The annoyance that GFWL is.

[Deleted]

Everyone probably knows it, the ridiculous pice of malware that is called Games for Windows Live that gets forced down your throat if you like it or not.
For example Age of Empires online, they are offering this game through Steam only! And yet, after it's downloaded and you login you _have_ to make a gfwl account and everytime you start the game it needs to take 2 min "downloading your profile".

Every other gamer i know and i speak to about it agrees that this piece of software is hideous and game developers should ban it. Is there anyhting we gamers can do about this, like an online petition or something of the likes?

[Deleted]

There is indeed something you can do. You can avoid buying games with gfwl.
Game developers have been starting to avoid the thing anyways so I'm not too worried about it.

[Riavan]

I heard in windows 8, GFWL is much more streamlined, since you have to make a live account on which to buy apps etc/e-mail. I think the whole gfwl is system is gone, instead you can just buy the games on the marketplace etc and there is still an achivement system, but even games in steam etc will be allowed to give achivements in live if they want? (That's what I remember hearing like a year ago anyway, not sure if its the case now)

[Mewtwo]

Am I the only one who doesn't think GFWL is -that- bad?

[Deleted]

Am I the only one who doesn't think GFWL is -that- bad?

You must be. I've had nothing but issues with it in the past. I just avoid anything running on the system these days.

[fatalaeon]

i dont see what the big deal is with it, its not that big of a deal, if it takes 2 minutes to download your profile then idk what kind of connection you have but it should probably be improved. i personally like that it adds to my gamerscore

[flarecde]

Am I the only one who doesn't think GFWL is -that- bad?

I don't think its any worse than the half a dozen alternatives.

[Riavan]

Like origin isn't just as bad.

[Mewtwo]

You must be. I've had nothing but issues with it in the past. I just avoid anything running on the system these days.

Only issue I ever had was one caused by me not having it installed..other than that.. none. Once it was installed, it just worked. heh

[Deleted]

i dont see what the big deal is with it, its not that big of a deal, if it takes 2 minutes to download your profile then idk what kind of connection you have but it should probably be improved. i personally like that it adds to my gamerscore

250 mbit fiber connection with 4ms latency average on several speedchecks. It's not about my connection, it's about the crappy gfwl servers.

[Deleted]

I heard in windows 8, GFWL is much more streamlined, since you have to make a live account on which to buy apps etc/e-mail. I think the whole gfwl is system is gone, instead you can just buy the games on the marketplace etc and there is still an achivement system, but even games in steam etc will be allowed to give achivements in live if they want? (That's what I remember hearing like a year ago anyway, not sure if its the case now)

and the flip side is.. valva, blizzard, tons of indie developers are staying the hell away from windows 8 because of this. GFWL is going to fail even with "improvements" with windows 8. So not only stick well clear of GFWL but microsoft products in general and id at least wait till after the new year to consider getting windows 8 as it totally depends on developer support which is against windows 8 marketplace

[Mashpotaters]

Am I the only one who doesn't think GFWL is -that- bad?

I don't think it's that bad for what it aims to be. Its major problem that it shares with any other service is that it's not Steam. If you are already in the MS universe with Xbox and all that stuff, then GFWL is something that is't pretty good if they can work out the kinks.

[SirRobin]

There is indeed something you can do. You can avoid buying games with gfwl.
Game developers have been starting to avoid the thing anyways so I'm not too worried about it.

Yep, I do that myself.

[Deleted]

GFWL is one of the worst systems I've seen. I wanted to try out Age of Empires online while it was in beta, i DL'd GFWL, and when i tried to create an account, it said my country wasn't supported, even though the list i saw said it was. Not to mention that I had to create an Xbox live account for whatever reason aswell (wich isn't actualy available in Hungary), but first I had to create a new email with a UK address so i could even register, since it wouldn't let me with an email that had a hungarian address assigned to it.
Basicly, it's a horrible piece of software, that wasn't available in loads of countries last I checked, and it even has some ok games on it that you can't play without having an account on there.

On a side note, it's nice to see how serious they take the whole country restriction thing, when they don't even check your IP address for your country.