Finally, Games For Windows Live is Going Away.

Ever since Steam reached a certain level of functionality any game that was distributed on it was kind of expected to make use of it. This isn’t a hard requirement from Valve or anything like that, no more it was an expectation from gamers that should Steam provide some services, like user login and what have you, then any game requiring them to do that again would be met with derision and, in my mind, rightly so. Whilst there were numerous examples of different game developers using their own login systems (Ubernet being one of the first to come to mind) by far the worst offender in this category was the Games for Windows Live service which would always manage to weasel its way into any game that came out or was published by Microsoft Studios.

Games for Windows Live got the most negative attention due to the fact that it directly replicated Steam’s technology, including things like the screen overlay, which meant that the user experience became somewhat confused. Additionally the benefits it provided were pretty slim as the only thing I could see was integration with my Live account, giving me achievement points, but considering most of those such games were cross platform intrepid achievement point hunters would likely prefer their Xbox. This was made all the more worse as since most PC gamers didn’t use it often the client usually needed to update itself, requiring multiple game restarts in order to get it working.

So you can imagine that there was no love lost when rumors started circulating that it was to be shut down next year.

The news comes from an unwitting source, Age of Empires Online, who mistakenly made the announcement as a courtesy to users who’d no longer be able to use the game after that point. The announcement was taken down almost immediately, although of course in the age of the Internet there’s always someone with a screenshot, which would seem to add a little credence to the idea that this was something Microsoft didn’t want everyone to know right now. Indeed in a strange coincidence it was also announced today that Arkham Origins would not be using the Games for Windows Live framework, strange considering that the previous two installments in that franchise did. Indeed looking at the list of Games for Windows Live games reveals that there’s been something of a dearth of titles released using the platform this year which would seem to confirm its imminent demise.

If the title of this post wasn’t a dead giveaway as to my feelings about this I’m honestly glad to see it go. The service never provided me any value and only served to get in the way of me playing the games, something which I don’t take kindly to. I’m sure this sentiment is shared by a lot of gamers, especially those who’ve made huge investments in the Steam platform like I have. Whilst I’m always wary of monopolies I’d hope that game developers took note of this and eschewed their own login systems in favor of something more standard and accepted.

Of course there’s also a dark side to this as Games for Windows Live going down will mean that games which rely on those services will simply stop working. Whilst I’m somewhat hopeful that the bigger titles might see a patch come through to remove it, at least enabling single player, I can’t imagine every title will see the same amount of effort put into it. There is a slim hope that Microsoft might make a general patch available however since a lot of the CD key authentication stuff was tied up with those servers I’m not too hopeful.

There is every chance that the Age of Empires guys got this wrong and Games for Windows Live will be sticking around but the evidence seems to say otherwise. Whilst I believe this is an overall positive for PC gamers the downsides to losing a hosted service like this are a painful reminder of the trade offs that coming with using them. We all like to believe that Steam is invincible, immune to things like this happening to it, but there’s every chance that in the future the same will happen to it. How the companies deal with this situation will be telling for the future as I’m sure this won’t be the last time we see such a service go down.