Even when villains are given a good, hard KAPOWTHWACKBIFFZOTT-ing and the day is saved, Batman stories rarely end on entirely happy notes. Thus, it’s almost sort of fitting that and haven’t escaped Games For Windows Live’s years-long countdown to self-destruction entirely unscathed. Yes, they’re finally free of Microsoft’s arbitrary, ages-behind-the-times shackles, but your save files, amazingly, won’t be making the jump to Steam. Kinda justifies some of those fears we’ve had about these DRM systems for all this time, huh? You know, the ones companies like Microsoft tried to reassure us about by promising that they’d never leave us without the things we worked so hard to buy and earn? It’s good, at least, that we get to keep the games we paid for, but their assimilation into the Steam borg hive cluster geosynchronously orbiting Gaben mega-beard has been anything but graceful. Warner Bros’ Erik Miller: “Dear Batman Arkham Fans – Microsoft has begun the process of closing down Windows Live services over the next year. To make sure there is no interrupted service, we will be moving the game to Steam for verification and update services for both the Base and GOTY versions of Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City.” “Unfortunately, you will not be able to continue playing from your current save. You will need to start a new game.” Hmm. Sounds like it’s time to start re-digging-up all those Riddler trophies, then. But hey, odds are, you’ve already gotten your fill of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City at this point. For most, I imagine the saves and Riddler trophies and things of that nature are just that: trophies. So it’s not the end of the world, but it doesn’t exactly set the best precedent for other DRM systems, regardless of whether the blame should be on Steam or GFWL for their proprietary gears failing to interlock. Here’s hoping other game developers and creators are taking notes – more specifically, on their “OH GOD PLEASE FIND SOME WAY TO AVOID THIS” lists. PopeRatzo says: I’m not sure you’re thinking this through. If “stealing” in the case of a digital game means “depriving the producer of profits from his work” and that is done through selling a “license” to the game (not actually selling the bits themselves), and the license was not available under any legal circumstances in his country, then what has he actually deprived the producer of? I would say there is a very good case (moral, too) that anyone in his country could download and play the game and it would not be stealing. Oct 31, 2013 I want to activate my copies of Batman Arkham City. Activating Batman Arkham Series on Steam. (Oct.17,2013 release date). Nov 25, 2011 Batman Arkham City Walkthrough Part 5 - Track Jokers Radio Signal, Steel Mill, steam shut off. Get Batman: Arkham City and all DLC for one low price with the release of the GOTY Edition! Not in the strict sense and not in any sense. It’s not like he deprived anyone of a legal sale, because it is impossible to have a legal sale in that country. They didn’t lose one penny of revenue by his playing a cracked version of the game. The fact that it is available via torrent is not the fault of the downloader in that country, and the producer lost no revenue. No harm, no foul. WaltC says: I can’t say that I ever bought a game just because it was a GFWL title;) More like I bought the game and then noticed it was GFWL, which I then proceeded to disable if possible. DRM is such a pain. For instance, for Bioshock 2, there’s a program file you can download (xlive.dll) and install locally in the game directory that allows the game to be played regardless of the requirements of GFWL. Works perfectly. It really would be interesting to hear the publisher’s “moral” side of the story of forcing their paying customers to jump through their DRM hoops! Probably runs something like: “Well, the bad apples spoil it for everyone.” Which is grade-school morality, if I’ve ever heard it, and avoids the question entirely. Why should paying customers have to suffer the slings and arrows of DRM? Good question. I don’t think they should. So, I’m all in favor of *paying customers* taking any steps they deem necessary to free up their software, up to and including downloading a cracked, DRM-free copy of their games if they choose. Morality is satisfied because the customer has paid for a license and copy of the game, and the customer also takes care of the publisher’s immorality (forcing DRM on paying customers) at the same time. I’m in favor of people owning the rights to a *copy* of every game they buy. Another area where obtaining an “illicit” copy is in fact legitimate, is in the case of old games out of publication and no longer being sold that a person might wish to play. Since no one is trying to sell those games anywhere, then the person obtaining a copy of them damages no one financially. Hence, no theft is even possible in those cases. Last, as mentioned earlier in the thread, if a person buys a copy but later loses his copy then it is acceptable to obtain another copy, since he paid for a copy of the game and surely under no circumstances would buy two copies of the same game;) (Unless he’s a bit “touched”, that is;)). MellowKrogoth says: Can’t believe some people are still stupid and twisted enough to deny someone the right to play a game, even though they’d willingly paid for it if they could. Remember, culture belongs to the people, to humanity, and copyright is only a temporary favor from the people to encourage the authors to make content. (Even American law says that much.) If that system for some reason fails to help the author in your country, you playing the game is only taking what’s rightfully yours. GunnerMcCaffrey says: “Jack Mack says: The argument here seems to be “Some acts are inherently evil” VS. “Acts are only evil if they have a negative effect”. So, if you stole 50 bucks from your grandma, and then a passing genie took pity on her and magically regenerated the $50 (so she never realized that you stole from her, and there was absolutely no negative effect from it) was it still an evil act?” How is this an analogy to what we’re talking about? When you take the $50, all you know is that you are taking $50. You don’t know a genie will show up. All you can say for sure is that your grandma has been deprived of $50. This is by definition stealing. That’s obvious. A better analogy to the situation we’re discussing is picking up a picture of a $50 bill while your grandma is nearby, and then someone shouting OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO GRANDMA and you getting kind of confused about why they’re shouting and how they got into grandma’s house. Defunct says: Wait, what? Where do I get my GOTY version? Steam doesn’t have it for me already. I bought the original game before it came out with any DLC, and now am waiting for a sale where it’s really cheap. Free would be better if I could get the GOTY version, but I don’t see that anywhere. A little help here, please? Edit: nevermind! It WAS in my library, I just had it filtered by installed games. I just unfiltered and am installing now. It’s cool, too, because I didn’t have the GOTY version of either one, and now I do. I bought both just about when they came out. Strangeloup says: I just picked up both Arkham games, in their goatee flavours, thanks to a very good deal that netted me the pair for £6. I bounced off them on consolebox (and don’t have the machine in question any more), but I figured for such a low price I was prepared to try again, especially as they’re so highly rated. I’d been put off the PC versions before due to GFWL’s foul taint, but now that’s been excised I’m sure it’ll be a smoother experience. And yeah, if they could fix Dark Souls, that would be great — maybe do something about all the hackers as well, because at this point it’s better to play offline to the point where I’m thinking of getting the PS3 version so I can actually unhollow for more than 2 minutes without some invincible murderlord popping up. Epmode says: It took some doing but I was able to convert my vanilla AA and AC Steam saves to the Steamworks GOTY version. It requires a little (easy) hex editing and some precisely timed file copies (to prevent Steam Cloud from overwriting your changes) but it definitely works. 2K and Warner have really impressed me with their Steamworks conversions. They didn’t have a way to verify exactly what DLC a user has so they could easily have charged extra for the GOTY Steamworks versions but they didn’t. I only hope Namco/From puts some effort into a Dark Souls conversion. It would be terrible to lose that one. Moose Malloy says: I’m the same as you, I think. GFWL never seemed to work properly for me. I don’t get achievements, but I’ve never cared very much about them. At this point, Batman:AA is working fine for me, as is Fallout 3 (both installed from disc and need them in to play). Both are showing the GFWL thing at the top of the screen on startup, signed in as Offline. Should I still worry and hack/convert to Steam, or will disc-installed offline games continue to work after GFWL dies? Advice welcome, as I intend to be playing these games for years yet. (I love them both but I’m very slow). EDIT: Whoops, sorry, I meant Batman:AC not AA. I finished AA, which is rare for me and an indication of how much I’ve enjoyed both Batman games. Thoma says: I believe it would be nice to mention in the article the manymany users with retail copies of both AA and AC are unable to register their game with Steam. There was still no response from Valve (at least from what I have seen), however this issue being present since the so called transition. For me the steelbook edition of PL/HU of Arkham City is not working with Steam – invalid key error message. Plus it is worth looking at the comments below the Steam thread just to see how extensive this invalid key issue is. Maybe the gaming press could put a little bit of pressure on Valve/Microsoft to take give a response? (Blimey, just realised that I’ve been reading RPS over 4 years now almost every day and I just registered today – oh well, better late than never I guess.). TWChristine says: As we near the point that GFWL will no longer “grace” us with its presence, I have to ask something that I’ve wanted to ask for a while. What exactly WAS the problem people had with it? To my knowledge the only game I own that used it was/is Dawn of War 2. It was a pain to sign in every time I wanted to play, but other than that I don’t remember it ever interfering with anything. Are there issues that I would’ve noticed if say, I had decided to utilize multiplayer? (And just to clarify, I’m not trying to be facetious.I just didn’t have enough experience with it to know what all the hubbub is:) ). Epmode says: Besides the terrible UI, it is a very unstable platform. Consider yourself lucky that you never had to deal with GFWL glitches. There are many and they are often very difficult to fix. I personally have had lots of trouble with installing DLC through the GFWL Marketplace client. The GFWL patching system is also a mess. I don’t think I’ve ever had a patch complete without the game crashing and having to restart, all of which could have been avoided had the games patched themselves through Steam. GunnerMcCaffrey says: For me, the only real problem with it seems to be what’s happening now: it made access to your games entirely dependent on a system that was almost certainly going to disappear one day, and didn’t serve any apparent purpose. (It seems like if you buy directly through the GfWL marketplace you need to go through some pretty strong voodoo just to make sure DLC is actually accessible through your base game, and not walled off behind a separate profile – but why would you buy directly through Microsoft in the first place?) I never had a real problem with it myself. FO3, Dark Souls, and Arkham City have all worked just fine. Its presence was nothing more than a passing nuisance at worst, but its removal is going to break at least one of my games (with no refund, of course). So in one way I don’t understand all the complaints and even kind of resent them. In another way I empathize, because of course MS was going to shut down such an unwieldy scheme some day, and I hope this convinces publishers to avoid that road permanently. But ultimately I think, if you want ownership over your games above all, why were you even dealing with these companies in the first place? The DRM is absurd, but it’s not a secret. It’s making me nervous about the size of my Steam library though. Let’s not pretend something equivalent won’t happen to Steam one day. It may be a long way off, but it’ll happen. Cytrom says: All my games that used it stuttered and run like 5-10 percent less FPS, which was completely cured by using an “unofficial” executable and removing gfwl (where it was even possible to do that), caused savegames to get lost / corrupted, same for entire profiles (I had to make like 3 different GFWL accounts), MP games lagged like crazy. It’s buttons were bugged in widescreen resolutions. I had manually update it a bunch of times because the auto update thing of it was broken Made annoying sounds, looked stupid, killed my kitten, and it made me want to hurt people. Especially microsoft employees..and its just another layer of useless garbage I needed to start up along the game i wanted to play. Blackmyron says: That the site is through one that Microsoft has for XBox says it all – the entire experience revolved around “Why are you playing your sad PC games? Go buy an XBox!”. Their reaction to Steam was to make the process more unpleasant. Specific examples are already rife here, but personally I had tremendous fun trying to reinstall Bioshock 2 on a new computer from the original hardcopy, only to have GWFL get stuck in endless update loops. Unfortunately, Steam has deprived me of 80% of game enjoyment by not providing the endless problems to install games I own. Kiya says: I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum with GFWL in January 2010 as part of the Eidos Collectors pack during the Steam winter sale. I created my GFWL account, played it for a few hours, then the next time I went to play it my saves had been wiped. Annoying, but not the end of the world – started from the beginning again, played past the point I had reached before, then GFWL wanted to update and I became stuck in an infinite update loop. So I followed various instructions to uninstall then reinstall the latest version of GFWL from Microsoft’s website – after which it would not accept my login. I thought maybe I had forgotten the correct password and tried to recover, to be told that my account did not exist. Yet if I tried to create another account I was told that an account with that email already existed. So for the last three and a half years I have not been able to play the game I paid for until the removal of GFWL this weekend – and after that experience I refused to waste any more of my money on the GFWL service. I couldn’t be happier with the move to Steamworks. Good riddence to bad rubbish. Farewell GFWL you will not be missed. Stupid_mcgee says: It was notoriously buggy, encrypted your save games, matchmaking was terrible, region restrictions meant certain countries couldn’t play the game or even register it, and then there’s also the little fact that when it first launched, GFWL required you to subscribe to play GFWL games online. Just like XBox Live. Yes, Microsoft thought they could get away with charging PC gamers to play GFWL games online. The whole thing was a disaster from launch to its death. It is a shining example of exactly what you should not do. It also called my mother a fat, dirty, ugly, old bitch and if I ever see it again, I’ll sock it good right in the nose! Cytrom says: Oblivion, and New Vegas never used GFWL. The steam version of fallout 3 has long gotten rid of GFWL, and the retail runs fine in offline mode even if you dont patch it for whatever reason. GTA IV has offline saves on your hard drive and is capable of running in offline mode as well so you can save that too. I really hope GTA 4 gets cured of this cancer too eventually, but i don’t count on it. Actually the only game I know will become completely unplayable (unless it gets patched) is Dark Souls unfortunately it is also the least likely to get cured. Considering how lazy the PC port of DS is, I doubt they’d spend an equal or more time to remove gfwl, than the entire porting process took them. Shadowcat says: Nathan, it would be really good if you could link to a statement regarding “companies like Microsoft tried to reassure us [] by promising that they’d never leave us without the things we worked so hard to buy and earn?” (In particular for Microsoft & GFWL, but any such statements for other DRM platforms would be appreciated as well.) I ask, because while I’ve heard plenty of people assuming that such companies will do right by their customers, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any official statements to that effect. PopeRatzo says: GFWL is one of those cases of a corporation acting in such a hostile manner toward its customers that it doesn’t deserve to succeed in the marketplace. If I buy a game and it’s got GFWL on it (which has happened). I just leave it in the box and get one of the unlocked versions that the Internet makes for me. I don’t believe in depriving a game maker of their fair revenue, but I won’t install malware on my computer just to play the game. And once I purchase the game, I treat it as if it’s my game to use as I see fit. Brickstool says: This is good. Recently I tried to replay Dead Rising 2 which I had registered under an old account from when I was a young lad. I launched it and entered my details, to which it prompted that I had to agree to the updated terms & conditions through a browser. So I went onto web and attempted to do so, clicked “agree”. What I had forgotten was that my account was under parental controls, but I had entered my actual age at the time of creation and due to being a few years over the age of 18 I thought that it would auto-remove the parental locks (which my mother had placed in order to look like she was at least attempting to monitor what I was playing/buying to her friends). Unfortunately for me, despite being an adult, it said that I would need my mother’s permission to agree to these new terms and conditions, and that it had sent an email to her email account. Her email account was deleted long before this and when I contacted Microsoft about it they pretty much stonewalled me. So basically I couldn’t and still can’t play Dead Rising 2. TL;DR Microsoft is mean and silly and so is GFWL. NEVER COME BACK.
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