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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

I hate the hoop jumping in modern games. I was playing Street Fighter 4 recently and it comes up with "oh, you want to save your single player game? You have to create a MicrosoftWindowsBingGamesPhone8ForXboxLive.Net account" .

Then of course you have to wait for the damn thing to sign in every time you want to play the game "Connection failed, do you want to retry?"

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I've found myself having to deal with roughly 100% more bullshit launcher-patch-launcher-settings-signup-login-wait crap since I've started buying games on Steam instead of just straight up pirating them like I did when I was dirt poor.

Honestly, about 1 in every 2-3 games I play I find myself wondering why I didn't just pirate it to begin with. When your software has the kind of extra "features" that make your user base actually consider downloading a cracked, illegal copy after buying the real deal, you know you've royally fucked up somewhere along the way.

Short of doing extensive background research on a title, Steam has no indication of a game's dependence on some third party launcher or cloud service, so every time I run a new game for the first time I have to clench and pray the Windows Live overlay doesn't drop down.

Meaning: I feel your pain, brother.

You sure about that? Section 8: Prejudice [1] (the only GFWL game I own) lists Games for Windows Live under 3rd party DRM.

On the other hand, the Batman: Arkham Noun games [2,3] list SecuROM in 3rd party DRM but not GFWL. I'm told that these games are both GFWL titles.

I don't know what's going on there, but it looks inconsistent.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/97100/

[2] http://store.steampowered.com/app/35140/

[3] http://store.steampowered.com/app/57400/

Batman: Arkham Asylum requires a Windows Live account, not sure about the new one.

Perhaps it is not listed if it is only used to enable "social gaming" but DRM is done by some other software.

Just spotted it, the Batman games hide it in the System requirements:

> Online play requires log-in to Games For Windows – Live

So I guess it's in the DRM list if you need it to play singleplayer, and in system reqs if you don't. Seems fair, but I'd still rather have it be consistent. No reason S8 couldn't list it in both spots.

Still, I habitually don't read System Reqs. I'd expect something more like one of the "Single Player", "Multi Player" bullets under the ESRB rating. "Requires 3rd party bullshit"

Agreed. There's no game that my desktop doesn't meet the minimum requirements for, and won't be for at least a few years. I don't make a habit of checking them.

Fable 3 doesn't mention GFWL anywhere, except that it's published by "Microsoft Games Studios" which would be a big hint... if you look at publisher info.

Which is why I say it's usually a crap shoot. :(

EDIT: In terms of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier specifically, it doesn't mention Uplay anywhere on the Steam store page at all. It's like "surprise! This 3rd party launcher / DRM / rootkit comes with it, absolutely free!"

Arkham City requires GFWL, almost made me quit the game I bought and go pirate it. Still considering it, honestly.

Not only did it fail to log me in the first time and totally dropped my first hour of gameplay, but I ended up having to reset a password and spend over half an hour trying to get Arkham City and GFWL live to work together.

I lost over 1.5 hours of time to that bullshit, and a pirate would have lost 0 hours.

I am ONCE AGAIN bitten in the ass for being a legitimate customer instead of a dirty pirate.

Couldn't Steam pull the game from their shop? Prevent new people from buying it and remotely de-activate/remove existing installs of the game?

Proponants of the walled garden 'App Store' model point out how it's good for users, since it's more secure. Well, is this a case for that? Will the closed app store model step up to the plate now?

Or is the walled garden no better for users, but much better for the sellers of software?

When a walled garden actually is better for users, they could choose to participate. When users aren't allowed to choose, you can be pretty sure who the primary beneficiary is.

I just wish there was some option that would let Steam warn me if something like this was going to happen.

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