Explorer intergration
* Compatible with 64-bit
* Supports normal and widescreen resolutions properly
* Supports parental controls
* Support for the Xbox 360 Controller
* Games must not disable the ALT+TAB (I know this is a big one for RPS writers)
* Install to Correct Folders
On the other hand GFWL is I agree a steaming pile of shite….
GFW Requirements page is here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee417691%28VS.85%29.aspx
01/10/2009 at 19:43 Paul Moloney says:
I think it’s, um – small voice – OK. Never had a major problem with it, but then the only thing I appear to use it for (in Fallout 3, GTAIV and Batman:AA) is to check my achievements. Never bought anything through it or played multiplayer. Considering that the way it only updates a game _when you try to play it_ is incomparably dumb compared to Steam, I’m quite willing to believe it does many other things stupidly as well. Wasn’t the original project leader unceremoniously fired?
01/10/2009 at 19:46 tekDragon says:
Still baffled as to why you’d need to have GFWL on top of steam. Screw that.
01/10/2009 at 19:54 Bret says:
Because Microsoft’s GFWL division is a bunch of worthless ass wipes with enough money to get people to support a useless system.
01/10/2009 at 19:46 Lidwoord says:
At the last GFWL update it insisted I had to do this while in the DoW2 main menu, this took more than 10 minutes with 90% CPU load or higher. Afterwards windows update tried to install the same update as well for about a week, failing miserably.
The interface is horrible, clunky and confusing and you can only see your “friends” (no real friend would inflict GFWL on you) while ingame. The desktop application of GFWL only allows you to buy things.
01/10/2009 at 19:47 Alux says:
I had to get GFWL for to play Batman: Arkham Asylum, which sucked because I got it through Steam. After about, oh, three hours of setting up an account BECAUSE I WAS DIRECTED TO THE WRONG PAGE, I could play just fine. You know, except for the huge amount of RAM it takes to have Batman and GFWL running at the same time.
Microsoft should just support Steam, you know, like every PC gamer.
02/10/2009 at 05:53 Hyudra says:
Ditto. Got Batman, had to do GfW, it was more hinder than help. I ragequit and nerdraged several times through the process before I finally got to play, and a shift-ctrl-esc revealed that my RAM was peaking with the two programs going at the same time. Brutal. I buy maybe one game a year, and Batman was it – and I probably won’t finish Batman with things in the state they are in now.
Screw GfW.
01/10/2009 at 19:47 Railick says:
When I was a baby GFWL punched me! Time traveling witchrogram.
01/10/2009 at 19:49 J. Prevost says:
I’m another one of those people who’s never had a bad GfWL experience because I’ve avoided buying any GfWL-enabled games like it was the clap.
01/10/2009 at 19:55 F_t_R says:
Dawn of War 2 requires me to sign in to this every time I want to play, adding about 30 seconds on before I can get going.
The other annoying thing is that when I created my profile I wasn’t really thinking about it too much and just put in a nonsensical handle, thinking I would change it if I ever played online. About 6 months later I got a 360 and signed in to live with my hotmail account, only to find that if I now want to change that handle I have to pay for the privilege! Ok so I could just register a new email account, but just the principle of having to pay for something as simple as a name change, which PC games can do as often as they like, is ridiculous.
01/10/2009 at 19:57 Dan says:
GFWL is a god damned abortion of a UI experience.
I still, to this day, cannot get a voice chat session running. It -never- works and is impossible to explain the process to non-techies.
Why DoW2 didn’t use Steam I haven’t a clue. I usually end up just setting up a voice chat in steam for DoW2 anyhow.
01/10/2009 at 19:58 Daniel Rivas says:
GFWL doesn’t work. Perhaps they should make it work.
01/10/2009 at 20:00 Ginger Yellow says:
“I would even see my own friends in the press–and I don’t have much of a social life, so people in the press are my friends”
Ouch.
Anyway, I thought his comments on sales numbers were more interesting. Both the “approaching 1m” for Sins, and the OEM stuff. Why on earth would a graphics card manufacturer want to bundle GalCiv. It’s an awesome game, but it doesn’t exactly show off your amazing new shader tech. Still, good on Stardock for wangling that deal. And then there’s the Amazon stuff. If that 100 sales at the top of the charts thing is true, that’s pretty scary. I know that book sales on Amazon drop off precipitously outside the best sellers, but if the top selling game is only shifting that number in a week, nobody’s going to make much money off it. I suppose there are plenty of online retailers, and loads of people are buying through Steam, so it all adds up, but even so.
01/10/2009 at 20:00 Railick says:
I'm still wanting to know why Stardock cares about GFWL when they have Impulse.
01/10/2009 at 21:06 bookwormat says:
impulse does not have network services and APIs like GfWL, Steam or Battlenet do. There is not much networking infrastrukture in impulse, and there is not much experience in making multiplayer games within Stardock.
01/10/2009 at 20:04 Hug_dealer says:
Personally dont have any more problems with gfwl, than i did with steam, which is not much.
sure there are problems people run into, but mostly it is user, or thier computer based, not microsofts fault, kinda like the problems with steam people have.
Dow 2 uses both steam and gfwl because they wanted steam to provide the hosting of the game for patches and only have 1 version of the game instead of making different patches for different ones, steam, d2d, hard disk, etc etc.
At the time, steam did not provide match making. So They went with GFWL, which provided the match making, and also provide some funding, help for devs that use gfwl.
The only complaint i have about gfwl, is that they take more time to cert patches, so patches take longer.
01/10/2009 at 20:08 Real Horrorshow says:
His complete inability to reference a game not made by Stardock is annoying.
01/10/2009 at 20:08 Railick says:
It is only an option for the publishers and devs not for the customer. The only option they have is to not play the game :P that isn't much of an option at all if you ask me.
01/10/2009 at 20:11 subedii says:
Well for starters, let’s head back to DoW2. Relic repeatedly stated before launch that they weren’t going with the “mega-patch” mentalitiy that plagued Company of Heroes. Instead, they’d be opting for smaller, far more regular patches in order to address issues that came up.
Of course, because of GFWL, this is completely out the window. Relic cannot release small, regular patches because each and every update not only has to go through MS certification, but has to be paid for as well. The result? Back to game breaking mega-patches and waiting months on end for the next update. This ironically, completely goes against the point of using Steam, since THAT system was originally conceived with fast and consistent patching in mind.
Voice support on GFWL is a complete joke. Aside from not working properly (every time I’ve tried it simply crapped out altogether, I have to stick with either using Vent or Steam voice chat), they’ve very much stuck with the XBL mentality in that there is no push-to-talk support, it’s all-talk or nothing. Grief, this has only been a standard feature of PC games for over a decade. Relic actually patched in push-to-talk in Dawn of War 2, but it’s stuck natively on the Tilde key and can’t be rebound. Not. Useful. At. All.
Let’s see, what other problems. Developments to the system aren’t designed with making the system better, just pathetic attempts at making it more proiftable whilst missing the most obvious flaws. It is beyond belief that GFWL still has NO external client, you have to be in-game to access your friends lists or modify anything. The last TWO updates saw revisions to an external client, but that was only for GFWL marketplace, and it has no other functionality besides. That’s right, they went to all the trouble of creating an external client for GFWL but gave it no functionality except the ability to process micropayments. I can’t call that anything other than stupid, it was an opportunity waiting to happen and they still refuse to take it. The last GFWL update even made that obsolete since micropayments are now available in-game. Still no updates to other parts of the architecture though.
Oh yes, micropayments, let’s vent on that a bit. I’m an adult with a bank account and card, why do I have to invest in 1000 MS “points” in order to purchase DLC? It’s a system designed purely with nickle-and-diming in mind, you can’t purachase the DLC directly for cash sums, and you can’t even pay the exact amount in MS points, you have to buy them in 500 and 1000 point increments when your DLC costs something like 800. Whenever I go on Steam I don’t have to plonk down for 1000 Newells in order to buy anything there
Are those sufficient reasons for you? How about GFWL constantly eating savegames when it loses access to the system (This problem happened with both Gears of War AND Fallout 3, although I haven’t personally suffered it with Dawn of War 2). Or the GFWL TrueSkill matchmaking that constantly matches new people against seasoned professionals (DoW2 again). I could go on.
I’m ranting. But the truth is that this isn’t surprising, it’s actually pretty natural. MS at first tried to make money with GFWL by breaking basic multiplayer support and charging for “extra” features (and by extra, I mean standard). When that didn’t work, there was no real profitability to be had from the system anymore. Ultimately, investment goes where the money is, and that’s not GFWL, it’s XBL, the service that they can actually charge a subscription for.
01/10/2009 at 20:12 jonfitt says:
I just can’t see what GFWL is supposed to offer that we didn’t have before? It certainly doesn’t offer the online community aspect that XBL does since there’s no client and it only runs in game.
I heard that it has been chosen for some recent RTSs because of it’s middleware peer-to-peer matchmaking and connection aspect. But if that’s the sole reason, I can’t believe that it is the best on offer.
If it is the best around then there’s a gaping hole for someone to move in and clean up. Valve could add it to Steamworks, for example.
01/10/2009 at 20:13 trindermon says:
What makes me laugh is… Services like Steam and Impluse are content delivery services with community functions. Games for windows live as ONE thing going for it, and its that it is a great Peer 2 Peer Match making technology – something that steam and impulse dont do.
Lets put it this way, Had demigod used the technology, would its multiplayer been the huge steaming pile of rubbish it was at release? that game was almost robbery its online functionality was so bad.
Its pretty un-intrusive only starts when a game starts; friends list is shared with your xbox if you have one, whats to hate? Sure its not the best thing in the world, but i dont see what there is to hate. especially when no oher service does what it does at a technical level on the peer to peer front?
01/10/2009 at 20:28 lumpi says:
You will learn to hate it, when you have to wait 3 weeks longer for every game update because it has to go through a “Microsoft certification process” first. You will learn to hate it when Microsoft decides to re-introduce a $15 “premium subscription” fee to access “premium content”. It is also beyond me why I need GFWL to save a game? Why GTA4 on Steam now needs to run THREE programs (Steam, GFWL and “Social Club”).
If you just enjoy the soothing “not-so-badness” of GFWL now, I envy you for your irrepressible optimism, but you might want to look up the history of the Microsoft corporation while playing the Propellerhead’s “History Repeating” in the background.
01/10/2009 at 20:28 subedii says:
With respect to trindermon, have you actually played Dawn of War 2 online (as of the moment, the only PC game I’m aware of that makes use of TrueSkill matchmaking)?
The implementation is a joke. In theory it’s supposed to have people playing against each other at the same levels. So why is it that my last match was against a group of TS 1′s and 2′s (i.e. complete new people), where the absolute lowest on my team was a TS12?
See the problem is people keep talking about how well TS matchmaking works. And I’m sure it does, on the 360. I’ve heard about how brilliant it is there. Which makes it all the more frustrating that for some reason it doesn’t do its job here, on the PC.
01/10/2009 at 20:14 lumpi says:
Oh my, turns out the cynics amongst us were completely right.
GFWL is a pathetic attempt of Microsoft to similarly control the games business on their Windows platform as they do on the XBox.
01/10/2009 at 20:18 FunkyB says:
I have played two GFWL games, on two separate OSs, and in both cases it prevented me from playing the game.
1. DoW2, Windows XP
Would not accept CD key, just sat there with the ‘submit’ button blinking no matter how often I clicked. Had to switch to a newly created Windows account to get it to work. Switching every time just to play a game is annoying.
2. Arkham Asylum, Win7
Totally fresh Windows 7 install. When I run the game GFWL pops up saying I need to update it, but the update never completes. I have not found a resolution to this, forcing me to create an ‘offline account’ so I can’t use any online features. I presume this will affect all other GFWL games on my Win7 install, but I will be avoiding it in the future.
Steam works, GoG works, GFWL just doesn’t.
01/10/2009 at 20:19 FunkyB says:
Oh and lets not forget that if you switch OS / user or reinstall anything you can’t move your saves across like you can with EVERY OTHER GAME IN HISTORY! It makes me so mad that such a buggy pile of crud is being used by developers.
01/10/2009 at 20:34 Christian says:
Hmm..I’m not sure about those savegams…aren’t they stored locally in the profile’s directory somewhere? If I remember, I moved my GTA4-savegames without a problem. But that might as well just be my memory getting worse..
01/10/2009 at 20:31 Christian says:
So…I’m not sure I did understand him right there. Is he really saying there that he’ll stop making PC-games if GFWL keeps on existing or getting more games?
Yeah, that’ll show ‘em. Why not just choose another platform?
But regarding GFWL:
It’s just a inferior platform, not thought through and lousily implemented. It doesn’t add any real value to games, it gets in the way and it just seems unfinished (even after all those years). And the worst part is: it uses some weird Microsoft make-believe money..why not let me pay with real money? That’s just a scam.
Also, seeing that i prevents me from buying DLC for Fallout 3 (I’ve got the English (original/uncut) version, but live in Germany), I don’t see myself buying anything that uses that system ever again. GTA4 was another example: If you bought it over Steam, you’d still have to use that system (although that’s the publisher’s poor choice).
GFWL, nobody needs you, there are better alternatives out there.
And I guess that’s just the point: wouldn’t it have the money and backup from Microsoft’s XBox Live, it would never have had a chance in a free market. It would just have vanished by now. And that’s a great part of the hate it’s getting: Microsoft pushing some inferior product into the market without caring if it’s any good.
Also, it ate my homework back when I was in school.
01/10/2009 at 20:33 Christian says:
Oh yeah: Also the German site for GFWL is so outdated. I haven’t checked for a while, but the last time, well after the release of GTA4, it still just showed three games. And the login didn’t work (and no usefull information was to be found).
01/10/2009 at 22:32 Wisq says:
No, he said he wouldn’t make PC games if GfWL “maintains that strategy and they take over” (emphasis mine).
I.e. if his options ever came down to “make GfWL PC games” or “don’t make PC games”, he’d pick the latter.
01/10/2009 at 23:18 Christian says:
Aah, ok. Thanks for making that clear. It seems I was a bit confused there…
01/10/2009 at 20:34 Zaphid says:
The easiest way to get Fallout 3 DLC was to pirate them and stick them into your F3 folder, without GFWL getting into the way, that alone speaks for itself. It’s terrible system and I haven’t used it since DoW2 beta.
Blizzard is developing some content distribution with the Battle.net 2.0, which could be easily expanded to other Activision titles, Valve has Steam which could add p2p multiplayer support with steamcloud quite easily, at least it seems that way. I’m sure Stardock could come up with something too. When a piece of middleware is the sole reason you are NOT going to buy a game (Batman AA), you have a problem.
It’s not DRM that eats babies, it’s GFWL!
01/10/2009 at 20:35 Hug_dealer says:
i can understand alot of the criticisms with gfwl here, and they are for the most part valid. Alot of the complaints are problems with the software, may or may not be the fault of microsoft. Others dont like the clunkiness. Some think it is just trying to take and make money.
There is not a better match making service available to devs out there at the moment. So i would rather have decent match making than none at all.
Steam is far from perfect also. It is worse for dow 2 than gfwl. Anytime steam loses its authentication, it ends the match being played. so those times when your friends list is losing connection every 5-10 minutes, you cant play.
Every online service has its ups and downs. Yes gfwl is trying to make money, why wouldnt they? Steam is trying to make money also. So is gamespy, so is stardock. you cannot make a multiplayer matchmaking service and not make money, cause you will eventually no longer exist.
I guess im fine with it, because everything works for me. from voice chat, to match making, and updating. I actually prefer not having push to talk button in dow 2. im already pushing enough buttons as is.
If you are complaining about true skill match making, you need to blame relic. They are the ones that control how and what it does. Microsoft only provides the server. Relic has been improving match making with every patch.
I love how microsoft is the fall guy for all the problems, but its never anyone elses fault about anything. Its microsofts fault that i imported a game, and cannot buy content that is illegal in my country. Its microsofts fault that something is wrong on my computer and it will not update. Its microsofts fault that the match making is broken, even though it is control by someone else. Microsoft cause patches to take 3 weeks longer, but steam isnt bad because they take a month or more to patch thier steam downloaded games, than when the original patch comes out. Its just cool to hate microsoft.
01/10/2009 at 20:47 TheSombreroKid says:
Match makng on dow2 is aweful, this is my only experience with gfwl matchmaking.
The gfwl servers being down stops you from playing your games just as much as the steam servers being down, i couldn’t play singleplayer batman the other day because of fucking gfwl!.
01/10/2009 at 20:55 subedii says:
With respect, my issue is NOT that GFWL is trying to make money, I stated that the problem is that GFWL can’t make any money. No money = no investment. Steam is Valve’s business, it’s in their benefit to improve the system. It is not in Microsoft’s interests to improve GFWL, that money would be better spent investing in XBL. A system which works incredibly well, and is continually improving. The comparison between the two is night and day.
Regarding how it’s better than Steam because Steam kills the game, I’m sorry, I have no idea where you’re coming from with this. I’ve happily been able to play Dawn of War 2 when Steams’ been down, so you’re just plain wrong there. I can’t play it online, but that applies equally to GFWL when that goes down.
Leaving that aside, it’s most certainly an issue when they force devs to pay for updates and go through a month long certification process. That really kills attempts at balancing online games. Valve spots a problem in TF2, it’s patched within a week. Relic is notified of a problem with Dawn of War 2, it can’t be fixed until the next major update 2 months down the line, and you’ve got to hope that balance updated didn’t break anything else in the meantime (here’s a hint, it did, and always will when you’re dealing with mega-patches).
You love not having push to talk? Fine, guess what, a lot of other people do to. The problem is every other game gives you the freaking option because it is and has been standard for years now, essentially since PC games started supporting voice talk. You might “like” the fact that this option is not available for some reason, I don’t. And I don’t see how including it would disrupt yourgame. My sole experience with GFWL voice coms when it is on is unnending streams of static and mouth-breathing noises coming from players because they can’t turn off voice coms. It is a very legitimate complaint, saying that you yourself don’t have a problem with it doesn’t dismiss that.
01/10/2009 at 20:42 MajorManiac says:
To play devils advocate; at least by making a total pigs ear of GFWL microsoft have forced companies to experiment with their own distribution systems (such as impulse), and thus have inadvertantly improved the overall experience of PC Gaming.
Thank God for GFWL being soo bad it has caused developers to create their own download services. Once again the PC proves to be dynamic enough to step around any such problem.
01/10/2009 at 21:02 Tei says:
Only … the timming is different. These paltforms where created after XBox Live show the world how a integrated multiservice feel, and before GFWL tried to provide that in a bloated and stupid way to PC.
How you think Steam has been created after GFWL is strange.
01/10/2009 at 21:48 MajorManiac says:
To be fair its been a long day. But what I mean is there seems to be a general move away from a centralised distibution of games and I think GFWL has only succeeded in speeding this up.
01/10/2009 at 20:43 MrSnoobs says:
Ok, no-one has really asked/answered this question and my ignorance may be symptomatic of my general duncicality (new word?) but why is GFWL necessary ever? I appreciate the benefit of a platform like Steam but GFWL never seemed to offer that kind of sophistication. All I ever got was a flashing bar at the top of the screen when I started a game, and that’s it. Games lived without these things before Steam et al came along, so why would a developer willingly submit to a service that THEY have to pay to use which cripples the game?
Personal anecdote? Ever try porting a save game from the PC version of GTA IV? My advice: don’t bother. Before some genius invented a tool to help you do this, you needed to edit a file in HEX just to get GFWL to recognise your save game. Hopeless.
01/10/2009 at 20:43 TheSombreroKid says:
i used to be the biggest gfwl advocate on here, but now, i have to say, there’s a lot of things i don’t like about it.
01/10/2009 at 20:53 Gemski says:
GFWL did some good things. Standardize the use of Xbox controller (doesn’t have to be Microsoft made). Before that, game pad setup for PC games was rather annoying. I like having my Xbox friends linked to the PC side. Handles achievements well.
The fact that Microsoft limits pc updates should actually be viewed as a good thing too. PC devs have been pretty sloppy about patches for far too long. So many games just ship with the notion that they’ll just patch it on launch. Then the first month you get like four patches that should have happened before it went gold.
01/10/2009 at 22:44 Azradesh says:
Multiplayer games need many micro updates for blance reason, and the PC hardware market changes often. MS limiting updates is not a good idea in anyway shape or form. Get a clue.
01/10/2009 at 23:11 Wisq says:
You’re confusing GFW with GFWL. See above posts.
.
Oh, and re: "get a clue"… while GFWL-bashing (and MS-bashing) is pretty much encouraged by the fact that this entire article is about Wardell bashing it, I gather that other-RPS-commentor-bashing is not.
01/10/2009 at 20:53 trindermon says:
Yes i have, I think street fighter also uses the same match making (dont quote me on that tho), i think the problem stems from the fact that to lots of people “Skill matching” equates to “i am skill matched why arnt i winning all the time”.
the same thing happened in quake live, people complained because in skill matched matches they werent winning all the time.
to me my skill bracket should offer me the chance to get better, that means playing people who are slightly better than me, but not god like. Nobody ever got better by winning all the time.
Skill matching is a touchey subject for me, i am big in to quake live, and it really was the case that people complained about the skill matching because they thought it ment they should win most of the time.
PS: Dawn of War2 is great fun online, and i am pretty terrible. If Brad had stumped up & tested his game more, he wouldnt have needed litterally tens of patched in the first month of demigods life. The games multiplayer support was base robbery for the money we paid. Did it ever occur to him that given better testing, and the willingness to pay the piper, he would have sold a zillion more copys cause the inital reviews of the game and the word of mouth wouldnt have been “the multiplayer does not work dont bother”.
ALL of the first 5 patches for Demigod were due to the multiplayer plain not working. And with all due respect, if he does not want to under stand networking or then he has to realise that he needs to ether pay a 3rd party to do so, or go on to make sholey single player games, because this is the marketplace we live in.
With all that said, i wish microsoft would loose up and allow developers more freedom; they do need to change; i am not saying they dont. I am just trying to say it sounds like depsite MS being stupid, Frogboy wants something for free, and is unwilling to accept that the peer to peer expertise comes at a cost in terms of finance. I wholey think that demigod would have probably sold at least 50% more copys had it included a built proof multiplayer – and would have not needed a bazzilion patches withing the first 60 days.
As for needing to sign in to save your GTA games, i could be wrong (and will admit if i am) but i am pretty sure that is down to how the developer has implemented the GFWL platform in to the game, its not required for other GFWL games to play single player. Thats down to the developer implementing the intergration badly.
/Theo
01/10/2009 at 20:54 Hypocee says:
It was great when my brother couldn’t play his Steam copy of Section 8 for several hours of forum-trawling and operating system diagnosis. It turns out GFWL’s installer and uninstaller were neither overwriting nor removing its directory in Program files and some contents – little, insignificant stuff like client.exe. Competence!
01/10/2009 at 21:07 Hug_dealer says:
Valve can patch thier own games very quickly. 3rd party devs cannot. if you bought a game from steam, it requires its own patch from steam. Steam takes forever to patch other developers games, there have been times when steam has been behind 2 patches worth for a game. Sometimes taking over a month. So your lil comment does not even hold water.
Relic knew that was a problem and then made all games tied to steam. so they only have to make 1 patch instead of 4 or 5. They fixed one of steams biggest problems.
if you set up your voice threshold properly, they cant tell you are breathing. there is even a control for that in GFWL. Another user error.
01/10/2009 at 21:23 subedii says:
Steam requires a separate patch, however, it does not require a month long certification process, hence the problem. Multiplayer games need to be updated quickly and regularly, and having to not only go through this process, but pay for it each time, is a major issue that needs to be addressed. Zeno Clash managed to be updated really freaking fast when they wanted to fix something.
And yes, I have configured myvoice volume, thanks for assuming otherwise. It doesn’t stop the GFWL voice coms from crapping out altogether on me repeatedly. I’ve got maybe 6-7 guys on my friends list that I play DoW with, and each of us has opted to either use Vent or Steam chat for games simply because GFWL voice chat refuses to work. If everything else works fine, but GFWL doesn’t, yeah, I’m going to call issues on that. And that still doesn’t dismiss the point of it needing a push-to-talk option.
01/10/2009 at 22:27 Wisq says:
BTW, RPS-folks… you may want to unify the tags you support on the forums and the tags you support on the main site. When someone posts on the main site with a bunch of “i” tags, they can no longer edit their post on the forum side without changing them all to “em” tags. Same if someone block quotes them on the forum side.
This is in addition to that whole issue where editing on the forum side nukes all your paragraph breaks and requires that you do silly stuff like “para1(newline).(newline)para2″.
01/10/2009 at 21:16 Tei says:
All this shitstorm to sells certifications. Shame. Microsoft you guys have no moral or taste!. BAD!
01/10/2009 at 21:18 Alexander Norris says:
I’ve skimmed the comments and will proceed to read the rest thoroughly when I’ve posted this, but: the greatest problem with GfWL is that it’s yet another layer that forcefully inserts itself inbetween the gamer and his legally-purchased game. I already have to sign into Steam to play Dawn of War II; I don’t want to have to sign into GfWL as well, doubly so when the game makes it mandatory for me to be signed in in order to do anything, promptly disabling the game I paid for if there’s a technical glitch on anyone’s end.
It boils down to this: GfWL is Microsoft trying to cash in on the “arbitrarily DRM restrictions” front too late, because someone saw the way Steam essentially locks us out of our games if we can’t connect to Valve’s system and decided that this was a good idea for the corporate chaps. The problem is, GfWL isn’t integrated into the OS like Xbox Live is integrated into the 360; it doesn’t work properly, and when it does, it lacks half the features that Steam has and which make Steam tolerable (IM, a workable friends list and an invite system that isn’t sending emails, for pity’s sake – contrary to the console types, we have keyboards). Except by coming to this party late, Microsoft missed the point and missed the boat, and we can only tolerate so many anally-restrictive systems.
What GfWL should have been is a standard into which other digital distribution systems can integrate. Microsoft already provide the OS that 99% of gamers use; it should have been their job to make it easier for different digital distribution clients to work on this same platform, so that games could work with Impulse or Steam or [other DD client here] rather than trying to force console-like restrictions onto PC gaming.
01/10/2009 at 21:31 Alexander Norris says:
Quickly clarifying two points: a) GfWL’s profile system ties your saves to your profiles, so if the system is down and you log in with an “offline” profile, you won’t have access to your saves; if you log in with a different profile, you won’t have access to your saves; and heaven forbid the game just plain not let you play unless you’re logged in (hello, DoWII skirmish); and b) Steam’s offline mode is often broken, and I wouldn’t be surprised if fixing it isn’t one of Valve’s priorities.
Either way, both of these place unnecessary restrictions on the player. By contrast, Impulse is only required to install and update games, and you can play something like Demigod regardless of whether Impulse is down.
01/10/2009 at 21:36 Tei says:
In “defense” of Microsoft theres a system that supposedly helps downloading stuff (part of what you ask for), made by microsoft. The BITS service. The problem with it is that It have a tendency to download 8 GB at 4KB speed for no reason at all, like some people suffered with AION.
It seems that custom made downloaders are better and fasters and more reliable than what microsoft provide.
01/10/2009 at 21:22 CaptainHairy says:
The Batman update would have finished, but it was downloading 500MB+ from Microsoft’s criminally slow servers. It took me 5 hours to get everything up to date when I’d downloaded Batman. It only took me 2 hours to download THE ENTIRE GAME of 8GB+.
01/10/2009 at 21:23 CaptainHairy says:
Oh wow, this was supposed to be in reply to a post above, where the guy can’t get Batman updated. Stupid reply button failed at its only freakin’ job.
01/10/2009 at 21:24 M$_$UX says:
Keep that Live POS on X-Box please, and away from PCs!
I can’t believe M$ has the nerve to even pretend they’re doing PC gaming any good, when they’re clearly actively seeking to destroy it (and yes I realize it’s not just M$).
Well said, Brad Wardell.
01/10/2009 at 21:31 Dinger says:
Okay, let’s break it down.
First off: That Microsoft limits PC updates. This is stupid. Consoles have extremely limited hardware configurations, and they’re not subject to random uncontrollable environmental changes, like the OS or a 3rd party app suddenly puking in your game’s presence. Windows isn’t. This has always been the problem with PCs, especially back in the DOS days. So, in the Windows world, we’re used to a different patching regime: instead of “Bang”, we see “Boom, bang, pop.” You just can’t adequately test for every configuration, so you need to adjust fire a couple of times. That’s how Windows works. Bringing in the Xbox Live team and having them dictate how Windows works will only be slightly less successful than Soviet genetics.
Second, what’s the big problem anyway? It’s quite simple. GFWL is a brand. Brands are supposed to have perceived value. And GFWL as a brand does have value: negative value. Why? Because A) digital distribution is not cheaper than retail, yet with GFWL, it nets you less product; B) the overall reported experience of GFWL (which is the only experience that counts. “Have you actually tried it?” is a worthless question when the common opinion is against you) is one where the customer is the least-invested stakeholder.
Look, each member of the GFWL team should fly economy with 10 different airlines. Even better, each member of the corporate board overseeing and hobbling GFWL development should do so. Why? Because that way they’ll learn what it takes to get people to eat their dog food. Some airlines these days charge for water and coffee (e.g., SAS on Euro-routes. I’m sure there are US equivalents). But many have learned that a dirt-cheap snack service — give people something, no matter how cheap, then offer something for money — keeps people calm: if they’ve signed on to a “Vendor-lock-in” service, they need the minimal suggestion, the slightest gesture, that the vendor is serving them, not fleecing them.
01/10/2009 at 21:34 Alaric says:
GFWL is bullshit. There was never any need for its existence. I hope it dies.
01/10/2009 at 21:49 subedii says:
I’ve been raging on GFWL pretty hard here, so let’s have a change of pace. I believe that GFWL could actually be a stellar system to use, but they need to make changes to it. Here’s my personal list of recommendations:
1- Stop requiring devs to go though GFWL certification for multiplayer updates. Multiplayer games are constantly evolving entities, and having to go through a month-long evaluation for each patch, and pay< for it, really kills balance attempts. Personally I’d prefer this for singleplayer updates as well, but those aren’t (usually) as pressing.
2- Introduce an external GFWL client. There’s no point in having a friends list if you actually have to be in-game to be invited to see it, or be invited into a game.
3- Start charging the ACTUAL cost for DLC, in cash, as opposed to making people buy MS funbucks. Nobody else does this, I don’t see why you should.
4- Fix the problem with game saves getting eaten, they shouldn’t be stored separately depending on whether you’re logged into GFWL or not.
5- Please please please give me a push-to-talk option.
I think that’ll solve the major problems. Anyone got any other suggestions?
01/10/2009 at 21:58 MajorManiac says:
Perhaps they could sweeten the deal by making DLC free, you know, like the other guy…Not mentioning any names…. *looks at steam in task bar*
01/10/2009 at 22:08 Alexander Norris says:
But wait! There totally is a GfWL external application! It’s called Microsoft Games for Windows – LIVE and is essentially a completely useless IE-based store browser that lets you buy DLC.
02/10/2009 at 09:57 Rostock says:
Really agree on the funbucks part, it’s so blatantly there to squeeze some extra bucks from you too.
01/10/2009 at 21:56 CJohnson03 says:
They STILL don’t have an application for GFWL outside of the games themselves. This is the first thing they would need to fix.
That said, I wouldn’t use it either way, if I had a choice. Unfortunately there are some pretty awesome games that utilize it. I’m addicted to Red Faction: Guerrila..
01/10/2009 at 22:09 SwiftRanger says:
If Brad is right then Relic/THQ are circumventing that patch rule quite handily with DoW II as most updates (all free up to now) happen through Steam and not via Live. The overlap isn’t that bad most of the time either.
I have the impression Wardell isn’t saying everything as well, it’s OK to diss on GfWLive (especially when your own PC matchmaking service is becoming more complete, isn’t it Brad? :) ), MS are still in the Stone Age like the console online business is but that doesn’t mean I’d want it to stay that way, at least if MS wants to be serious about PC gaming (which they clearly aren’t, yet).
A monopoly is never good and GfWLive will only collect a bigger piece of the market when it tries to be better than Xfire, Steam, Impulse, etcetera. I want more good online services, in the end MS will have to give in anyway, just like they did with making Live free and removing the hidden DRM that was in the first versions.
01/10/2009 at 22:14 subedii says:
This is an interesting point. If GFWL was better than all the other services, then it would pretty much be the monopoly by default. It’d be on every Microsoft system, and it would be hard for other community services to compete. In that respect, I suppose I we should be thankful that GFWL isn’t really all that good.
01/10/2009 at 22:21 Ravenger says:
I’ve not had any major problems with GFWL, at least no problems that have wiped my saves, or prevented me from playing a game; but I really hate it.
I hate the way it manages profiles and savegames, creating hurdles for users who wish to play offline or transfer saves to a different computer / OS
I hate the clunky slowness of the in-game interface with its over the top animating notifications and x-box style windows.
I hate the long time it takes to log in.
I hate the lack of a separate client.
I hate its hidden limited activation feature which has been kept secret, but which has caused problems for many users.
I hate the invite system.
I hate being forced to use GFWL for a Steam game when Steam’s community features are so well integrated and easy to use.
I hate its slow download speeds for patches, and hate even more its download progress bar that instantly fills to 90% then stays that way for hours giving you no indication of download progress or speed.
I hate having to use up to three different clients and DRM systems just to play a single player game – Batman uses Steam, Securom Activations, and GFWL – three separate points of failure.
Basically, I hate it.
01/10/2009 at 22:27 orta says:
I wouldn’t buy a GFWL game
01/10/2009 at 22:31 scalywg says:
nicely elucidated
01/10/2009 at 22:36 SirKicksalot says:
Fuck GFWL. I live in an unsupported country and I can’t play any multiplayer game, download map packs or earn achievments. I tried all the proxy, country, fake account tricks – it’s a freakin’ lottery, and I’m one of those that can’t use an online profile no matter what they do.
I’m a really sad panda when playing Red Faction, as that game seems to have a really fun multiplayer and I must resort to competing with myself in Wrecking Crew. Fuck you Microsoft.
01/10/2009 at 22:38 Sagan says:
+1:
My Street Fighter IV wants to update my GFWL. But the updating always hangs. So now I can’t play Street Fighter IV online. Now I’m just a little disappointed with it, as it just got frustrating with the AI which seems to fluctuate between too easy for the normal guys, and too hard for the boss. Maybe I would have played Street Fighter IV more, had I been able to take it online.
01/10/2009 at 22:39 Cooper says:
I recently went on a game splurge (by splurge I mean buying them (legit copies) in the Ukraine where, for example, Batman: Arkham cost all of £2.50 – and hoping desperately that they’ll have English language options).
Some of those games have GFWL. I’m about to have my first taste. I’m dreading it. I know you can mod it out of Fallout3, and I hope it’s the same for some of the other games…
01/10/2009 at 22:52 Centy says:
I’m siding with the overwhelming majority here. GFWL is utter shite I haven’t had such a poor experience with a piece of software since well IE and MSN of which I now use open source alternatives.
I can’t see the rational behind it at all I don’t own a 360 and I dont want to and I certainly don’t want my PC being turned into a console just to suit Microsoft. I own 1 GFWL game and thats DoW2 and having “used” it I have since avoided every single game that has it like the plague I have missed out on Red Faction, Batman and Street Fighter 4 because I point blank refuse to have it on my system now.
I don’t mind steam because for the most part it’s avoidable but I like it and prefer to use it over buying boxed copies (price permitting) honestly I don’t think it’s salvageable as a platform I think MS should just let it die I can’t say I’d be sorry. PC gaming is fine how it is it doesn’t need a terrible program running an awful service to completely ruin it we got along fine without it till now and we can continue on that way thankyou very much.
01/10/2009 at 22:56 Sunjammer says:
Isn’t raging on GFWL sort of like raging on hitler? Aren’t everybody just about agreed it’s a shitty thing we wish hadn’t happened?
Personal gripes anyway remains the hideous interface and the fact that it actually lags behind the 360 in terms of features. Lacking the party system is absolutely abominable
02/10/2009 at 00:10 Shalrath says:
There’s always the occasional asshat who claims that it’s been ‘totally fine’ for him/her, and that they’ve ‘never had any problems.’
01/10/2009 at 23:12 Azradesh says:
On a side not, have you guys heard anything details about Elemental? I hadn’t even heard of it untill I read that whole interview and it looks pretty cool.
01/10/2009 at 23:12 Azradesh says:
Agh! I meant “On a side note…”
01/10/2009 at 23:12 Hulk Hogan says:
http://gamepolitics.com/2009/09/28/boycotting-boycotter-stardock-takes-ups
Why isn’t anyone talking about Stardock boycotting UPS for boycotting fox news because their CEO is a hard-core neo-conservative?
I know Stardock is supposed to be the good guys but I’m not confortable giving money to those kind of people.
Given a choice between a shitty attempt at porting Xbox Live to the PC and giving money to someone I think is a horrible person I’ll chose neither.
01/10/2009 at 23:13 Azradesh says:
Because this is a UK based site and we don’t really care. :P
01/10/2009 at 23:26 Wisq says:
I may not agree with Stardock’s CEO’s apparent politics, nor would I agree with the concept of boycotting UPS because they chose to boycott some nut on TV, regardless of said nut’s politics.
However, I can certainly think of better reasons to be boycotting UPS, such as how they utterly gouge anyone who tries to ship cross-border with massive “brokerage fees” (on top of duties, etc.) that the other carriers don’t charge.
So as one of the people regularly affected by UPS’ greed, Stardock boycotting UPS = win for me, whether I agree with the reasoning or not.
02/10/2009 at 00:19 jalf says:
Perhaps the hivemind feels that boycotting a company because it’s CEO wants to boycott another company for boycotting someone would be…. silly.
Just a guess.
02/10/2009 at 08:20 leeder krenon says:
glenn beck is a fucking prick – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvN5IPLGs9c
02/10/2009 at 09:26 Alexander Norris says:
Is he a neocon? The update bit in that gamepolitics article has Wardell’s response, and it seems like he was boycotting UPS for blanket-boycotting the entire Fox network because of one loon. Mind, I think Fox should be boycotted into oblivion regardless, but his stance seems like a fairly reasonable one.
01/10/2009 at 23:30 Heliocentric says:
Fox news is a joke, those who rush to support them jokes also.
Elemental will still be a fun time. Here’s hoping UPS (pronounced whoops) are okay, oh wait i don’t care.
Political tastes aside, Brad runs a business which makes games i like.
01/10/2009 at 23:39 Robin says:
GFWL can’t be fixed, because it’s a product spawned from corporate politics rather than market demand. The same organisational cancer that explains why Live Anywhere languishes years after being announced, why the Zune exists in a weird apathetic limbo (rendered utterly irrelevant by the iPhone lacking the leadership to even begin to face up to this), and why Natal (the marketing-mandated “Project” prefix being a particularly telling affectation) will be pushed around like a half-chewed brussel sprout for a few months after launch before being discreetly binned, like every previous attempt by Microsoft to appeal to the mainstream which has been treated internally with bitter disdain.
Compare and contrast DirectX, where engineers drove the development of something that they knew developers and gamers would benefit from, but which the corporate hierarchy didn’t understand the value of. Nobody is personally invested in taking the risks that would be required to make GFWL a viable alternative to Steam, they’re just ticking the boxes they need to make something vaguely functional (but not good enough to conflict with charging a subscription fee for Xbox Live) and hoping they can eventually be moved to a more glamourous project, like Songsmith. In professional dignity terms, that’s right up there with working for mid 2000s spyware vendors like Gator.
02/10/2009 at 00:32 TheSombreroKid says:
directx was spawned from corporate politics also, if directx hadn’t wedged itself firmly between every game this decade and Windows, despite there being a perfectly good alternative, Windows would no longer exist and ms would basically be bankrupt.
02/10/2009 at 01:13 bildo says:
“why the Zune exists in a weird apathetic limbo (rendered utterly irrelevant by the iPhone lacking the leadership to even begin to face up to this)”
Zune HD > iPod touch, not to get too far off topic. Apple is for hippies. Meanwhile, the church said limbo dosen’t exist anymore so the Zune isn’t going to a void where dead babies go.
01/10/2009 at 23:44 Pijama says:
THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
02/10/2009 at 04:09 Wooly says:
Hopefully GFWL’s and Microsoft’s! GALLONS OF IT. PAINT THE WALLS RED! *foams*
01/10/2009 at 23:44 Monkeybreadman says:
GFWL is shit
01/10/2009 at 23:48 BabelFish says:
I find it funny that Microsoft still thinks that GFWL is a decent product.
It’s a poorly done port of the poorly thought out XBox voice/connection/update/matchmaking systems, and if there’s one thing that sends us PC gamers into a frothing rage, it’s poorly done ports.
I will happily dance on the grave of GFWL once it finally dies.
01/10/2009 at 23:49 Bravedave says:
An excellent point. However, that doesn’t excuse the fact (raised initially when DOW2 was released) that I have to have both steam and GFWL. I have never wanted to use GFWL but have been forced to do so in order to play games I have bought. As far as I’m concerned this is every bit as bad as DRM.
01/10/2009 at 23:51 Heliocentric says:
“The shit”, oh yeah I said it. I love Games For Windows Live! Without it where would i point to express the way Microsoft are turd vendors.
01/10/2009 at 23:55 Hug_dealer says:
The fact that dow 2 uses both steam and gfwl is because of 2 reasons.
relic wanted 1 place to go for patches and distrubution. That means steam. they only have 1 version of the game to work on because everyone will be tied to steam.
The other is they needed a matchmaking service. Thier attempts with quazel for coh was pretty bad when it comes to quility. so the opted out of making thier own server again. that left microsoft GFWL. They proviced the servers for the matchmaking.
So everyone bitching about having to use both, and blah blah blah. pay attention. Relic/thq decided on that.
GFWL is not trying to be a distrubution service for full games. they are a matchmaking service, and offer a way to deliver additional product online.
Steam is a distrubution service, that sells games. they dont deal with match making for anything other than thier own valve products. they are trying to work into that, but currently only valve games are involved in steam match making.
2 different products. but plenty of uninformed users of both.
02/10/2009 at 00:04 BabelFish says:
I’d be interested in seeing what relic would say off the record, but having played both CoH and DoW2, and having been an active watcher of their communities for both, GFWL has been a terrible choice for matchmaking.
It’s pushed new players completely out of multiplayer (the first 3-4 games you’re more likely then not to be put up against the best players available, smart for determining trueskill, terrible for player retention) and because of an issue in the player matching system, tends to match organized groups of players vs rag-tag individuals, which has effectively killed their 3vs3 bracket for anyone without 2 friends who play consistently.
02/10/2009 at 00:05 gulag says:
GFWL. It’s a bit pants and Steam does it all better and easier.
Next song.
02/10/2009 at 00:06 Hug_dealer says:
relic has admitted they fubared the match making and are still working on it. it will eventually make people outside of true skills because a game is better than no game.
gulag. please, tell me how steam does match making better?
02/10/2009 at 00:16 BabelFish says:
Spending your first 5 games getting mercilessly beaten down, only to have the player on the other side say, “oh crap, sorry, GFWL matchmaking FTL” once they see your trueskill (I’ve had it done to me and have said the exact same thing to others) is not a good way to bring new players to the game.
So no, I would not say that “a game is better then no game.” Especially when you’re attempting to pull in new players to a very hardcore genre (which was a stated goal of DoW2.)
02/10/2009 at 00:11 Orange says:
Trying to use GFWL has been one of the most frustrating experiences in 10+ years of PC gaming, it really is terrible. I learnt my lesson though, DoW2 was the last time I will ever buy a GFWL game. Would rather miss out than support that rubbish.
02/10/2009 at 00:13 Lucas says:
In Section 8, changing the name of a customized loadout brings up GWFL for the text entry box. I know reusing components beats reinventing the wheel, but come on. I don’t remember the beta doing that.
02/10/2009 at 00:15 Hug_dealer says:
how is that gfwl's fault? Sounds like a problem for the devs.
02/10/2009 at 00:24 Dave says:
I sometimes suspect GFWL is intentionally crappy in order to sell more XBoxen.
Then again, Microsoft hamstrings itself on a regular basis. Not having DX10 support for XP, for instance.
02/10/2009 at 00:29 fuggles says:
I was saddened/amused that at Gamesday at the NEC Relic could not show off their new game mode as GFWL wouldn’t work right.
02/10/2009 at 01:00 Quintesse says:
What’s wrong with Steam?
(in comparison to GFWL, I could actually list quite a number of things wrong with Steam, but the same would hold true for GFWL)
02/10/2009 at 01:15 bildo says:
I find it hard to compile a list of steams problems. So far, I haven’t had any since they refined it after the release of HL2.
02/10/2009 at 01:06 bildo says:
But the achievements system is better than Steams : /
That’s the only thing I like about GFWL at least. *sigh*
02/10/2009 at 01:08 ChaosSmurf says:
I have never had a problem with GFWL.
I have never used GFWL.
THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE DOING WRONG PEOPLE.
02/10/2009 at 01:24 Persus-9 says:
You know these is one nice feature in GfWL, it does have an option to turn of all notifications so unless I’m playing multiplayer then after the 10 – 60 second nerd rage inducing sign in period once I’ve loaded a game I can almost forget it’s there.
02/10/2009 at 01:28 Hug_dealer says:
well, steam and gfwl are totally different types of programs.
so yes, we can kinda of compare them.
GFWL match making is 100% better than steams. and Steams game distribution is 100% better than gfwl.
Can someone provide me with an alternative to GFWL???? what is better than it out there.
Nothing, not steam, not impulse. Not blizzard. Nothing provides match making and community like GFWL. the fact that you can be playing any game you wan, see what your friends are doing, and invite them to your game, send voice messages etc across games.
Argue for steam and blizzard, but end up failing because neither of them provide match making except for thier products. steam only does it for L4d, blizzard thier games.
If and when blizzard or steam open thier matchmaking up other developers, then we will have a legit arguement, but currently only GFWL brings them together. I am not saying steam or blizzard suck, im just saying they are a step behind in this regard. While steam and blizzard are a step ahead in others.
02/10/2009 at 03:33 invisiblejesus says:
@Hug_dealer:
Nothing, not steam, not impulse. Not blizzard. Nothing provides match making and community like GFWL. the fact that you can be playing any game you wan, see what your friends are doing, and invite them to your game, send voice messages etc across games.
OK, I haven’t used GFWL so i can’t say firsthand what they offer. But Steam does let you play any game you want, including games you didn’t buy on Steam, and see what your friends are doing. You can invite them to your game if you’re playing a game that supports that feature (all Valve games, Source mods, multiplayer Source engine games, and a small but unfortunately very slowly growing number of 3rd party games). You can send a voice message across games, or even to someone who’s logged into Steam and not playing a game at all.
Now, maybe GFWL is great, maybe it’s horrible. Maybe Steam is great, maybe it’s horrible. But let’s get the facts straight here, and then go from that. OK?
02/10/2009 at 02:17 MinisterofDOOM says:
The irony here is that Stardock’s “Impulse” is just as unnecessary (if certainly not as poorly executed) as GFWL. Just yet ANOTHER steam-wannabe to un-check the “start on windows startup” box on.
But I’ve been against GFWL from the beginning. The beauty of the PC as a platform is the wealth of options. GFWL consolidates, restricts, and impairs. It’s the very antithesis of PC gaming as an ideal.
02/10/2009 at 15:04 Subject 706 says:
I wouldn’t say Impulse is unnecessary in the way GfWL is. It is a distribution/patching system that is competing with Steam (and is currently not as good), but it sure as hell is not an intrusive piece of shit software like GfWL.
02/10/2009 at 02:44 Spoon says:
Wow, MS is pulling their closed platform patch checking xbox tactics on the PC? Knowing that now, I am somewhat surprised I have even played a game that uses GFWL. Ridiculous.
02/10/2009 at 03:00 Robin says:
@Hug_dealer “match making and community … see what your friends are doing… {loads of other console-centric things} …”
You realise PCs are capable of running multiple applications simultaneously, yes? And have “The Inter-Net”?
02/10/2009 at 03:22 Schadenfreude says:
Two words: Microsoft Points. I bought Fallout 3 from Steam but the only way I can play the DLC is by pirating it, since Microsoft’s make-believe toy currency can’t be used in my country.
02/10/2009 at 07:30 Azradesh says:
That highlights another problem and it’s not just MS that are doing it. The fact that people are still thinking in ridiculous regional terms. These companys all need to realise that the internet has made the markets of all media a global one whether they like it or not. By putting artificial regional limits on sales they are only hurting their profit margins. Idiots
02/10/2009 at 09:35 Alexander Norris says:
I’m pretty sure they’ve realised it, alright; it’s just that companies in general want all the benefits of being able to sell world-wide with minimal tariffs with none of the “drawbacks” to them (read: benefits to the customer). In theory, I shouldn’t have to pay $75-90US for new PC games – I should be paying $50US; however, that isn’t in the interest of the person providing these games, since it would mean they make less money.
02/10/2009 at 04:30 Hug_dealer says:
yes lets get the facts straight.
GFWL provides a match making service. Steam does not. Anything other than valve games like l4d still have to provide thier own match making service. Like dawn of war 2 does, it uses both because steam doesnt provide a server to host match making.
GFWL provides that for developers, so they get something better than gamespy. GFWL provides alot of tools, and help for devs that choose to it. And if you use GFWL, you can then provide attentional content, like fallout 3 did.
It also provides DRM for Devs, which they like. Say what you want about DRM, it is here to stay. Even stardock is like WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! piracy now.
So in conclusion. GFWL provides match making services, stat recording, and the like for developers that use it, and provide a community to make friends and download additional content. No one else does that.
So anyone saying, why didnt they use blah blah. remember that no one else provides that.
02/10/2009 at 07:31 Azradesh says:
Stardock has at no point “WAAHHHHH!!!”ed about piracy, what are you talking about?
02/10/2009 at 09:13 toni says:
you see, PCs don’t need matchmaking (L4Ds biggest flaw IS the matchmaking, the biggest piece of crap Valve has ever coded): WE CAN USE A GAMEBROWSER, use filters, friends list. I don’t need some obscure code trying to figure out who I am gonna wanna play with and put me on some server it THINKS is appropriate. That’s just bullshit. give the lazy users a “quick match” button but leave the actual decision making to ME. If you are too stupid to use a gamebrowser, how could you be able to play a game (unless the game itself is as stupid)
02/10/2009 at 04:49 Scott Kevill says:
Stardock is playing the developer card when talking about GfWL, but let's not forget they are also slamming it because they are also busy trying to pitch ImpulseReactor (the matchmaking used in Demigod) as something all developers should adopt.
Disclaimer: I'm also not without bias, being the owner of a matchmaking service that actually works: GameRanger. :)
02/10/2009 at 07:01 bildo says:
hopefully gameranger works better than your website ; ) tis 404′d.
02/10/2009 at 09:29 Scott Kevill says:
Hah.
Website is fine. :P
I had an extra ” in the link tag here. Edited it a few seconds later, and the post in the forum updated, but the one on the comments did not. Looks like there are a few minor kinks with the new system.
02/10/2009 at 07:21 Sentient says:
I agree.
I hated the fact that I had to install both steam and GFWL for DoW2.
Once I did I quite enjoyed the friends options they offered.
I counted more steam downtime that GFWL downtime.
Recently after the great reports here I bought BloodBowl and kind of miss the GFWL matchmaking.
Even if it costs MS money to certify, charging devs for certification is too harsh it depends on how much money they ask I guess. Is it the same as for an XBox game? Is the certification the same.
02/10/2009 at 07:42 Jayt says:
I haven’t had steam downtime since the dark days of post-won
02/10/2009 at 07:22 Sentient says:
I agree.
I hated the fact that I had to install both steam and GFWL for DoW2.
Once I did I quite enjoyed the friends options they offered.
I counted more steam downtime that GFWL downtime.
Recently after the great reports here I bought BloodBowl and kind of miss the GFWL matchmaking.
Even if it costs MS money to certify, charging devs for certification is too harsh it depends on how much money they ask I guess. Is it the same as for an XBox game? Is the certification the same?
02/10/2009 at 07:43 Tei says:
People that see no problem with Microsoft require for certificates in a OPEN PLATFORM like the PC sould pay a “certificate” for every post, and wait 30 days till his post is certificated.
02/10/2009 at 07:37 toomany says:
I hate GFWL more than I hate death.
02/10/2009 at 07:48 Robin says:
@Hug_dealer
Your argument seems to be making less and less sense. By your own admission PC developers have multiple options regarding matchmaking and DRM, but you don’t explain what GFWL offers over any other option. You say that GFWL “allows”(?!) developers to offer additional content, while citing Fallout 3, the most infamous example of GFWL catastrophically hindering a developer’s ability to offer DLC and patches for their own game. And the idea that only by using a piece of middleware can a PC game to foster a community, when PC gamers have been forging communities around games since the mid-1990s, is patently absurd.
The fact is that most publishers that have signed up for GFWL in the past (e.g. THQ/Relic, Eidos, Capcom, Bethesda, Rockstar) have done so because they have formal risk-reduction policies in place to investigate any third party option that will lower the unit cost of their games. Usually this results in irritating but ultimately benign things like “nVidia” logos at the start of the game, or a GFW banner on the box. (And sometimes less benign, such as using Starforce’s DRM for the sake of saving a few pennies on licensing.) GFWL has proven to not be benign, but rather a huge and costly support headache and PR nightmare, which is why Brink (for one) won’t be using it, even though Bethesda almost certainly signed a blanket agreement to use GFWL across all their titles in exchange for support, marketing and/or crisp bank notes. Factor in further problems like the flakiness of updates and the loopy idea of charging developers to issue patches through the system, and it seems likely that you’ll see more publishers dropping it soon.
02/10/2009 at 09:35 invisiblejesus says:
@Hug_dealer: Yes, you’re right in saying that Steam doesn’t offer matchmaking, at least at this time. My point, however, was that every other service you mentioned is in fact offered over Steam. I don’t think anyone has tried to claim that Steam offers matchmaking for games other than L4D, and if you care strongly about matchmaking then that’s a pretty fair criticism. If that’s the case you are trying to make, go to town with it, but don’t try to bullshit us by implying that Steam doesn’t offer those other features you mentioned.
02/10/2009 at 10:17 Shadow Aspect says:
I’m sorry, but I’m one of those that never had any real problems with GFWL. I like how it works presently but of course there are things they need to improve. Especially if there really is that much of a restriction on aftersales updates for developers.
02/10/2009 at 10:37 Blackops says:
As long as GfWL stayed in the background and didnt bother me much (for GTA4, Fallout 3 and DoW2) I did not mind it too much. The program worked and gaming was fun, achievements and all. This was with Vista 32bit.
Then the happy fun times began. I went over to Win 7 Professional 64-bit (MSDNAA) and I’m not going back. But GfWL did not go along with this change, my Gamertag somehow ran away and died during my OS change. Thus all my saves and achievements coupled with my gamertag (which the xbox live system tells me still exists…) is unavailable for my Win Live ID. By making a new gamertag and doing some copy pasting of save files i actually salvaged my progress in some of the games.
So I have joined the GfWL-hate club at full force. Did not have any DLCs at my previous gamertag, but how can i be sure i get to keep them and my gamertag this time?
(GfWL is not officially supported by win 7 yet either, support starts at retail-launch)
Figures MS producing the best Win ever, and than gives me a useless games platform just to have something MS produced to complain about.
02/10/2009 at 10:41 DMJ says:
We don’t need GfWL’s ten-yard interface or the massively streamlined features for efficiency. We’re PC gamers; keyboards have dozens of keys, mice are superb analogue controllers, and our monitors are roughly 3′ from our heads. We like to tweak stuff. We like to set things up in our own unique ways. A PC gamer wants things his way and will likely spend a while in the options screen before starting the game. A 360 gamer wants no downtime between starting the game and playing the game and so consistency of interface and control scheme and settings is key.
That’s not a value judgement, just acknowledement that someone who has a multi-purpose PC wants more control over the details of his experience than someone who buys a specialised appliance. Give us GfWL that plays to the PC’s strengths, not the XBox 360′s.
03/10/2009 at 00:48 Schadenfreude says:
If you ever think about running for president, you can count with my vote =D
02/10/2009 at 11:55 itsallcrap says:
LOL
I’d like to comment on this, but you’ve clearly all sworn so much that our proxy server refuses to load the page.
I’ve only managed to get to the comments box by making up my own URL for the non-existent comments page 4:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/01/stardocks-wardell-slams-gfwl/comment-page-4/#comments
02/10/2009 at 12:41 KindredPhantom says:
One of things that annoy me about GFWL is it”s payment system, it doesn’t support Paypal or Switch cards. What is the reason for this? Not everyone has a credit card nor wants one and such is forced to buy the points separately.
Steamworks is a better alternative to this for developers in my opinion, at least steam works..well most of the time.
02/10/2009 at 14:19 Harper says:
I don’t care about matchmaking. I want to use my own custom banners/badges in DOW 2. GFWL won’t let you because MS hates user created content. They claim it is because they want to keep the children from seeing obscene stuff, but anyone with a brain knows it just so that they can charge you for that “premium” DLC down the road.
Keep that console bullshit off my computer thanks.
–Harper
02/10/2009 at 17:39 Alastayr says:
By not allowing user created content they open up another revenue stream AND save money by not needing a regulatory body that handles eventual user complaints over dicks for Avatars.
I wanted to link to a piece by Gabe from PA where he was insulted by some kid after playing Halo 3 but I just spent 20 minutes on google and I couldn’t find it. It was the perfect example of why Microsoft’s LIVE service is pants.
02/10/2009 at 15:27 Meesh says:
This perfectly captures GFWL.
03/10/2009 at 00:50 Schadenfreude says:
I think there’s a missink link in your post. Unless by this you actually mean an italicized word “this”, which I guess would be too clever for me to understand =/
02/10/2009 at 15:55 Geoff says:
Wait! Hold! Stop!
Yes, GFW Live is actually as terrible as everyone here is saying it is, but did anyone actually read the article? Actually read what Wardell says about it?
“I wish Microsoft would do a lot more in making the PC better as a gaming platform. For example, the Demigod fiasco with the multiplayer should never have happened. Developers on the PC should not have to license a third-party NAT facilitator. If I was making a game for the Xbox, I get that for free. But on the PC, some of us have to become network experts. I didn’t sign on to become some sort of IT network guy. And I would love if Microsoft would make these servers available–and they do under Games for Windows Live–without having all these strings attached.”
He is NOT saying “GFWL sucks”, he’s saying “I wish they made it easier for me to put all my games on GFWL for free without working so hard at it.”
Seriously, he’s saying the opposite of what all you guys are saying! Go read it!
His points aren’t even that great – he complains that devs get free networking service on Xbox but not PC, which is technically true, but that’s because:
1. The gamers have to pay for that service, instead of the devs.
2. The devs have to go through the rigorous certification just to make the Xbox game at all, and since that certification is what he’s complaining about, he’s not going to get away from it with Xbox Live.
I absolutely agree that GFW Live (not the same as GFW!) is terrible, but what we actually have here is a publisher who neglected their networking code in a multiplayer-focused game, resulting in a botched launch and angry customers, then complained that Microsoft should have given him GFW Live for free with no strings attached, so he could have used that instead.
02/10/2009 at 16:45 Hypocee says:
True enough. Of course, he’s basically comparing it to the DirectX model.
02/10/2009 at 18:14 Malibu Stacey says:
Hmm… Games I’m interested in buying.
Dawn of War II (throughly enjoyed Dawn of War Anthology on PC)
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Grand Theft Auto 4
Fallout 3
Would I buy them on Steam? Most definitely yes. Unashamed Steam fanboy.
Will I be buying them on Steam? No. Take a wild stab in the dark why.
At least I can buy the latter 3 for the PS3 when I get around to buying one of those new cheaper slim versions of the console (by which time there should be plenty of second-hand copies around, if not they should be heavily discounted). DoW II I will have to live without I guess.
Any dev’s still reading please take note. I doubt I’m alone in this.
02/10/2009 at 19:00 Buemba says:
There are things I like about GFWL, but I can’t overlook the fact that it doesn’t let me buy things in their marketplace because I don’t live in the US (And therefore don’t have a credit card with an American billing address, not to mention that the standalone client doesn’t even work with my version of xp because it’s in Brazilian Portuguese so even if they accepted international credit cards I’d still be unable to add $ to it).
That’s 5 Fallout 3 DLC and one Street Fighter IV costume pack you didn’t sell because you locked me out of it, you bloody bastards.
02/10/2009 at 19:07 Hypocee says:
Something was bugging me about agreeing with that ‘Wardell’s just riding a sour-grapes waambulance’, so I went back and read again. I dunno. There’s room for interpretation here. The relevant paragraph:
An uncharitable reading of that is ‘I want all my infrastructure for free from Microsoft waa waa’, and it’s certainly possible that’s what he meant, but the way I read it he’s saying two separate things that have been unfortunately concatenated into one paragraph of text:
1. In the Space-year 2009, when virtually everybody’s behind a router and has been for five to ten years, game developers using DirectX down the line – DirectDraw, DirectInput etc. down to DirectNetwork (as I presume it’s called) – still have to licence a third-party NAT traversal solution. Not paying for a server or providing TrueSkill rankings, just the low-level business of temporarily forwarding some virtual ports. Is this really something Microsoft needs to leave to every third party? If MS continues to patch and upgrade the infrastructure of Windows gaming, as it does, should NAT not be a standardised 50k DLL in DirectX that everyone can use and forget about? Is this a symptom of chicanery or waning interest at MS?
2. Choosing GFWL for your licenced lobby and matchmaking service should not entail patch delays and surcharges; I read ‘these strings’ as referring to the previous paragraph, where that’s what he’s complaining about: delays and surcharges for patches that may not even be the dev’s fault, but due to e.g. new antivirus conflicts or defective driver updates. By all means charge your licencing fee for the community service, but importing punitive business practices from your unified hardware and software platform is inappropriate.
02/10/2009 at 20:06 Geoff says:
“should NAT not be a standardised 50k DLL in DirectX that everyone can use and forget about?”
It cannot be. The only sure-fire solution to allow people to do on-the-fly two-way connections to each other through typical home NAT (really PAT) routers is to have an accessible server out on the public Internet. Which is how Xbox Live does it, and those servers cost a lot of money.
There is no magic code that can be copied for free and installed on your computer that solves the problem, because of the fundamental workings of PAT (Port Address Translation, AKA NAT Overload). With Xbox Live, the funding for that infrastructure comes from charging the gamers a subscription fee, and the reliability of that infrastructure comes from certifying the clients (the games and consoles) which connect to it.
With GFW Live, the funding comes from charging the developers to use the service, and the reliability comes from certifying the game that uses it. Both the payment and the certification requirements must be frustrating for a developer, especially a small one, but they’re there for a legitimate reason, not because M$ is teh sux0r.
02/10/2009 at 21:30 Hypocee says:
Thank you for that. Except I’m not an idiot, which means I wasn’t talking about having the server hardcoded or Microsoft providing the server for free; yeesh. Establish_tunnel(Protocol, LobbyServerIPAddress|LobbyServerURL, PublicKey). Dev points the game at whatever server they pay for in one way or the other, either independently, GFWL, Gamespy, whatever. Tunnel Just Works at least on the client side, rather than the game dev taking, what, a few man-months to research and reinvent yet another hack across three layers of the IP stack. Seems like a prime candidate for infrastructure work to me.
02/10/2009 at 19:25 Hug_dealer says:
even if that is what he is saying, thats still a gimme gimme gimme attitude.
02/10/2009 at 21:32 Hypocee says:
Mathematically, I suppose so. In the real world, more a donttakefrommeandbreakmybusiness donttakefrommeandbreakmybusiness donttakefrommeandbreakmybusiness. Suit yourself.
02/10/2009 at 20:32 Smurfy says:
Top stories tonight: Brad Wardell says something sensible.
04/10/2009 at 20:07 Kadayi says:
Maybe an attempt to make up for this foolishness: -
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95062-Stardock-CEO-Boycotts-UPS-Over-Fox-News
He attempts to clarify that its not because he supports Glenn Beck, but is upset that UPS aren’t supporting the network elsewhere, as if Beck is the only problem with Fox News. Fox news who are little more than the mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch and his extremist views. Back during Bushes days, any government protests were labelled ‘Anti-American’ nowadays Fox News is encouraging any halfwit racist they can to get on a sponsored bus and go ‘protest’ Obama over the fictious ‘Death Camps’: –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&feature=player_embedded
02/10/2009 at 22:02 IvanHoeHo says:
I think I just spotted a full page flash ad of xbox live points, which is at least slightly ironic, considering the circumstances.
03/10/2009 at 01:24 Cross Joe says:
GFWL corrupted my arkham asylum savegame. it has happened to other people on forums yet no proposed fix. thanks to gfwl and its insistence on gifting us with the console experience i have to play the main game throgh again (collecting each stupid riddler achievementbait) before i am worthy do the good challenge maps. if i find anyone connected with this idea i would like to put my hand down their throat and mutilate their lungs.
Ta.
04/10/2009 at 11:40 Rei Onryou says:
I want GFWL to work, but it just doesn’t. It’s too mixed and messed about whether it wants to be live XBox Live or different, while trying to look/handle the same, but not.
If Microsoft actually put the resources into it that they do for XBox Live with a team that’s actually focussed on the PC as a platform, then it may work. As it is, you’re lucky if it does what you want.
04/10/2009 at 17:12 Bursar says:
I bought one GFWL game, Dawn of War 2. I really liked the idea of the single player campaign and wasn’t bothered about multiplayer at all.
I had huge problems getting GFWL to work. I could sign in on the web easily enough, but the game flat out refused. I found the fact that the single player campaign required you be logged in to GFWL to be slightly offensive given that it COULDN’T log in.
The tech support were pretty rubbish (insisting it was a firewall issue), and it took a week of googling Event Manager error messages before I managed to find a fix which worked. Which was of course nothing to do with the firewall, it was actually a Vista issue.
So Microsoft GFWL not working with Microsoft Vista. Bravo.
DoW2 was great though, but the hassle to get it to work really spoilt the experience. I came very close to pirating it on the basis that i’d already bought it and quite wanted to play it!
08/10/2009 at 11:19 dave says:
What the hell are you talking fox is the least racist news station out there they hate everybody unlike there competetors who only hate low income hard working americans and the capitilism they believe in
20/03/2010 at 02:06 ak says:
All I have to say is that after batman I will not buy another GWFL game (including bioshock 2). I currently have 3 GWFL (gears of war (which I liked) fallout 3 (which is ok) and batman (which seems really good).
The problem is that i was playing in ‘offline’ mode (and all is well). But then I wanted to download the free content for batman. To do that I had to update the client. Now I can no longer play in off line mode (yes I can create a new id; but then I can’t continue my current game; which is stored on the local disk). The whole thing is excessively confusing and restrictive and try to find a simple explanation of what is going on and like most of ms crap it is enshrined in secrecy. There is simply no reason for this crap at least with steam I can easily save and mod games. Anyways elemental is very high on my list of games to buy so I’m very glad they are skipping gwfl because I will not buy another gwfl game (and if games like those on pc came out for linux I would never buy another windows game).
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