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[brain_stew]

GFWL gets a lot of hate around here and elsewhere and (imo) a lot of it is for good reason but there's also a lot of seemingly irrational hate that comes with it as well.

One of Microsoft's community guys has been working with me and some of other guys in the PC community lately and they've asked me to provide some feedback on why there's such hatred for GFWL outside of the usual "Microsoft sux and hates PC gaming." Now I've already given some feedback myself that covers a lot of the issues (a very buggy client to start with, unclear DRM policy, locked save games etc.) but the more suggestions and the more coherent the feedback the better. Know that the people that can make a difference are probably going to be keeping a very keen eye on this thread so if you actually want something done about your issues with the service, this is the place to voice them and voice them coherently and intellectually. Mindless rabble will get us no where.

I know a lot of people are skeptical about Microsoft's motivations towards PC gaming, and I'd count myself among them but there does appear to be a change of direction going on at Redmond atm and there's definitely some guys at the company that do see the value in offering PC gaming more than token support. I'm confident the announcements at Gamescon are just the start but we'll wait and see, in the meantime make use of the fact that people are willing to listen at this moment in time.

 

[Nemo]

I don't really have any problems with it. If it has 360 controller support I'm happy, don't care about the rest

 

[Felix Lighter]

Other than the obvious issues mentioned in the OP, a personal request I have would be to add cross platform party chat on the GFWL. I'm sure it's pretty low on the list of priorities but it would be a huge addition for me.

 

[Dynoro]

I don't have a lot of problems with GFWL tbh and a lot of issues I've seen would appear to be to be the game developer's issue and not an issue due to GFWL. However there are a number of ways they could improve:

- Worldwide invites: don't split by region
- Locked saves: sometimes you can copy saves over from your backup when you do an OS reload and sometimes you cannot. But I assume a lot of this is to prevent Gamerscore farming.
- The client is a bit bloaty compared to Steam and visibly slows games down as it opens even on a fast PC
-Uneven limit on installations: sometimes you get unlimited sometimes is 5 activations - why the difference (or even a limit) if its all through GFWL
-Doesn't integrate well with other DD services - If I buy a GFWL game through Steam that has Steamworks why do I need to go through GFWL integration at all?

 

[capitalCORN]

For one thing, It's not compatible with my firewall, preventing me from playing online.

 

[Keyser Soze]

When Steam debuted it sucked, but got better. Then Valve themselves made the service a success beofre others jumped aboard

GFWL sucked when it debuted and never got better (at least in the initial years). Microsoft then killed many a decent PC company and took (in many people minds) decent games away from the Steam service.

So, the only way the only way for GFWL to get better is for Valve to fuck up. A complete re-branding might work wonders too

 

[mikespit1200]

I'll just give you one personal anecdote that explains my hatred of GFWL.

I purchased GTA4 off of Steam, worked fine. I had some Microsoft points lying around so I decided to grab the two DLC episodes off of GFWL. Lost and Damned worked without a hitch, but Gay Tony refused load after opening cut scene. I called GFWL support and they couldn't figure it out. I tried Rockstar and they couldn't help either. I tried GFWL support once again and after a failed attempt to fix the issue I asked for a refund of my points. They refused. I bought the Episodes standalone off of Steam and it worked fine. Since then I've sworn off GFWL altogether. I understand that mixing and matching DD providers was my fault but if MS insists on building their platform into their games they should insure that it works with other resellers' copies.

 

[Mrbob]

Don't treat your customers like pirates. If I bought a game let me activate as many times as I want.

And if MS is going to lock save files behind the profile making them impossible to recover save data for re-installs, please make cloud storage mandatory for all GFWL games.

I hope MS has realistic expectations though to try and repair their image. They screwed up big time over the past couple years on the PC front, and I honestly have no need to come running back even if they start turning things around. Steam is here in MS absence and it does so many things right already. So unless Valve royally screws up adios GFWL, don't really need you in my life.

 

[Luigiv]

I don't really get the hate myself. Then again, my only GFWL game is RE5 and I have yet to actually play that online. My only gripe is having to log into the online service to access my save files. Shouldn't there be some sort of system level log in like on the Xbox 360?

 

[SmokyDave]

I haven't really used it enough to have any problems with it. TBH, my impressions so far are fairly positive. It's given me no grief, I love the ease of integration with the 360 pad and it's handy for seeing what friends are playing whether on 360 or PC. My laptop is always online so I don't know if there are any DRM issues I'm unknowingly avoiding.

 

[WanderingWind]

Well, frankly, it's a redundant service. They're never going to beat Steam at their own game, and it's a just money pit. They barely have any games out that support it, and it's seen as a way to "consolize" PC games in a way that is distasteful to most PC gamers.

I know it's marketers job to find some solution to take to their highers, but GFWL is just fundamentally flawed. They'd be much better partnering with another service than trying to create their own system.

 

[Cday]

Some people hate Microsoft in general for abandoning PC gaming and leaving a "very buggy client, unclear DRM policy, locked save games etc." behind. Some people don't want to be forced to run 2 programs over their games (GFWL and Steam) and when given the choice to hate Steam or GFWL they're probably going to hate GFWL.

Personally I don't have anything against it but the interface is garbage if you try to use a mouse to navigate it. Sometimes you have to wave the mouse around just to get it to recognize it.

 

[SolsticeZero]

What annoys the fuck out of me is when I buy a game (I love you Dawn of War 2, but I'm looking right at you for this one) and it uses Steamworks for the activation, but then you have to use GFWL to play online. That is the stupidest shit in the world!

Not to mention the voice chat on GFWL is like having a flaming pine cone shoved in my ear.

 

[Visualante]

In a rough order

0. Microsoft Game Studios pushing 360 over PC.
1. Limited activations
2. Poor patching, for GTA IV I had to get patches from websites because they didn't have their service running. Couldn't play the game until GFW was up
3. Service reliability, sure Steam sucks during sales but GFW Live sucks even harder when Steam has a sale any you can't even activate the key to play because the servers are getting hammered (Christmas sale, Red Faction)
4. Tying save to a profile, lost my progress once because I wasn't logged in- it told me I couldn't save and booted me to menu. Thanks GFW.
5. Integration, for instance you can't just load up a GFW live app and buy stuff, talk to people, launch games. It's fragmented

 

[Draft]

I don't use it enough to have any sort of insightful opinion, but I can toss two things out:

1. Why does it log me out of Xbox Live? That shit is so irritating if I'm spending a lazy Sunday alternating between Netflix and GFWL gaming.

2. Why does it look like some shit designed for a 1024x768 resolution? I hate big, chunky menus in my PC Gaming.

 

[Wthermans]

Honestly the Steam community has taken over my social interactions with gamers outside of message boards. Until you offer a service that is better than the Steam Community, I (and all of my Steam friends) will not switch to your offering UNLESS you have DRM-free downloads/unlimited activations (AND offline play once installed and verified a single time) OR your prices are much, MUCH cheaper than the regular Steam sales.

Steam has cornered the DD market and their client is a perfect examples of what DD on PC should be. I have in-game overlays, in-game web browsers, and customizable user-groups that are easy to use and integrated into their store. The ONLY thing Steam lacks for me at the moment is a way to converse with my friends and buy games through a mobile platform (please Gabe, give me a mobile Steam client). Given the abandonment of GFWL and the buggy, process-intensive history of GFWL, I really see no way to save the program unless MS is dedicated to throw tons of money at it.

Steam wasn't built in a day and given the lackluster offerings of GFWL and the buggy history of the program, I see no way for MS to gain the marketshare that it basically gift-wrapped and handed Valve. MS abandoned PC gamers for almost half a decade so don't be surprised when PC gamers are resistant to ever trusting you again.

BUT, the quickest way to a gamer's heart is through their wallet. Give us good, DRM-free (or activation-less) games at a lower price than other DD offerings and we'll come back in droves. If you don't do that, then just stop trying right now cause you will never defeat the behemoth that is Steam/Valve as long as they are forthright, honest, and fair to their PC gamers.

Oh yeah and as much as it will pain you (MS) to do, you HAVE to start getting Mac involved somehow. Once again, Valve has beat you to the punch on this (even giving away "free" copies of their games on the platform) and you've got a TON of ground to make up.

 

[Mrbob]

What annoys the fuck out of me is when I buy a game (I love you Dawn of War 2, but I'm looking right at you for this one) and it uses Steamworks for the activation, but then you have to use GFWL to play online. That is the stupidest shit in the world!

Not to mention the voice chat on GFWL is like having a flaming pine cone shoved in my ear.

For your first point, Valve is a little at fault. Steamworks didn't have matchmaking in place for RTS (still don't think it does?) so they went with GFWL for it.

Second part absolutely. Trying to use GFWL voice chat in DoW2 is terrible.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

there's nothing on it, it might as well not exist.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Girlfriend bought Where's Waldo. I can't play it on the same computer she bought it on. I have no idea if this is by design or by defect.

Girlfriend boots up 360 while I'm playing RE5 on GFWL. Oops, signed out, because my tag was set to auto sign-in on 360. The reasoning behind this (prevent account sharers or frauds or whatever) is truly irrelevant to me. It negatively impacts me, so I don't like it.

Patching system is horrendous. With Steam, it auto-detects game patches and downloads them for me. With GFWL, I start the game, login with my gamertag. At this point it's probably been 30-45+ seconds. Oh, wait, game has a patch. Okay, let's patch it. Boom, game boots me out, and downloads and installs the patch. Okay, time to launch the game again. Oh wait, I have to sign in again.

But also, even if GFWL was exactly on par with Steam, why would I use it? I'm already running Steam 24/7. It has the same social functionality. It has achievements. If I wanted to "prevent Steam from gaining a monopoly", wouldn't I be rooting for the little guys, not Redmond, Washington?

And it's not on par. The selection is terrible, they don't have the truly epic sales the other guys have, they don't have any developer outreach in the indie community (with their only indie support being games that are on every other platforms). Efforts to improve the selection would mostly boil down to offering to sell me copies of games that I've already bought on other platforms, and efforts to secure better selection for the future will basically be the same.

Which is another thing. MS needs to stop being so schizophrenic with everything they do. Windows Phone 6.5. No, wait, Windows 7 but we'll still do 6.5. Here's the Kin! The Kin is cancelled! The Zune isn't cancelled but it's clearly not being supported. PC gaming is old, let's fire most of the GFW team, ignore the system for a year or more, and stop porting our games. Wait, now we like PC gaming, how come we don't have a foothold. The browser war is over, time to dismantle IE's team. Oh, no, now people don't use our outrageously shitty browser and developers hate us, I guess we'll set up the IE team again. Outside of MS's most very core products, their reliability for continued support is 0. I would trust some third-tier service like Greenhouse Games over GFW. The problem isn't that I doubt the sincerity of this change in direction, the problem is that I doubt there won't be another change in direction 12-18 months from now.

You say you want arguments for why GFW sucks besides "MS sucks, GFW sucks", but half the arguments for using GFW boil down to "It's Microsoft! And you can talk to your Microsoft friends! And use Microsoft achievements! How are those things better than anyone else's implementation? They're from Microsoft!"

When you say "Mindless rabble when get us nowhere", I disagree. Mindless rabble has worked spectacularly so far. I'm very happy with PC gaming. I'm very happy with Steam. I'm very happy that developers are increasingly abandoning GFWL. Mindless rabble has created an absolutely excellent situation right now. Ignoring the mindless rabble has gotten MS nowhere. Tough break, guys.

 

[derFeef]

I said it already today in the AoE thread, but I am having zero problems with it. Playing SFIV and DoW II regulary and it works great.

My only complain is, that the menu is clumsy and not very intuitive - you need lots of clicks to get what you need.

 

[erpg]

Region locking PC games is idiotic. Especially when you don't have worldwide LIVE support.

 

[poppabk]

Allowing region change on an account. I have two accounts - one is UK which I play 90% of my games on - and a second one that I had to create to buy stuff from the US store.

Don't tie saves to an account, or create an option to allow accounts to be merged.

Make it massively obvious that when you activate an online account that any offline account and thus all your saves on that account will be useless. Make this abundantly clear when you create an offline account. Or just get rid of offline accounts altogether, the majority of services and games require an internet connection at least once.

Allow access to the full GFWL network while not playing a game.

Server browser - not sure if this is limited by GFWL but most titles seem to rely on peer to peer.

Easy network configuration - why do I have to mess around with opening ports on my router - why can't I easily configure my firewall to work with it.

Better games launcher - The games browser in win7 is crap - I want to be able to add games, sort games, remove games from the list.

Edit: Forgot fix the patching mechanism - however they do it they are doing it wrong. A Red Faction Guerrilla patch maxed out my 2GHz core2duo at 100% for about 15 minutes. Couldn't even use a web browser.

 

[dalyr95]

I hate it because there seems to be no clear "roadmap" as to what to do and how to use the service effectively. Since I don't play on a 360, how Live works for me is a mystery.

With Steam you have everything in your Steam client clearly labeled and there is no annoying popups etc in the game.

Also when installing GoW and BioShock 2 I have to sign in and download updates numerous times, it wasn't clear what was happening, if the game was borked or what not. After downloading around 4 updates (which were unnumbered) Bioshock 2 finally worked.

Also I had an issue with GoW which I had to Google and download a patch for which GFWL should surely handle.

 

[Plasma]

It doesn't bother me that much I prefer it over stuff like Gamespy but I'd still take Steam over all of them.

 

[SolsticeZero]

It doesn't bother me that much I prefer it over stuff like Gamespy but I'd still take Steam over all of them.

True. Using Gamespy for Civilization IV was absolute rape. It really was.

 

[Draft]

Girlfriend bought Where's Waldo. I can't play it on the same computer she bought it on. I have no idea if this is by design or by defect.

Girlfriend boots up 360 while I'm playing RE5 on GFWL. Oops, signed out, because my tag was set to auto sign-in on 360. The reasoning behind this (prevent account sharers or frauds or whatever) is truly irrelevant to me. It negatively impacts me, so I don't like it.

Patching system is horrendous. With Steam, it auto-detects game patches and downloads them for me. With GFWL, I start the game, login with my gamertag. At this point it's probably been 30-45+ seconds. Oh, wait, game has a patch. Okay, let's patch it. Boom, game boots me out, and downloads and installs the patch. Okay, time to launch the game again. Oh wait, I have to sign in again.

But also, even if GFWL was exactly on par with Steam, why would I use it? I'm already running Steam 24/7. It has the same social functionality. It has achievements. If I wanted to "prevent Steam from gaining a monopoly", wouldn't I be rooting for the little guys, not Redmond, Washington?

And it's not on par. The selection is terrible, they don't have the truly epic sales the other guys have, they don't have any developer outreach in the indie community (with their only indie support being games that are on every other platforms). Efforts to improve the selection would mostly boil down to offering to sell me copies of games that I've already bought on other platforms, and efforts to secure better selection for the future will basically be the same.

Which is another thing. MS needs to stop being so schizophrenic with everything they do. Windows Phone 6.5. No, wait, Windows 7 but we'll still do 6.5. Here's the Kin! The Kin is cancelled! The Zune isn't cancelled but it's clearly not being supported. PC gaming is old, let's fire most of the GFW team, ignore the system for a year or more, and stop porting our games. Wait, now we like PC gaming, how come we don't have a foothold. The browser war is over, time to dismantle IE's team. Oh, no, now people don't use our outrageously shitty browser and developers hate us, I guess we'll set up the IE team again. Outside of MS's most very core products, their reliability for continued support is 0. I would trust some third-tier service like Greenhouse Games over GFW. The problem isn't that I doubt the sincerity of this change in direction, the problem is that I doubt there won't be another change in direction 12-18 months from now.

You say you want arguments for why GFW sucks besides "MS sucks, GFW sucks", but half the arguments for using GFW boil down to "It's Microsoft! And you can talk to your Microsoft friends! And use Microsoft achievements! How are those things better than anyone else's implementation? They're from Microsoft!"

When you say "Mindless rabble when get us nowhere", I disagree. Mindless rabble has worked spectacularly so far. I'm very happy with PC gaming. I'm very happy with Steam. I'm very happy that developers are increasingly abandoning GFWL. Mindless rabble has created an absolutely excellent situation right now. Ignoring the mindless rabble has gotten MS nowhere. Tough break, guys.

Fuck.

Absolute devestation.

Nothing but dust remains.

 

[JADS]

Don't treat your customers like pirates. If I bought a game let me activate as many times as I want.

This. I can uninstall and install a game as many times I want on STEAM. Why can't I do the same on GFWL, I already gave you my money why do you keep bugging me? Secondly, it is impossible for me to buy something on your store without going to a real life store. That kinda defeats the purpose of an online store. I don't own a credit card but that shouldn't be a problem. Steam offers me several ways to take away my money, including something that is only locally used called Ideal, why can't GFWL do the same? Now, there might be an option to use something like paypal but I can't seem to find it.

 

[derFeef]

This. I can uninstall and install a game as many times I want on STEAM. Why can't I do the same on GFWL, I already gave you my money why do you keep bugging me? Secondly, it is impossible for me to buy something on your store without going to a real life store. That kinda defeats the purpose of an online store. I don't own a credit card but that shouldn't be a problem. Steam offers me several ways to take away my money, including something that is only locally used called Ideal, why can't GFWL do the same? Now, there might be an option to use something like paypal but I can't seem to find it.

You can´t? How many installs are there? I installed DoW II for at least 3 times already. Isn´t your key bound to your Gamertag?

 

[Minsc]

Girlfriend bought Where's Waldo. I can't play it on the same computer she bought it on. I have no idea if this is by design or by defect.

Girlfriend boots up 360 while I'm playing RE5 on GFWL. Oops, signed out, because my tag was set to auto sign-in on 360. The reasoning behind this (prevent account sharers or frauds or whatever) is truly irrelevant to me. It negatively impacts me, so I don't like it.

Patching system is horrendous. With Steam, it auto-detects game patches and downloads them for me. With GFWL, I start the game, login with my gamertag. At this point it's probably been 30-45+ seconds. Oh, wait, game has a patch. Okay, let's patch it. Boom, game boots me out, and downloads and installs the patch. Okay, time to launch the game again. Oh wait, I have to sign in again.

But also, even if GFWL was exactly on par with Steam, why would I use it? I'm already running Steam 24/7. It has the same social functionality. It has achievements. If I wanted to "prevent Steam from gaining a monopoly", wouldn't I be rooting for the little guys, not Redmond, Washington?

And it's not on par. The selection is terrible, they don't have the truly epic sales the other guys have, they don't have any developer outreach in the indie community (with their only indie support being games that are on every other platforms). Efforts to improve the selection would mostly boil down to offering to sell me copies of games that I've already bought on other platforms, and efforts to secure better selection for the future will basically be the same.

Which is another thing. MS needs to stop being so schizophrenic with everything they do. Windows Phone 6.5. No, wait, Windows 7 but we'll still do 6.5. Here's the Kin! The Kin is cancelled! The Zune isn't cancelled but it's clearly not being supported. PC gaming is old, let's fire most of the GFW team, ignore the system for a year or more, and stop porting our games. Wait, now we like PC gaming, how come we don't have a foothold. The browser war is over, time to dismantle IE's team. Oh, no, now people don't use our outrageously shitty browser and developers hate us, I guess we'll set up the IE team again. Outside of MS's most very core products, their reliability for continued support is 0. I would trust some third-tier service like Greenhouse Games over GFW. The problem isn't that I doubt the sincerity of this change in direction, the problem is that I doubt there won't be another change in direction 12-18 months from now.

You say you want arguments for why GFW sucks besides "MS sucks, GFW sucks", but half the arguments for using GFW boil down to "It's Microsoft! And you can talk to your Microsoft friends! And use Microsoft achievements! How are those things better than anyone else's implementation? They're from Microsoft!"

When you say "Mindless rabble when get us nowhere", I disagree. Mindless rabble has worked spectacularly so far. I'm very happy with PC gaming. I'm very happy with Steam. I'm very happy that developers are increasingly abandoning GFWL. Mindless rabble has created an absolutely excellent situation right now. Ignoring the mindless rabble has gotten MS nowhere. Tough break, guys.

Damn, well put. Not sure there's much left to add now!

 

[Mrbob]

Thought of one more thing. I'd like a separate PC friends list to access besides the Xbox friends list. My Xbox Live friends list is fine for when I'm on my 360, but when I'm on my PC it is absolutely worthless. I can still communicate but about 95 of the 100 people on my list are pure console gamers. I need a separate list I can fill up for PC gaming.

I said it already today in the AoE thread, but I am having zero problems with it. Playing SFIV and DoW II regulary and it works great.

I don't think the issues are with functionality. Playing online works about the same as using Xbox Live. The bigger issue is why would I want to use GFWL when Valve already offers a superior service which is growing and evolving into a better service with each day. At this point I'd rather use the new Battle.net as a secondary service versus GFWL.

 

[Lonely1]

Well, the way to have people use the system is to have exclusive games that people want to play. Also, the all the previous complains.

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

You can´t? How many installs are there? I installed DoW II for at least 3 times already. Isn´t your key bound to your Gamertag?

I'm pretty sure Dawn of War II has a 10 install limit before you have to call up Microsoft to get it reset.

 

[Interfectum]

Girlfriend bought Where's Waldo. I can't play it on the same computer she bought it on. I have no idea if this is by design or by defect.

Girlfriend boots up 360 while I'm playing RE5 on GFWL. Oops, signed out, because my tag was set to auto sign-in on 360. The reasoning behind this (prevent account sharers or frauds or whatever) is truly irrelevant to me. It negatively impacts me, so I don't like it.

Patching system is horrendous. With Steam, it auto-detects game patches and downloads them for me. With GFWL, I start the game, login with my gamertag. At this point it's probably been 30-45+ seconds. Oh, wait, game has a patch. Okay, let's patch it. Boom, game boots me out, and downloads and installs the patch. Okay, time to launch the game again. Oh wait, I have to sign in again.

But also, even if GFWL was exactly on par with Steam, why would I use it? I'm already running Steam 24/7. It has the same social functionality. It has achievements. If I wanted to "prevent Steam from gaining a monopoly", wouldn't I be rooting for the little guys, not Redmond, Washington?

And it's not on par. The selection is terrible, they don't have the truly epic sales the other guys have, they don't have any developer outreach in the indie community (with their only indie support being games that are on every other platforms). Efforts to improve the selection would mostly boil down to offering to sell me copies of games that I've already bought on other platforms, and efforts to secure better selection for the future will basically be the same.

Which is another thing. MS needs to stop being so schizophrenic with everything they do. Windows Phone 6.5. No, wait, Windows 7 but we'll still do 6.5. Here's the Kin! The Kin is cancelled! The Zune isn't cancelled but it's clearly not being supported. PC gaming is old, let's fire most of the GFW team, ignore the system for a year or more, and stop porting our games. Wait, now we like PC gaming, how come we don't have a foothold. The browser war is over, time to dismantle IE's team. Oh, no, now people don't use our outrageously shitty browser and developers hate us, I guess we'll set up the IE team again. Outside of MS's most very core products, their reliability for continued support is 0. I would trust some third-tier service like Greenhouse Games over GFW. The problem isn't that I doubt the sincerity of this change in direction, the problem is that I doubt there won't be another change in direction 12-18 months from now.

You say you want arguments for why GFW sucks besides "MS sucks, GFW sucks", but half the arguments for using GFW boil down to "It's Microsoft! And you can talk to your Microsoft friends! And use Microsoft achievements! How are those things better than anyone else's implementation? They're from Microsoft!"

When you say "Mindless rabble when get us nowhere", I disagree. Mindless rabble has worked spectacularly so far. I'm very happy with PC gaming. I'm very happy with Steam. I'm very happy that developers are increasingly abandoning GFWL. Mindless rabble has created an absolutely excellent situation right now. Ignoring the mindless rabble has gotten MS nowhere. Tough break, guys.

My fucking god... complete and utter annihilation.

100% agree.

 

[JWong]

It adds nothing but annoyance and memory drain.

It can be improved if Microsoft actually supports it.

 

[JADS]

You can´t? How many installs are there? I installed DoW II for at least 3 times already. Isn´t your key bound to your Gamertag?

IIRC there is or used to be a limit on how many reinstalls you can do. It's unclear how many reinstall you can do or if the reactivation limit is still in effect.

 

[butts]

Why can I only run it when a game that uses it is running?

If the game I bought in-store uses GFWL, why cant I register my key once and then play without the disc in the drive? Why cant I re-download the game from GFW?

Why do they use an ugly-ass interface when they are obviously capable of something decent? (Windows 7)

Why is there no GFW Arcade? (is there? if there is I don't know)

 

[Mrbob]

Yeah each game is different for activations. Dawn of War 2 is set at 10. If you run out call MS to reset (if they will there have been some horror stories with people calling) or buy a new copy.

MS also only gives you a new key once. After that good luck.

 

[Man]

Steam will be multiplatform among the largest computer OS (Windows, OSX & Linux).
A threshold which can only be circumvented by taking the same step (and they won't).

 

[brain_stew]

You can´t? How many installs are there? I installed DoW II for at least 3 times already. Isn´t your key bound to your Gamertag?

It is with newer releases but it never used to be and there was some arbitrary install limit which was never publicised and even Relic didn't know about until some people started complaining on their forums. What's more bizarre is that you could use the key from any other old GFWL to gain access to the multiplayer portion of another. So someone could buy a cheap cpy of say, Kane & Kynch on sale and then play half a dozen other GFWL online, through Microsoft's service with the same key.

Yeah, it was completely broken. Its been fixed now though, and basically works just as Steam does, although games that were bundled with the old DRM solution still suffer from the same issues.

 

[Visualante]

I'd also like to say that. In terms of what it is right now, I don't think it can be saved.

Completely beyond repair, it needs a reboot. Oh and using Allards to buy stuff on PC is dumb.

 

[speedpop]

Yeah what stump said.

 

[MCD]

Just one issue:

Guide text is too small on my 1080p HDTV.

 

[brain_stew]

I'd also like to say that. In terms of what it is right now, I don't think it can be saved.

Completely beyond repair, it needs a reboot. Oh and using Allards to buy stuff on PC is dumb.

You can use both cash or points for full game purchases, dunno about DLC.

 

[Minsc]

The other problem is MS has repeatedly shown PC gamers that they're not important, and the money is with the Xbox system. Stuff like what happened with Alan Wake is not good PR for MS which in turn is not good PR for GFWL.

They should get the entire XBLA and as much of the 360 titles as possible to run under the GFWL. There'd be a huge increase in users if you had 100% access to everything from XBLA through it alone.

There's a similar thread on the GFW forums actually, from just a few days ago, I found googling. Seems to have a bunch of the stuff mentioned here.

They basically need to use Steam for a year, and see what they're doing wrong.

 

[Woo-Fu]

I don't want it to get better, I want it to go away. There are already products out there that do it better and aren't limited to Microsoft branded/licensed software.

Simply stated, Microsoft has too many conflicts of interest when it comes to making GFWL something good for consumers who buy anything other than Microsoft products.

 

[poppabk]

The problem they have is convincing the people who have had issues in the past to come back to the service. Losing my RE5 save after only playing mercenaries once was a real kick in the nuts, and although I don't actively avoid GFWL live titles, they used up any goodwill towards the service right there.

The region locked accounts is still the biggest impediment to using the store.

 

[derFeef]

It is with newer releases but it never used to be and there was some arbitrary install limit which was never publicised and even Relic didn't know about until some people started complaining on their forums. What's more bizarre is that you could use the key from any other old GFWL to gain access to the multiplayer portion of another. So someone could buy a cheap cpy of say, Kane & Kynch on sale and then play half a dozen other GFWL online, through Microsoft's service with the same key.

Yeah, it was completely broken. Its been fixed now though, and basically works just as Steam does, although games that were bundled with the old DRM solution still suffer from the same issues.

Shoot, that´s messed up. Guess it was a good idea to ignore the first GFW titles where there still was a fee and so on (did not know that). I am just glad it works for what it is and what I need.

 

[brain_stew]

I don't want it to get better, I want it to go away. There are already products out there that do it better and aren't limited to Microsoft branded/licensed software.

Simply stated, Microsoft has too many conflicts of interest when it comes to making GFWL something good for consumers who buy anything other than Microsoft products.

Whether you want it or not, that's definitely not happening any time in the foreseeable future.

 

[kinoki]

Whether you want it or not, that's definitely not happening any time in the foreseeable future.

Well, developers aren't exactly lining up to use it... SteamWorks on the other hand.

 

[Diablohead]

Activation limits have to go, they don't stop piracy at all and are just annoying on the users end, some games seem to be fine though such as Dirt 2 which registers a key to your gamertag, like an online pass otherwise you are limited to offline play. It's the older games which have that annoying install limit because you give your key every time you install it even on the same computer.

Turning the marketplace program into something better, right now it's just a shitty store with no pc accessible friends list unless you play a game, might as well make that program a website since it's just a boring marketplace as it is.

Faster patch process, like consoles if someone needs to patch a game quickly they have a 2+ week wait while microsoft test it themselves, it's stupid because the bugs still get through even on the 360.

I like using gfwl as it's connected to my 360 profile, all my achievements and friends in one place, I do use steam quite often but I am only on that for pc chatting and the sales

I'd also like to say that. In terms of what it is right now, I don't think it can be saved.

Completely beyond repair, it needs a reboot. Oh and using Allards to buy stuff on PC is dumb.

You can use cash also, it's optional. The allards are shared between pc and 360 so if you ever end up with a few spare you can use them where you like, zune store not included because I live in the UK.