No GFWL for Bioshock Infinite

By compl3x
in PC Gaming

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Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

Posted
Posted

Great news. GFWL is an abomination. In fact, ever since the release of the Xbox it seems like Microsoft has been trying to actively sabotage PC gaming.

Ah good, it's a horrid piece of software that needs to die. The only thing keeping me from installing DiRT 2 again.

Yeah. I'm really glad that DiRT Showdown opted to use Steamworks.

Mentor

coresx

Posted
Posted

Does anyone else think it's weird that Microsoft don't try harder with PC gaming ?

I know they have Xbox but surely both could co-exist. Look at how succesful Steam is for example. Money to be made.

It's embarassing seeing GFWL as it is today and has been for many years.

Whether it's a good thing Microsoft ignore it, I'm not sure. More of the same would be disappointing. There would be a chance to rock the boat with something new but looking at Xbox, no thanks on the PC side.

I just feel there is room to improve, even past Steam and maybe Microsoft is big enough to do it.

Anyway, good news with no GFWL on Bioshock Infinite.

Grand Master

+Majesticmerc MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

Microsoft didn't ignore PC gaming. GFWL was their attempt to capitalize on PC gaming after the Steam store caught on. Their problem was that the fruit of their labour was so tragically crap that people thought they were trying to sabotage PC gaming.

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coresx

Posted
Posted

They tried paying for online and that went down like a lead balloon. Their attempt was crap but they never improved on it other than bug fixes. Last update was years ago.

Why haven't they done anything in years ?

Has the Xbox team just told them to **** off to their tiny corner in the office or has Windows just drowned them into having no say and power at all.

I imagine it's a bit of both. Microsoft are trying to intergrate things, Xbox into Windows, Avatars and all. GWFL uses the same back end but they, like the Xbox team seem to get thrown about without any direction. Windows stamps on both, they can't get any say other than put some games on the marketplace.

Grand Master

TPreston

Posted
Posted

Steam and GFWL getting in the way of you and your games. How about you give me the game without all the social networking non standard ports bullcrap in the background ?

Grand Master

George P Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

Isn't GfWL dead anyways? It doesn't even display the store anymore much less receive updates.

They moved the PC game listing to xbox.com now. As for GfWL it's been replaced with the Xbox Live service in Windows 8 itself. There are already games you can d/l through the windows store that use it and give you achievements etc. Also games in the works that let you jump between Xbox and PC and keep playing. I don't know the specifics but I don't think a game has to be sold through the store or be a metro game to use it but I haven't read up on it.

As far as MS trying to kill PC gaming, that's just silly. If anything with Vista and the new driver model they've made gaming a bit more stable than it used to be. Toss in the advances in DirectX 10 and 11 and I'd say PC gaming is looking good. Sure they don't directly feed you the games like steam (not yet anyways, we'll see where the windows store goes) but they haven't stopped working on the platform regardless of what people think.

Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted

Good. GWFL is friggin awful, I ended up stopping Bioshock 2 MP because of the constant disconnection issues and issues finding servers playing with them. It's a mystery to me that Bioshock 2 was sold on Steam but not integrated with Steam's multiplayer gaming features.

Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted

Well the GFWL client crashed whilst I was playing Bioshock 2. It hosed my configuration data and corrupted all of my save files. And even when that didn't happen I got a lot of server drops, and I just found the matchmaking system to be poor (I was constantly being dropped into completely empty servers whilst searching for online games)

Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted

Although I don't play Bioshock 2 as much now, I had no more crashes after that one. Although I'd be surprised if many people still play Bioshock 2's multiplayer, it was never that busy to begin with.

Grand Master

PGHammer

Posted
Posted

Javascript is not enabled or refresh the page to view.

Click here to view the Tweet

Straight from the horses mouth. None of that damn GFWL.

GfWL is itself being replaced by XBLA.

Molehill/not news.

Still, what it comes down to is that the same folks that complained about GfWL really want LAN-based multiplayer - not online multiplayer.

(I've heard the same complaint about *every* PC game with a non-LAN MP component - regardless of who provides the service.)

Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

Specifics please. People just say pain in the but. How? It just brings a menu up when I press the home key that lets me see achievements and do a private chat with another LIVE user.

I know on my old connection (which obviously wasn't great, but it worked) the patch downloads died on large patches and there's no resume, so that ****ed me off. And if I'd moved the folder I had to do some general ****ery to install the patch.

I didn't care, otherwise. It was just there.

It just seemed like they got everything working and forgot to actually make it user friendly.

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