Games for Windows Marketplace closing next week
Games for Windows Live is pretty much dead. While support for Microsoft's PC gaming service has waned over the years, the company has announced that it will no longer be possible to purchase games off the service.
Games for Windows Live is pretty much dead. While support for Microsoft's PC gaming service has waned over the years, the company has announced that it will no longer be possible to purchase games off the service.
On August 22, the PC Marketplace on Xbox.com will stop selling Games for Windows titles. As Microsoft points out, first-party games published by Microsoft "are no longer available for purchase from any marketplace." However, third-party games may be distributed on other services.
If you did purchase games through Games for Windows Live, you'll be able to redownload content through the client. However, in-game purchases and DLC support may be affected depending on the title. According to Xbox support, you'll have to contact specific publishers for more information.
If you have any remaining Microsoft Points, they'll be converted into local currency around the time of the next Xbox 360 system update. While you won't be able to use your credit on PC games, you'll be able to buy Xbox and Windows Phone 8 content.
Although the store is being closed, Microsoft told Eurogamer that they will continue "to support the Games for Windows Live platform."
"Although purchase functionality will be discontinued through this marketplace, the Games for Windows Live service will continue to operate as usual," Microsoft said. So while you won't be able to buy any new Games for Windows games, the ones that are still out there should remain functional.
Microsoft's PC gaming ambitions may have recently changed, as the company recently hired a Valve alum to make "Windows a great platform for gaming."
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Games for Windows Marketplace closing next week.
Games for Windows Live is pretty much dead. While support for Microsoft's PC gaming service has waned over the years, the company has announced that it will no longer be possible to purchase games off the service.-
interesting. is this our first taste of what happens when a digital download store gets shut down?
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Nope. The first one was Triton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triton_%28content_delivery%29
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Triton was awesome. Too bad it closed. I fondly remember Triton asking me if I wanted to install a patch for Prey... beats the heck out of Steam's approach(I am a huge fan of Steam otherwise) to autoupdating. Really all DD platforms should allow you to have autopatching with the option of being queried on a patch by patch basis if you want to install it.
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Quick! It's leg is broken! SHOOT IT
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Charming: While you won't be able to use your credit on PC games, you'll be able to buy Xbox and Windows Phone 8 content.
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I have really started to hate Microsoft's strategies lately.
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Which you cannot buy since they're not selling games in GFWL anymore.
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For the.. Xbox I don't have anymore? And not getting the One
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Ooo, I wonder if they sell anything I want. I'll have to look at it.
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Aren't there Mass Effect DLCs there you can't get anywhere else for PC? Also that BioShock 2: Minerva's Den thing, IIRC.
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You can get those directly from Bioware.
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set it on fire so it can't become Games for Windows Undead.
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Jeez, so I guess I can say goodbye to the two or three GFWL games I own in a few years when they shut down the activation servers too. And I have the fucking discs too.
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Maybe the publishers of said titles will be cool and issue update patches to fix the problem. You can hope, anyway.
If nothing else, there's cracks out which fix this. Getting your saves migrated over might be a pain in the tuchus if you want to retain those, but that's about the extent of the problems you can expect.-
"if we ever stop supporting BioShock [online activation servers], we will release a patch so that the game is still playable." http://www.shacknews.com/article/53236/bioshock-pc-install-limit-lifted
That was for Bioshock 1, for the SecuROM activation DRM. The spokesperson who said that is no longer with the company. The Steam version of BioShock still has SecuROM DRM listed.
As for Bioshock 2, that's Games for Windows Live. We'll see what happens with that. Same with Bulletstorm, Red Faction Guerilla, Batman: Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and a few other notable games.
At least we now know why Capcom announced that Street Fighter IV was going over to Steam. How could they sell DLC over GFWL if the marketplace was closing down?
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that is a very sad fucking thing
why anyone ever thought using GFWL instead of..well.. anything else, is beyond me.
hell ya GFWL, lets do that! That way we can piss off our consumers and make something simple like releasing a 4 month old patch for our game damn near impossible!
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They better fucking patch that shit so the games will keep working once the service shuts down.
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Has it ever come up? I mean, yes, there are games with central server requirements that shut down after some time, but in those cases the servers were central to the gameplay (e.g., every single MMO EA Online ever published). In this case, we're talking about third party titles that could easily be played without the server requirement.
TL;DR: I should be able to play a Bethesda game regardless of Microsoft's failed DRM platform/layer
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GFWL servers arent shutting down, the marketplace is shutting down.
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"MS had no qualms about shutting down an entire console service, what makes you think they're gonna give a shit about a bunch of dead weight PC games?
At most we'll see individual devs/publishers take responsibility."
Fixed version: "MS has no qualms". -
This is a bad post. They kept the servers for the original Xbox Live running for years, even when the number of active users had likely become remarkably small. I understand the few thousand hardcore Halo 2 players were affected by this, but out of all the things you can criticize MS for, this is a pretty silly one.
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We already have seen individual devs make moves. Monolith changed Gotham City Impostors from a GFWL retail game to a Steamworks free-to-play game: http://www.shacknews.com/article/75564/gotham-city-impostors-goes-free-to-play-on-pc
Also, Ultra Street Fighter IV will be Steam only on PC: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/08/14/ultra-street-fighter-4-on-pc-ditches-gfwl-for-steam/
That's pretty much only for games that have active development, though; I imagine that there won't be much done for games that have been out for years, and whose developers and/or publishers can't spare the time to convert them. For those reasons, Microsoft's probably going to keep GFWL authentication running for years from now.
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"Bioshock and Batman games already have inbound patches announced. "
Source? I have only seen online speculation about this, not any actual official annoucements from 2K or WB.-
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Batman is the game I'm really concerned about.
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Maybe they've got something else in the pipeline?
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/15/microsoft-hires-former-valve-jason-holtman/ -
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Yes. For now.
From the sounds of it they are only killing the marketplace where you buy digital games and addons, not the actual GFWL service you are required to log into for these games.
There would be a massive shitstorm if folks couldn't play stuff like Dark Souls, GTA4, SSF4, etc.
But if you can no longer buy the stuff that's exclusive to the GFWL Marketplace, is it gone forever? I own the Minerva's Den DLC, will I still be able to download it?
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Just keep the various ESMs and BSAs for the DLCs. Back them up to a separate drive if necessary. As annoying as GFWL was in Fallout 3, it doesn't seem to encrypt content, so you should be good.
On a related topic, I'm crossing my fingers and wishing very hard that Bethesda will take a couple minutes and issue a patch for F3 that removes GFWL and its atrocities. Anyone who runs FOSE pretty much has to do that already, so it's not like it's impossible.
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Crabs Jarrard just got an erection and he doesn't know why
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It was a giant F'ing mess. I remember them walling off multiplayer for Gold members only, and then backtracking on that.
I remember the complaints about the broken client back in late 2008, when GTA IV PC was released ("Ah, .NET 3.5; who WOULDN'T have that installed?" -- Chris Remo, Idle Thumbs 8)
I remember completely losing my shit when Bioshock 2 was announced as a GFWL title: http://www.shacknews.com/article/62013/bioshock-2-pc-requirements-drm?id=21946069#item_21946069
I remember doing the same for Bulletstorm when IT was announced as GFWL. "@therealcliffyb: 'BULLETSTORM DEMO COMING TO 360/PS3 JANUARY 25th. In other news, PC gamers are grumpy about this. '"
And I remember the GFWL fading into obscurity, getting obscured by "XBox Games for Windows", which was a dumb rebranding of Windows RT apps as "games". Skulls of the Shogun was supposed to be a showcase of that, but that turned out to be a giant mess: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/20/the-sorry-saga-of-skulls-of-the-shogun-windows-8/
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Yeah, I'm wondering if I should buy Minerva's Den now or hope that it goes on Steam.
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Oh crap, that's right. In an ideal world, 2K would release this as a standalone title on Steam. But that would be dirty, since most of the creative minds that made Minerva's Den split away to make Gone Home. I think I'll just buy Gone Home instead.
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Age of Empires 3 for ten cents: the only thing I ever bought there
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KILL IT!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!
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Also, thank God. I'm pleased they're still supporting it, I need Street Fighter in my life, but my God...what a broken platform GFWL is.
Designed by a goon who has only ever used a PC once in his life, obviously, given the moronic way it forces you to interact. Where's my chat box? Oh nooooooo, I have to mess on bringing up menus and typing a message to someone then clicking send...W.T.F!
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