Looks like GFWL is being axed too. Will be discontinued July 1st, 2014

[Nintendesert]

They are run by retarded school children yet they are doing very well and not just with Steam. Dota 2 and TF2 are doing great for them. They have a totally different way of doing things and you know what? They proved it works. They are a financially successful independent company that doesn't have to answer to anyone else.

The catch with that Origin return policy I see lots of people overlooking is, it is for EA games only, like Need for Speed/Dead Space/The Sims/Dragon Age/etc. Steam doesn't even sell new EA games anymore.

You're right, they're a small development studio of 400 people run on an Anarchy model that sporadically produces anything worth shit. DOTA isn't even something they created.

Somehow Gabe is going to go from that to running MS and be just amazing?

I'm simply mocking how retarded that sounds and how stupid and deep someone must be riding the Valve/Gabe-cocktrain to possibly think Gabe could do anything for a large publicly traded company. You know, actually have bosses even if he was the CEO.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Holy hell,my prayers have been answered.:awe:God have i ever hated GFWL and it sucks so bad the bastard seed is being discontinued,praise the lord.:biggrin:

I have never hated something so much in pc gaming more then i have hated GFWL,the last install of GTA4 recently was a blast with the many updates just to get GFWL working and you get this stupid ass error about modifying my system that refuses to install GFWL and its cause i have my updates shut off.:twisted: Enable them despite the fact the install does nothing with windows update and there goes the install,what black magic is this?:|

 

[smackababy]

You're right, they're a small development studio of 400 people run on an Anarchy model that sporadically produces anything worth shit. DOTA isn't even something they created.

Somehow Gabe is going to go from that to running MS and be just amazing?

I'm simply mocking how retarded that sounds and how stupid and deep someone must be riding the Valve/Gabe-cocktrain to possibly think Gabe could do anything for a large publicly traded company. You know, actually have bosses even if he was the CEO.

People have a blind love for Gabe. The people talking about he was the savior for gaming because he turned down an offer from EA to buy Valve for half it's value were met with praise and cheer! Everyone ignored the super lowball offer and hailed Gabe as the savior of PC gaming.

And when he came out and said Windows 8 sucked for gaming, yep everyone jumped on board with that. People who haven't used Windows 8 claim it is bad for gaming, despite it being better from a technical standpoint than Windows 7. The only downside is the Metro UI that you can get out of.

 

[BladeVenom]

Gabe is a genius and visionary. While Ballmer is the opposite of a visionary; he couldn't even see the present when someone places it in his hands. He laughed at the iPhone, he laughed at the iPad, and he laughed at Android. Now Android is more popular than Windows, and Apple is bigger than Microsoft. A dead cat would have made a better CEO than Ballmer.

While MS stocks dropped and then remained flat since Ballmer took over, Steam was doubling sales year after year.

 

[Nintendesert]

People have a blind love for Gabe. The people talking about he was the savior for gaming because he turned down an offer from EA to buy Valve for half it's value were met with praise and cheer! Everyone ignored the super lowball offer and hailed Gabe as the savior of PC gaming.

And when he came out and said Windows 8 sucked for gaming, yep everyone jumped on board with that. People who haven't used Windows 8 claim it is bad for gaming, despite it being better from a technical standpoint than Windows 7. The only downside is the Metro UI that you can get out of.

I think Steam showed us why PC gaming is so great though. It showed us a store front with games having a shelf life of infinity. (Assuming servers stay up, which MS has now shown us isn't so...)

The potential for PC gaming though is great and it's been growing. I just don't see what Valve or Gabe has done recently for PC gaming other than try to stop the growth of other digital distribution methods and fight against consumer rights.

Ballmer had a tough shitty job running such a huge company, and while there's now hope someone better can come along and push MS in the right direction. MS should have always focused on PC gaming as well as console gaming in my opinion. The push to everything Xbox was a bad move to me, console gamers and PC gamers don't really overlap and I don't think anything was gained by shunning the PC gamer.

PC gamers upgrading hardware drives sales of not only the software but the hardware for OEMs, Ballmer made a lot of bad strategic decisions. That being said, MS also created the PC market as it is today, PC gaming today is relatively easy compared to 15 years ago and I find it less frustrating then even console gaming. MS and DX are to thank for that. I just hope the next CEO views PC gaming as a separate market from the Xbox instead of one to try and cannibalize for the Xbox.

Give PC gamers what Gabe really fears, a real digital competitor. EA is starting to and Impulse did a fair job. It's why Windows 8 was pissed on by Gabe, not for any technical reasons, but it had the potential to actually compete with Steam. Gabe threw fits and started to run to Linux. Strong PC gaming needs MS. Time to play Madden 25 and get drunk at noon. YESSSSS.....

 

[KaOTiK]

You're right, they're a small development studio of 400 people run on an Anarchy model that sporadically produces anything worth shit. DOTA isn't even something they created.

Somehow Gabe is going to go from that to running MS and be just amazing?

I'm simply mocking how retarded that sounds and how stupid and deep someone must be riding the Valve/Gabe-cocktrain to possibly think Gabe could do anything for a large publicly traded company. You know, actually have bosses even if he was the CEO.

I'm not saying not did I ever say Gabe/Valve's way of doing things would work for MS. I simply said that it does work for them and isn't as horrible as you make out to be simply because it isn't the standard model. It wouldn't work for the vast majority of places sure, but it doesn't mean it doen't make it a viable model for others.

Valve has released its fair share of games in the past few years and they have all done very well. Sure it is nice to have Steam for them so they can do what they want, but to act like they don't release anything and anything worth shit at that is laughable.

You get all riled up thinking people ride the Valve cocktrain and calling them stupid while you are doing the exact opposite with hating them and being stupid.

 

[smackababy]

I'm not saying not did I ever say Gabe/Valve's way of doing things would work for MS. I simply said that it does work for them and isn't as horrible as you make out to be simply because it isn't the standard model. It wouldn't work for the vast majority of places sure, but it doesn't mean it doen't make it a viable model for others.

The problem is Valve's way doesn't work without Steam. They are being propped up by their store. Same as MS was being propped up in pretty much every market by Windows OS sales. The Xbox division wasn't considered profitable for a very long time into the Xbox 360s lifespan (despite it always being profitable year over year) due to the billions spent on the original Xbox.

Valve has released its fair share of games in the past few years and they have all done very well. Sure it is nice to have Steam for them so they can do what they want, but to act like they don't release anything and anything worth shit at that is laughable.

But they haven't. They released HL2 in 2004, Episode 1 in 2006, and Episode 2 in 2008. That is 4 years to release 2 hours of gameplay on the same engine, recycling textures. They didn't make Left 4 Dead, they bought it. They didn't make Portal, they bought it. Valve, on it's own, would be the new 3d Realms without Steam.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yes! I might finally get to play Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. There's several games that I didn't buy because of GFWL, and now I'll probably pick them up if they get patched.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

I hope no devs patch their games to work without GFWL, so everyone can see how much fail this sort of DRM is. That will set a nice precedent.

 

[KaOTiK]

The problem is Valve's way doesn't work without Steam. They are being propped up by their store. Same as MS was being propped up in pretty much every market by Windows OS sales. The Xbox division wasn't considered profitable for a very long time into the Xbox 360s lifespan (despite it always being profitable year over year) due to the billions spent on the original Xbox.

But they haven't. They released HL2 in 2004, Episode 1 in 2006, and Episode 2 in 2008. That is 4 years to release 2 hours of gameplay on the same engine, recycling textures. They didn't make Left 4 Dead, they bought it. They didn't make Portal, they bought it. Valve, on it's own, would be the new 3d Realms without Steam.

Considering Valve released few games before Steam became an actual store and an actual store that was used, they weren't being propped up by it before that and they had the same type of work environment. It was a smaller number of employees but still the same, now that they have a lot more stuff they obviously have a larger employee number as well.

I don't get this line of thinking at all. They bought it so it doesn't count. Yes, they bought the mod/dev teams with the original ideas behind Portal and Left 4 Dead. Yet Valve was the one who made them into full fledged games and not just that have released sequels to both that were fully them. Who gives a flying fuck? That happens all the time in all industries, not just games. It isn't the first time a dev/mod team gets picked up by a bigger dev and takes all the ideas for a game. Tons of games wouldn't be counted towards other devs credit if that was the case.

Oh, and its hard to call HL3 the next DNF when it has never even been announced or acknowledged that it is in development when DNF was. Do we know that HL3 is being worked out? Almost certainly. Do we have any idea when it was actually started? Not a damn clue.

 

[Maximilian]

I hope no devs patch their games to work without GFWL, so everyone can see how much fail this sort of DRM is. That will set a nice precedent.

Hmm maybe, except fallout 3 and any other games i care about

 

[Nintendesert]

Considering Valve released few games before Steam became an actual store and an actual store that was used, they weren't being propped up by it before that and they had the same type of work environment. It was a smaller number of employees but still the same, now that they have a lot more stuff they obviously have a larger employee number as well.

I don't get this line of thinking at all. They bought it so it doesn't count. Yes, they bought the mod/dev teams with the original ideas behind Portal and Left 4 Dead. Yet Valve was the one who made them into full fledged games and not just that have released sequels to both that were fully them. Who gives a flying fuck? That happens all the time in all industries, not just games. It isn't the first time a dev/mod team gets picked up by a bigger dev and takes all the ideas for a game. Tons of games wouldn't be counted towards other devs credit if that was the case.

Oh, and its hard to call HL3 the next DNF when it has never even been announced or acknowledged that it is in development when DNF was. Do we know that HL3 is being worked out? Almost certainly. Do we have any idea when it was actually started? Not a damn clue.

The issue is simply that their anarchy model stopped producing anything substantial a while ago. This is like giving MS credit for Skype. Sure there's some vision needed to choose which IPs to buy, but the Gabe anarchy model isn't producing IP anymore which is what it's supposed to do. Or perhaps it's simply due to a lazy boss.

Either way it's not acceptable in a publicly traded company and not one of MS's size. A big issue with Ballmer is how he runs MS and how the environment isn't one conducive to producing quality from it's people. Valve has the same problem so any assertions that somehow Gabe is the god and savior of anything gaming/PC is simply what I have issue with. There are better run companies out there than either MS or Valve and that's what the PC gaming market and MS in general needs.

 

[Red Storm]

The issue is simply that their anarchy model stopped producing anything substantial a while ago. This is like giving MS credit for Skype. Sure there's some vision needed to choose which IPs to buy, but the Gabe anarchy model isn't producing IP anymore which is what it's supposed to do. Or perhaps it's simply due to a lazy boss.

Either way it's not acceptable in a publicly traded company and not one of MS's size. A big issue with Ballmer is how he runs MS and how the environment isn't one conducive to producing quality from it's people. Valve has the same problem so any assertions that somehow Gabe is the god and savior of anything gaming/PC is simply what I have issue with. There are better run companies out there than either MS or Valve and that's what the PC gaming market and MS in general needs.

I don't remember Portal or Left 4 Dead being already released and then later bought by Valve. Skype was like that though.

 

[ImpulsE69]

The issue is simply that their anarchy model stopped producing anything substantial a while ago. This is like giving MS credit for Skype. Sure there's some vision needed to choose which IPs to buy, but the Gabe anarchy model isn't producing IP anymore which is what it's supposed to do. Or perhaps it's simply due to a lazy boss.

Either way it's not acceptable in a publicly traded company and not one of MS's size. A big issue with Ballmer is how he runs MS and how the environment isn't one conducive to producing quality from it's people. Valve has the same problem so any assertions that somehow Gabe is the god and savior of anything gaming/PC is simply what I have issue with. There are better run companies out there than either MS or Valve and that's what the PC gaming market and MS in general needs.

Among other things said, I would add that I trust Valve to do the right thing much more than I trust MS to do the right thing. There's something to be said for history.

 

[Elixer]

Logged into steam to check for updates, and 2 GFWL games are now steamworks games.
Both of the Batman games were updated to remove GFWL.

Down with 3rd party DRM (well, actually, down with all DRM, but, we are slowly getting there...)

 

[Imaginer]

Logged into steam to check for updates, and 2 GFWL games are now steamworks games.
Both of the Batman games were updated to remove GFWL.

Down with 3rd party DRM (well, actually, down with all DRM, but, we are slowly getting there...)

Steam in itself is a third party DRM.

And account based software management and usage IS NOT a bad thing.

 

[Elixer]

Steam in itself is a third party DRM.

And account based software management and usage IS NOT a bad thing.

Yeah, but in the case of those GFWL games, it was steam DRM + GFWL DRM... then they axed the GFWL DRM.

I never said account based software management is a bad thing, it depends on how they do it, and in this case, GFWL sucked, and will die, as ordered by MS.

 

[Maximilian]

The issue is simply that their anarchy model stopped producing anything substantial a while ago. This is like giving MS credit for Skype. Sure there's some vision needed to choose which IPs to buy, but the Gabe anarchy model isn't producing IP anymore which is what it's supposed to do. Or perhaps it's simply due to a lazy boss.

Either way it's not acceptable in a publicly traded company and not one of MS's size. A big issue with Ballmer is how he runs MS and how the environment isn't one conducive to producing quality from it's people. Valve has the same problem so any assertions that somehow Gabe is the god and savior of anything gaming/PC is simply what I have issue with. There are better run companies out there than either MS or Valve and that's what the PC gaming market and MS in general needs.

Like who?

 

[biostud]

I don't really miss the days where you had to go and find patches on different sites, and servers ran different versions of the games as well.

 

[Barfo]

Like who?

Haliburton.

 

[Barfo]

Funny how Arkham City starts so much faster without the GFWL crap.

 

[Nintendesert]

Like who?

Those companies don't even make the top lists of any reputable financial publication or show. So pick one.

 

[Crow550]

I'm sure well see a 3rd party tool for removing GFWL on games that don't get the luxury of being patched by there devs.

 

[Elixer]

I'm sure well see a 3rd party tool for removing GFWL on games that don't get the luxury of being patched by there devs.

Yeah, cracks.

 

[irishScott]

I'm sure well see a 3rd party tool for removing GFWL on games that don't get the luxury of being patched by there devs.

For most games such tools have been around for a while.