The thing about launching from the background when you start the game always seemed like a smart decision to me. When I start a game, especially from Steam, I don't want to be greeted with a message saying "Sorry, it looks like Games for Windows LIVE isn't running. Please be sure it is active before attempting to launch this game." But the drawback was the updates, which even for games I bought on Steam were only available through LIVE. Having to leave the game running while it updated, which sometimes ate up 100% of my CPU, was a pain.
That said, being Microsoft, they had another option: Integrate it into Windows directly, like they did with Windows Update. That way it's always running dormant in the background but not using up hardly any memory. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't take it in this direction for Windows 8, considering that Windows 8 has its own built-in app store thingy already.
erbkaiser said:
The Batman games at least have gotten Steam achievements. So has Bioshock 2. Some games like Dirt3 have the code set, but those aren't active yet.
GTAIV and Episodes have also appeared with the flag active, although no Achievements exist yet.
I am pretty sure this is the case for more games, so that when GFWL does get mercy-killed, many games will be updated to use Steamworks instead.
I guess the only "dead" games will be Microsoft's own.
Those probably will be salvaged too. There have been rumors of the
Halo series being available on Steam in the near future, and Microsoft-published XBLA ports have been Steam-exclusive for about a year now. If Microsoft is indeed planning to replace GFWL with a new service of their own, it's a very recent development and yet another flip-flop from an earlier plan.
Sofus said:
Killing GFWL is the lesser evil if you ask me.
Yeah it would be somewhat sad not to be able to play games which currently use GFWL, but in all honesty, I would rather see the entire service die than have future games with that shit service. If the price for killing GFWL is that I lose the ability to play all the games which have used it... then so be it.
Keeping the service alive for existing customers and locking it off from future games aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, only one game in the last year has launched that uses it, and that's because that game had been stuck in development hell for a long time, so they probably already have cut it off for publishers.
