Games destroyed by Games for Windows Live

[gorfias]

I just uninstalled my Steam copy of Bulletstorm, a fantastic shooter I hadn't finished yet. It was Games for Windows Live and Microsoft allowed the Steam version to die. Someone posted a .dll that would allow single play but my Norton Anti-Virus deleted it saying it would blow up my computer. Dang it. Not worth it to take the chance.

That's at least the 2nd game GFWL killed. The other was Bioshock 2. I ended up buying the PS3 version for $5 used. I didn't give it a chance to kill Batman Arkham as I was able to buy that in a Humble Bundle sale. I haven't checked my GTA 4 and DLC nor Dirt 3 for PC yet. And I'm unsure of how many other games in my library are GWFL.

What have you lost? Were you able to save any (by means other than just re-purchasing?

 

[Gladion]

Thanks for the heads-up. I own Bulletstorm for PS3 and thought I'd buy the PC version some time soon to replay it. I have the Mortal Kombat anthology which won't let me get past the start screen and one of the Dirt titles (could be 3) that won't let me save my game, both because of GFWL.Both acquired in Humble Bundles, but still. What a load of doodoo. Maybe even more (Fallout 3?), I haven't gotten to check out my entire library yet, but I got most of them after GFWL was announced braindead, so my hopes are high.

 

[Strelok]

I just uninstalled my Steam copy of Bulletstorm, a fantastic shooter I hadn't finished yet. It was Games for Windows Live and Microsoft allowed the Steam version to die. Someone posted a .dll that would allow single play but my Norton Anti-Virus deleted it saying it would blow up my computer. Dang it. Not worth it to take the chance.

That's at least the 2nd game GFWL killed. The other was Bioshock 2. I ended up buying the PS3 version for $5 used. I didn't give it a chance to kill Batman Arkham as I was able to buy that in a Humble Bundle sale. I haven't checked my GTA 4 and DLC nor Dirt 3 for PC yet. And I'm unsure of how many other games in my library are GWFL.

What have you lost? Were you able to save any (by means other than just re-purchasing?

BioShock 2 was removed from GFWL a long time ago, and all DLC was added for free. Bulletstorm is still on the list of games to be done. Batman was also done long ago, Dirt 3 was removed from Steam but came back still with GFWL, so someone is likely working on it, same with Bulletstorm.

The full list is here, but not updated since fall 2014.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3236567

Also a .dll or Direct Library Link will often produce a false positive in anti-virus software, especially one as awful as Norton. Also if you have an old GFWL account it apparently still works for Bulletstorm, I remember replaying this not long ago. Also just wondering if you ever bothered to look any of this up? Seems strange not to have even searched for this once.

 

[gorfias]

The full list is here, but not updated since fall 2014.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3236567

Also a .dll or Direct Library Link will often produce a false positive in anti-virus software, especially one as awful as Norton. Also if you have an old GFWL account it apparently still works for Bulletstorm, I remember replaying this not long ago. Also just wondering if you ever bothered to look any of this up? Seems strange not to have even searched for this once.

I'll review the list. I recall Bioshock 2 being patched for Windows 7 32 bit but not 64. Windows 7 64 was only their flagship. Aggravating.

Looking this sort of thing up is how I got the .dll that gave me the (possibly or not) positive from Norton. Norton sucks but my ISP gives it free. Don't all anti-virus programs suck? I've had bad experiences with AVG, McAffee and Norton. Friend of mine loves Viper, but do I trust it? Outside of him, I'd never even heard of it.

The only happy thing I have to write is that I have so many games that it is not worth risking the trouble of dealing w/ possible viruses.

Still, Bulletstorm is awesome.

I'm on Windows 8.1. I have a 2nd PC I may try it on with Win 7 64 bit. It is running McAffee. It may be worth risking that .dll on it.

Thanks for the list.

 

[Tom Fisher-Massheder]

Hey. At Least Dark Souls didn't go down. Every cloud has a silver lining

 

[Tilly]

Hey. At Least Dark Souls didn't go down. Every cloud has a silver lining

I was wondering about that actually. What's the situation with Dark Souls?

 

[fix-the-spade]

Aboluteley nothing, because from the moment GFWL gave Halo 2 PC the touch of death I didn't buy a game that used it on principal.

But I have a lot of sympathy thanks to the death of Gamespy having a similar effect on what feels like half my childhood. Back then I had no clue what DRM was and merrily bought and installed away. Roughly 75% of all the online games published bteween 2001 and 2010 seem to be unusable now thanks to that.

 

[AT God]

I haven't loaded up Bulletstorm in years, I have been secretly hoping that it would one day kick the shackles of GFWL and get Steamworks which would encourage me to play it again like several other games but I doubt it will since its EA property to some extent and they seem to have no intention of giving Steam any sort of help.

I honestly have never had any problems with GFWL live aside from it just being annoying and unintuitive, and I don't know of any games that do not have work-arounds for GFWL's demise.

To the OP, I cannot say for certain that the .dll you found isn't harmful but as a Norton user I get that warning all the time and have never had any problems ignoring it. If you are really worried but want to play Bulletstorm, backup your computer and disconnect your internet connection before running the .dll. Norton automatically flags any files it doesn't recognize and tells you not to use them. If the warning talks about reputation, it isn't actually detecting anything, it is blocking because .dll files have the potential to do harm and Norton automatically assumes the worst. When Starcraft II went into beta pre-release, Norton kept blocking it from installing because "Less than 50 Norton users have run this program before", and I assume Blizzard didn't bother getting Norton approval with a beta version build of the game.

My only experience ever with a virus that I recall was one that actually disabled Norton, it was some malware thing that was a complicated ploy to get me to download some anti-virus specifically designed to cure the problem. Was a tense few days but once I found out how it was disabling Norton it sorted itself out and I haven't had any other problems.

 

[Sable Gear]

Hey. At Least Dark Souls didn't go down. Every cloud has a silver lining

I was wondering about that actually. What's the situation with Dark Souls?

Basically it still asks you to sign in to Live but you won't get soapstone messages or see summon signs. I've been told there's a way in the games Properties (in the Steam interface) to opt in to a different server (I think it's labelled as opting in to a "beta" version of the game) that will replace Live. So until you do that the game us just very quiet...

 

[Tilly]

Basically it still asks you to sign in to Live but you won't get soapstone messages or see summon signs. I've been told there's a way in the games Properties (in the Steam interface) to opt in to a different server (I think it's labelled as opting in to a "beta" version of the game) that will replace Live. So until you do that the game us just very quiet...

Yeah, I kinda ignored all of that stuff anyway. Dark Souls is great because you can play through a lot of the game in complete ignorance of the various systems and options available to the character. I just stuck as an undead and went on an action rampage.

 

[loa]

Basically it still asks you to sign in to Live but you won't get soapstone messages or see summon signs. I've been told there's a way in the games Properties (in the Steam interface) to opt in to a different server (I think it's labelled as opting in to a "beta" version of the game) that will replace Live. So until you do that the game us just very quiet...

Wait so there's no longer a way to activate dark souls multiplayer vanilla?
It's dead?

 

[DrOswald]

Just so you know, a .dll will almost always produce a positive in any antivirus. This is because a .dll runs unrestricted programs on your computer, and computers are not smart enough to understand the difference between a virus and a good program. So antivirus software typically assumes everything is a virus unless some person tells it that the program is not a virus. So when you try to run a program that is not on its list of "not viruses" then it has to ask you to make the judgement call.

Installing a .dll is essentially the same thing as running an executable. And I am sure you run executable you find on the internet all the time (for example, the chrome installer) but you are careful about it. So the question is actually if you trust the source. Not if you trust the antivirus.

Basically it still asks you to sign in to Live but you won't get soapstone messages or see summon signs. I've been told there's a way in the games Properties (in the Steam interface) to opt in to a different server (I think it's labelled as opting in to a "beta" version of the game) that will replace Live. So until you do that the game us just very quiet...

Wait so there's no longer a way to activate dark souls multiplayer vanilla?
It's dead?

No, Valve saved it. If you own the steam version of Dark Souls, right click on Dark Souls, select properties, go to the betas tab, and select the steam build 2.0 version from the drop down menu. Multiplayer now works fine.

 

[DrOswald]

Ironically, RE5 hasn't started at all for many people since the Steamworks update, and the game reportedly performs worse than it did with GFWL.

So Capcom botched the conversion? Can't really say I am surprised. Capcom is dealing with financial woes, they are not going to spend much money on a conversion for a 6 year old game. No money in it.

 

[Stg]

You do realize most anti-virus software will flag all cd cracks as false positives, right? If you do some research on the .dll before installing it, there shouldn't be an issue at all. A lot of games that went the way of GFWL and GameSpy require no-cd cracks just to play them and every one of them have been flagged by my anti-virus has a potential threat.

 

[Seishisha]

The only thing i lost on GFWL was save data, batman arkham asylum, lost planet 2 and a couple of others i've forgotten. Essentialy i had a 100% save on batman, all the challenges and story+collectables. I also had all the skins and weapons for lost planet 2 and the other games were just story completion data.

I lost the save's when my GFWL tried to update, the server crashed part way through and corrupted the profile data for all the games. I litteraly had to restart the progress on all of them since the data wasn't even reconised by the games. Never did bother one hundred percenting batman again but i spent several hours re-unlocking all the guns and skins for lost planet.

Suffice it to say i was not impressed and from then on denied GFWL from ever trying to update again.

I also lost my dark souls save data when converting to steamworks version, but that was by choice since i like playing dark souls from scratch with new characters and the process to convert the data seemed like more of a hastle than it was worth.

I guess i got away pretty lightly, since all the mentioned games were bought as boxed or digital copies via steam, no GFWL account needed to actualy install them.