So I got the urge to see if the PC version works again for me and I'm having problems with launching the game. I've got the latest Marketplace installed but that seemed to have no effect. I'm not even sure what the purpose of GFWL is at this point. Any suggestions?

I'm running a Windows 7 64 bit PC in case it makes any difference.

It took me a bunch of screwing around to get the PC version to run. I ended up not only having to set the Steam and darksouls/data exe's to run as admin, but reinstalling GFWL as well. This was on Win 7 64...I since changed that installation of Windows to 8.1 for other reasons and now I can't get Souls to run at all. I gave up on it, thankfully I have already gone through the game rather thoroughly on Xbox.

I had the game running with little problem when I first bought it on PC but I couldn't get DSFix to work with it so I gave up and switched back to the PS3 version. Since then I've tried twice to get it to work again, the first time I was able to get into the menu but the second time it just kept crashing to desktop. I believe that was when they changed all the GFWL stuff but now I've gone and reinstalled the new client the game doesn't even launch. I'm glad I finished my first playthrough on the PS3 and have preordered Dark Souls II for PS3 in case something screws up again on the PC version. It's just frustrating when I spent an entire day downloading the game and it doesn't even work.

I had this exact problem when my Dark Souls itch flared up recently, turned out my DSFix was out of date. Perhaps you have some files lingering in the Dark Souls folder from when you tried getting DSFix set up?

I had problems with DS recently aswell. Turns out it just won't run at all on 120Hz monitors over displayport. Crash everytime you try to load the game engine. You can get around this by using a HDMI cable instead since it forces your monitor to run at 60hz, but it's akward for me since i have my pc in a different room and need to drag a new cable through the wall.

Considering just getting the PS3 version instead but afaik it has pretty bad framerates?

@tussler: The console versions have framerate problems, mainly in Blighttown and Izalith. For me that never broke the game, but if you are used to a stable 30 fps on PC (or more via DSfix, a feature I never used) it might irritate you.

I recently switched back to PS3 because it is unknown if the PC version will have online support after GFWL gets shut down this summer. From Soft said they will patch it out, but they did not say if they will enable another way to connect online (Steamworks or something like that).

@marmalade: My god, I didn't even notice the outdated DSFix files in the folder. I thought they give you a fresh install when you redownload something on Steam? I was trying to launch the game without putting the DSFix files there. It's working now, although the performance is terrible, not sure if it's because of the settings or my computer. Either way, it works. Thanks guys.

@marmalade said:

I had this exact problem too. It's worth looking into. The latest DSFix works though!

I know this is somewhat tangential to the topic of this thread but should I using DSfix if the games runs smooth on my PC without it? I haven't noticed that it looks particularly better with DSfix there.

@michael_katarn: The only significant changes that I really care about are the 60fps and anti-aliasing (my understanding is the game's own AA is poop.) If you're fine with the lower frame rate and resolution then it's still a phenomenal game.

"If you mean the facebook announcement, it was fake."

http://steamcommunity.com/app/211420/discussions/0/864977564541482766/#p1

Seems to me that if they intended to patch out GFWL, they would have patched in some of the other expected features they left out, like HD and stereo.