Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014

MrMarvelous said:
Is there a list of games that have switched from GFWL to Steam and ones that haven't? I don't want to be purchasing a game that still has GFWL in the Steam sales coming up.
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It's a pretty small list.

Been removed:
Batman AA
Batman AC
Toy Soldiers
Bioshock 2

Being removed:
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Dirt 3
All the Capcom games

A few other companies have also mentioned that they are looking into removing it.

Martini1991 said:
So when gfwl is disbanded all my games that are gfwl and not patched cease to work legit?
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All online stuff will be dead. Single player content depends on the game.
 
Except for Age of Empires Online which is going to die on that date. Still fuming that they refuse to hire a team to remove GFWL from it and make the game playable in single player. Most of the elements can be played as a single player, but still require GFWL server login. Shame on you Microsoft..
 
Cosmic Schwung said:
It's a pretty small list.

Been removed:
Batman AA
Batman AC
Toy Soldiers
Bioshock 2

Being removed:
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Dirt 3
All the Capcom games

A few other companies have also mentioned that they are looking into removing it.



All online stuff will be dead. Single player content depends on the game.
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Only 5 games? Not looking promising so far... :(
 
I am unsure what would happen if a game stops working 100% due to GFWL like that age of empires or w/e. I don't suppose anything can be done about it. I have concerns over a couple of games but I think they can just do as they please and they will say it is down to the game devs to remove it. I do not see EPIC removing it from bulletstorm or Gears of War which will make me quite sad actually as on the PC those games are damn good. Oh Dark Souls is another one I have concerns with, I do hope they remove it as the game is not that old.
 
MrMarvelous said:
Only 5 games? Not looking promising so far... :(
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Well, all of the Capcom games being done will bump that number up quite a bit. If only I was interested in any of their games.

Witcher1979 said:
I do not see EPIC removing it from bulletstorm or Gears of War which will make me quite sad actually as on the PC those games are damn good.
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That would be a real bummer as they are both examples of games that won't let you play with an offline profile. They will be properly dead and buried when GFWL goes down.
 
Arkham City has not been affected for me - even though it is installed on Steam. Still the same start up process, still the same save games.

There is an extra DL option on my Steam Library though.
 
Most GFWL titles from Sept 2009 onwards use SSA this will no longer function after 01/07/14 & many also use something called ZDPP (a GFWL decryption service which again will not function after 01/07/14).

So unless the publishers/developers replace GFWL for something else most of the games will stop functioning UNLESS you have already installed them before that date then some may still work without GFWL servers but new installs will be impossible as the GFWL DRM servers for SSA & ZDPP will be gone forever.

It would be so easy for MS to just leave these servers running a few more years....Jason Holtman (ex-Steam boss now MS PC gaming head) are you taking notice of all this & trying to extend the retirement date :rolleyes:
 
Holy hell, isn't microsoft flight really expensive if you purchased everything?

I remember when Sony shut down the eye of judgement servers and took most of the value out of my £750 card collection. I ended up selling them on ebay for £80 a couple of years later.

Be careful what you invest in in the digital world.
 
Good riddens! Even if we don't get official patches for all those games, I'm sure some unofficial patches will surface to take care of it.
 
blackadderV said:
Holy hell, isn't microsoft flight really expensive if you purchased everything?

I remember when Sony shut down the eye of judgement servers and took most of the value out of my £750 card collection. I ended up selling them on ebay for £80 a couple of years later.

Be careful what you invest in in the digital world.
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Microsoft Flight is Games for Windows, not Games for Windows Live.
 
AWPC said:
It would be so easy for MS to just leave these servers running a few more years....Jason Holtman (ex-Steam boss now MS PC gaming head) are you taking notice of all this & trying to extend the retirement date :rolleyes:
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All that would achieve would be to push the problem forward for a couple of years. MS have given a fair amount of notice that this is going to happen. Developers need to get off their backsides and get patches implemented pronto. The problem is, I think that publishers are not going to do it with games such as Dark Souls since they may see it as a way to push people over to Dark Souls 2.
 
Did they actually give proper notice though? I thought they removed the wording saying it was going, or did they actually release a proper statement that they did not retract. They may have to the companies but the joe public have no statement as far as I know just the removed age of empires thing.

Might be wrong
 
Calabi said:
I think steam going south will be a sign of the end times. Your games being available will be the least of your worries.
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And yet you just know that for some, it would the biggest concern. Zombies could have decimated 4/5 of the world's population and for a small group, the biggest problem with this is that there's not enough people to get a good dota game going.
 
benjii said:
Good question, I guess the developers would need to provide stand alone games. Either that or resort to unofficial patches, again.
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The problem is many of the games people have in their collections will have been made by development studios that no longer exist or have other projects to work on. Very few publishers are going to pay a studio to fix a years old game that doesn't generate them much revenue any more at the expense of churning out their latest title. In fact if Steam died I think it would be even less likely because at least for the moment publishers might see some value in porting games to Steam because it actually gives them a platform to generate sales on older titles during sales etc.

That said, in many cases I suspect removing Steam DRM is fairly simple for people with access to the source code.

I think people are being naive if they think every old game that get broken DRM is going to be [officially] sorted out. Unfortunately as the digital age is finding its feet I think we may need to be wary of issues like this and make sure you get value out of digital purchases within a reasonable timeframe. I've just started playing AOE3 Complete for example which I bought from GFWL 3 years ago.

It does of course prompt an interesting debate in terms of how far back it is reasonable to expect a game to be 'fixed' when issues like this occur - especially given that older games are now easier to buy (due to DD) than they used to be as there is no need for stores to maintain a physical inventory of them. Online multiplayer servers getting shut down may give us some pointers, though.
 
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