I know, because I'm about to pirate a game that I just bought.

And it's not the first time. I just bought Dark Souls for the PC during the Steam sale, and trying to play the game is a damn chore. A quick aside: I moved back to the States this last April and finally bought a 7th gen console - a Xbox 360. (I'm mainly a PC gamer.) Once I had an XBLive account, I saw that I could use it for GFWL also, and tried it while playing Street Fighter IV on my PC. Well, that logged me out of my Xbox, and my wife could no longer watch Netflix. Once again, GFWL is making life harder for the people who have to use it. For no gain.

Anyway, I haven't used GFWL since then, and I want to run Dark Souls. Except it keeps trying to log into my XBLive account. Even getting to my old, PC-only GFWL account is a pain in the ass that takes several screens. And once I do, it's locked for inactivity. So I have to jump through hoops to get it unlocked, including some of the dumbest security questions ever to reset my password. "Do you like food? Yes/No." <-- That level of stupid. Even then, it didn't send my password reset confirmation to my e-mail, but sent me straight to a screen to change it. That's early 90's AOL level of security.

So I finally get my old account back, get Dark Souls to load, fight with it again to sign in to my PC-only account instead of my Xbox account... and GFWL is down. Fucking down. Even after all that I can't access it.

So I'm going to pirate a game that I paid for. Just like I did the time I first bought Fallout 3. (I also bought a 2nd copy of Fallout 3 during one of the Steam sales for cheap... so that's a game that I own 2 copies of and still have to pirate to be able to play it.)

Great job, Microsoft. Maybe instead of making life for the consumer harder, you should try competing with easy & free.

WHAT PART OF FUNKY CHICKEN DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND

But achiiiiiieeeevements!

You can play Fallout 3 without GFWL.

I do agree, it's a pain in the ass most of the time, but when I first fired up Dark Souls a few days ago it worked without issue. As for your issues with signing into the Xbox and the PC at the same time - I don't what to say on that front, nobody uses my account except me.

I've never had a problem with it. I've deliberately have chose to play GFWL games and have had not issues with the service. Just sign in with a MS account, this aint rocket science DUDERs

that first time set up will log you out of other devices but after that its plain sailing and thats been my experience, my one complaint before was needing gold for multiplayer and that not the case anymore. I couldnt agree with @xMEGADETHxSLY more, its as easy as cake to use and ive never; not once had GFWL servers go down on me, ;) know what im saying.

@xMEGADETHxSLY said:

I've never had a problem with it. I've deliberately have chose to play GFWL games and have had not issues with the service. Just sign in with a MS account, this aint rocket science DUDERs

Whenever I played Batman: Arkham City with GFWL the game would occasionally have abysmal framerate drops - sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent forcing me to reboot the game. If I played without GFWL I couldn't access my save files.

You see why people hate it?

@xMEGADETHxSLY said:

I've never had a problem with it. I've deliberately have chose to play GFWL games and have had not issues with the service. Just sign in with a MS account, this aint rocket science DUDERs

You seemed to have missed the part where not only do I already have a separate MS account exclusively for GFWL, but I can't sign in with it because GFWL was down.

But, whatever, this is the internet. People go out of their way to not comprehend. I will say that my pirating experience so far has been a breeze, though I can't fathom why the menu button in Dark Souls is the END key. That's... it's like the people who ported this game have never used a PC before. Luckily I have a 360 controller to plug into my PC, as that seems like they only way I'll be able to play this.

@buft said:

that first time set up will log you out of other devices but after that its plain sailing and thats been my experience, my one complaint before was needing gold for multiplayer and that not the case anymore. I couldnt agree with @xMEGADETHxSLY more, its as easy as cake to use and ive never; not once had GFWL servers go down on me, ;) know what im saying.

I've never been hit by a car, but I don't pretend that it has never happened to other people because it has never happened to me.

If you feel like a pirated version of Dark Souls is somehow more stable or better for you in the end and you already bought the game, I see no harm in pirating it. I'm not advocating piracy but simply that in this case, I or anyone could care less that you do as long as you're doing it for "better" reasons than others.

I'll add another ring in the hat of GWFL is cludgy and could be way better but I hadn't had any real trouble with it over the years.

@Viking_Funeral said:

@buft said:

that first time set up will log you out of other devices but after that its plain sailing and thats been my experience, my one complaint before was needing gold for multiplayer and that not the case anymore. I couldnt agree with @xMEGADETHxSLY more, its as easy as cake to use and ive never; not once had GFWL servers go down on me, ;) know what im saying.

I've never been hit by a car, but I don't pretend that it has never happened to other people because it has never happened to me.

So by that logic you would never drive a car again because you got into an accident. While I'm not defending the person you are quoting, I think the more important point is that while GFWL as a service sucked for you, it didn't for others so in ranting without qualifications about GWFL is only going to attract people who want to represent their experience. Like you said, the internet is the internet.

Don't you make the security questions up yourself? I don't think you can blame GFWL for your own questions.

@BaconGames said:

If you feel like a pirated version of Dark Souls is somehow more stable or better for you in the end and you already bought the game, I see no harm in pirating it. I'm not advocating piracy but simply that in this case, I or anyone could care less that you do as long as you're doing it for "better" reasons than others.

I'll add another ring in the hat of GWFL is cludgy and could be way better but I hadn't had any real trouble with it over the years.

At that point I don't know if he's actually pirating it. Isn't there some kind of clause that states if you already own the game, you're legally allowed to back it up? Or did they get rid of that?

@Jams said:

@BaconGames said:

If you feel like a pirated version of Dark Souls is somehow more stable or better for you in the end and you already bought the game, I see no harm in pirating it. I'm not advocating piracy but simply that in this case, I or anyone could care less that you do as long as you're doing it for "better" reasons than others.

I'll add another ring in the hat of GWFL is cludgy and could be way better but I hadn't had any real trouble with it over the years.

At that point I don't know if he's actually pirating it. Isn't there some kind of clause that states if you already own the game, you're legally allowed to back it up? Or did they get rid of that?

While I can't say for sure, probably not allowed if I had to guess, functionally the only moral issue is jacking up the numbers of torrent downloads by 1 making it look like another copy was pirated without knowing why or by who. I would hazard to guess that he's likely not going to get into any sort of trouble for it, however much the "I bought a copy" wouldn't work in a court of law (although it sounds like I should right?).

GFWL isn't down, I just launched dark souls with no issue.

GFWL is probably the worst thing I was forced to use on a PC since Windows 98. If you're going to buy games that have GWFL you're gonna have a bad time! Every single game I tried with GFWL had some fucked up issue that made me regret spending money on it in the first place.

I've never personally had any big issues with it, but there are too many horror stories to say that GFWL is great or that it's designed well.

@BaconGames said:

So by that logic you would never drive a car again because you got into an accident. While I'm not defending the person you are quoting, I think the more important point is that while GFWL as a service sucked for you, it didn't for others so in ranting without qualifications about GWFL is only going to attract people who want to represent their experience. Like you said, the internet is the internet.

The logic's not perfect, but a better analogy would be that I stopped driving a car after several accidents, and somehow hitchhiking is not only easier but gets me to work quicker. Again, not a perfect analogy.

I shouldn't have responded to him, but I'm just sick of seeing people online saying, "It works for me, therefore everything is okay." It's like some people can't comprehend that a world outside of their experiences can exist. On that note, it is perfectly valid that some people may do just fine with GFWL. However, there is ample evidence that my experience is shared by a great many people. The outcry that happened once people saw that Dark Souls would come with GFWL was not in jest. Remembering that now, I have no idea how I forgot this game had GFWL before I bought it on Steam.

@BaconGames said:

So by that logic you would never drive a car again because you got into an accident. While I'm not defending the person you are quoting, I think the more important point is that while GFWL as a service sucked for you, it didn't for others so in ranting without qualifications about GWFL is only going to attract people who want to represent their experience. Like you said, the internet is the internet.

The logic's not perfect, but a better analogy would be that I stopped driving a car after several accidents, and somehow hitchhiking is not only easier but gets me to work quicker. Again, not a perfect analogy.

I shouldn't have responded to him, but I'm just sick of seeing people online saying, "It works for me, therefore everything is okay." It's like some people can't comprehend that a world outside of their experiences can exist. On that note, it is perfectly valid that some people may do just fine with GFWL. However, there is ample evidence that my experience is shared by a great many people. The outcry that happened once people saw that Dark Souls would come with GFWL was not in jest. Remembering that now, I have no idea how I forgot this game had GFWL before I bought it on Steam.

So uh... the only GFWL game I've ever played was Halo 2 Vista. It never gave me any trouble. That's not exactly helpful input, is it?