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Save Our Souls Saves: Dark Souls From GFWL To Steam

Characters, progress, and achievements carry over

Look, are things really so bad in Lordran? Sure, it's swarming with undead and we're all a few short hours away from losing our minds, but it works, doesn't it? Lifts are still moving, traps keep on rolling, and most people have given up on complaining. But wait: this was an elaborate metaphor for Games for Windows - Live. "Bwhaaaaaa?" you cry, unable to believe such artful wordsmithing, but it's true. And that's not all. Watch this simile: like the Chosen Undead replacing Lord Gwyn and linking the bonfires, Dark Souls is going from GFWL to Steamworks.

Players will be able to transfer saves, characters, and achievements from GFWL once the Steam version launches in November, Bandai Namco explain. GFWL rankings won't carry over, they say, which I assume is PvP arena rankings and covenant leaderboards and such.

You'll need to be quick, mind, as migration won't be available forever. The early crow catches the burrowing rockworm and all that. More details on quite how all this will work are promised soon.

If you bought Dark Souls on the GFWL Marketplace, I must ask: why? But you'll be able to get a Steam version for free by going on an dark and dangerous journey into the GFWL Marketplace client to find your GFWL token. You should start on that quest now, as you might have a spot of troubleshooting ahead; I tried to load the client out of curiosity and received an unhelpful "connection error" message.

Amidst the "will they, won't they" drama about Microsoft potentially shutting down GFWL in July, which didn't happen, Bandai Namco had said they were looking into bringing the die 'em up to other services. I am glad they are, and won't miss GFWL at all once it's gouged out the last of my games.

At least, I think this is what's going on. Namco Bandai's language is weirdly stilted, speaking of migrating saves but not explicitly saying they're removing GFWL, but what else would they be up to? A recent update to Dark Souls' Steam database entry refers to a "NOG4WL" build too.

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Alice O'Connor avatar

Alice O'Connor

Associate Editor

Alice has been playing video games since SkiFree and writing about them since 2009, with nine years at RPS. She enjoys immersive sims, roguelikelikes, chunky revolvers, weird little spooky indies, mods, walking simulators, and finding joy in details. Alice lives, swims, and cycles in Scotland.

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