"We are very excited to announce that next month it will be possible for players to migrate their Dark Souls: Prepare to Die games, saves and achievements from the Games for Windows Live platform to Steam.

• Games for Windows Live users will be able to redeem their Games for Windows Live Tokens on Steam to get Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition at no additional cost. (To find your Games for Windows Live Token, please head to the support webpage.)
• In the month of November, there will be a period by which Games for Windows Live Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition users will be able to transfer their Save Data (characters + progress) and Achievements over to their Steam accounts.
• Players will still be able to use their Games for Windows Live Tokens to redeem the Steam version of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition at no additional cost even after the migration period ends; but game Save Data and Achievements transfer functions may not be available.
• Games for Windows Live Rankings will not be transferred to Steam.

The specific migration start and end dates will be available soon; however the migration period will begin sometime in November 2014 with more specific dates to come."

http://bandainamcous.tumblr.com/post/100546461401/we-are-very-excited-to-announce-that-next-month-it

This was my excuse for not playing the game yet, all the rumors that GFWL was shutting down and Namco stating that they where planning something. Looks like ill finally play my copy of the game sitting in my Steam account.

I played Dark Souls on 360 and the only thing stopping me from replaying the Steam copy I have was stupid GFWL. Hopefully there are no adverse effects on DSfix. This is great news, maybe made more exciting because I never expected that they would actually patch it.

GFWL sucks, but it was never a reason to not play (or replay) a game, especially if you already had a login through Microsoft... In fact, for its time it was at least one of the more automated means of searching for and applying patches, even though Steam did so more seamlessly.

I'm still glad for the news though, especially because, despite what I said above, GFWL is still abandoned and still showing its age now much more than in its heyday. Another unnecessary layer to getting into a game sucks. My copy is already tied in through Steam as it is. I'm also still in the middle of two potential playthroughs (a new game plus and a new character about 1/3 through the game), and the potential resurgence of co-op partners is good news.

@mb: I don't think it will have an adverse effect on DSFix, but it will certainly disable DSCFix which most people use to play co-op.

I think the maker of DSFix will upgrade the base tool they made for Dark Souls, but they also made a more catch-all wrapper for games in general in GeDoSaTo. Just a whole lot more unwieldy to use and less focused (it's currently popular because of the FF13 PC issue which is very similar to Dark Souls 1).

Praise the sun! Someone had to say it.

That's awesome, but I'm confused. What if you bought the game on steam and it connects to servers through GFWL while running on steam? Are they just moving that version over to steam servers or whatever with just a patch... or whatever?

@cornbredx: The connection to Microsoft servers for online features would be transitioned out, as would the underlying added bulk of the GFWL interface.

Am I being stupid or something? I can't get the Game For Windows Marketplace to open to try and see if I could get the token right now.

same here, I bought it through Steam I'm hoping that token step is only for people who bought it direct from GFWL.

I don't understand what is so bad about gfwl... I played through [most of] Dark Souls on PC and hardly noticed anything. Plus you get gamerscore? What am I missing here?

In order to protect the gamerscore from being cheated easily by sharing savegames, it tied your (encrypted) savegame to your GFWL application data profile.This made it a huge PITA to switch savegames between PCs (in the beginning at least). Batman Arkham games switched to Steam some time ago and there was this long convoluted process to get the save games decrypted.

I wonder if Dark Souls is offering some support for this in November. Luckily I started my game with xliveless or whatever so I guess I can just copy my savegame.

The service wasn't that bad once all the rough spots had been ironed out but it was still a walled garden introduced to a system that has traditionally been very open and customizable.

Capcom you're next!

@cornbredx: @monkeyman04:

Saw the answer today fellas. Good news!

http://steamcommunity.com/app/211420/discussions/0/619569608741195548/

Steam DS owners don't need a token, because you already have it, it's the cd-key.

@slag: WOO! Now I just sit back and wait.

@slag: Awesome. Thanks for finding that clarification on the matter =)

Steam integration is now live: http://steamcommunity.com/games/211420/announcements/detail/206368522048405952

However, I cannot get the game to work with DSfix or DScfix at the moment. If anyone manages to do it be sure to post it here.

@hassun: Turning off the framerate unlock seems to fix the issue. Durante is on the case regardless.

@rhombus_of_terror: Oh right I should have thought of that. It works without the fps unlock.

Durante didn't make that mod though...

@forcen: I wish I could go back to a time when I didn't know what Dark Souls was.

Oh boy...time to install Dark Souls, I guess. I played it on my 360 in glorious 17 fps or whatever, then later on picked up the PC version for $4 or something.

@mb: Well since the fps unlocker doesn't work atm you will be playing it at about 30fps now...

My god, whatever will we do?

Yay, I'll finally be able to play it again after losing access to my GFWL account!

I installed it from my disc. How do I add it to Steam so that I don't have to download it? Edit: Forget it, it won't even verify the integrity of the cache. I'm downloading it.

I just looked at someone's Steam achievements and was pretty disappointed to see that the dates weren't copied. I was also hoping for other fixes.

Not play it until it's fixed. I'm not going to deal with 30 fps if I don't have to.

Seems like a pain in the ass to transfer achievements... but I'm gonna do it anyway!

I couldn't get the migration to go through after using the guide, even having to opt out of v2.0 beta and verifying the game cache. I wouldn't mind doing another playthrough but my Halberd hunter is somewhat lost in the game's current form unless I uncheck v2.0.

PC gaming.

@rhombus_of_terror: Tried reinstalling the game?

@hassun: I'll look into it.

@rhombus_of_terror: I had problems getting it to work but I reinstalled the game and made sure the frame rate unlocker was off and it worked.

I've come to the conclusion that this only doable with saved games on online profiles / achievements not on offline profiles. That might explain why I never got a GFWL achievement during my playthroughs.

Time to brace for invasions, not since my PS3 days that is.

Now GTA IV, I hope you are next.

@slag: When's Legacy of the Void? My money's on August-ish.

Steam achievements started popping in the main menu. Havnt touched the game in months.

@fredchuckdave: sure, sounds plausible to me. Maybe a little fast for Blizz, I was figuring Q1 2016 but I think they know they've lost prominence to LoL/DOTA 2 etc so they know they can't take their sweet time as much as they used to.

Wings of Liberty was an August-ish release too if memory serves.

I completely forgot about this until now.

One of the very few games where I achievement hunt. Such a great game.

@slag: July 27, 2010. Much like October 4th, 2011 a date I remember. Of course SC2 turned out to be sort of a disappointment except for the ridiculously good campaign; but a lot of that has to do with the community not the game itself (considering it is virtually identical to Brood War hard to find fault).

FYI: DSFix has just been updated to work with the new beta version of Dark Souls that's out today. All features from the mod, including 60 FPS support, are restored to working order. You can get DSFix 2.3 from its official site here: http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=652

Reinstalled dark souls applied the patch, witnessed a tidal wave of achievement. Loaded up a low level character save in Undead burg got invaded and killed by a guy in a robe with a scythe. Great that it finally works but I don't think I'll spend more that the 50 hours I already logged in that game.

@savage: Yay!

@savage: woohoo!

@sadsadsad said:

Oh nice, it gave me the achievements too.

I must have fucked something up, because I lost my save and had to start over again. Not that big of a bummer, because I am much better at Dark Souls now, but kind of a bummer because I had some real good equipment and now I gotta grind it up again.

oooh, is this the perfect time to get Ds1? I played it years ago on ps3 and I feel like I got everything I could get out of ds2... I only played ds1 once and as a heavy(vinny style). I believe I missed out on a bunch of side quests too.

Yep! Although, I believe that people who are only just now buying it still have to go to properties and enter the beta until this transfer period ends in February. Otherwise, yeah, buy it, download DSFix so you can play it at a decent framerate, and then play. No GFWL bollocks to mess with anymore.

EDIT: Also, I bought Dark Souls II Saturday evening because I wanted to play Dark Souls and didn't know when they would finally get this out there. Oh well, I'll just go backwards, and I wanted to start a new character anyway.

Playing DS2 before DS1 is probably for the best.

I disagree. I don't enjoy Dark Souls 1 as much anymore because now I'm used to 360 degree dodging, more fluid animations/movement, grid menus (The list was awful.), two-handed weapon parrying (which makes shields redundant), moving cloth and much more. Soul level reallocation also saves a lot of my time. No longer do I have to start over again and again to try out everything. Dark Souls 1 still does a lot of things better, but I find it hard to get into again.

The new version of DSfix is already out, The version you want is 2.3

really fast turnaround!

EDIT: Praise the Sun!

Man I should play this version but I kinda want to play the PS3 one instead (I own both). Still a fucking sucker for trophies.