So that's what GFWL stands for...

Games For Windows LOSE. Essential linkage and much whining about Fallout 3 and DLC.

So last night I tried to get Operation Anchorage up and running on PC. I mean, it's not as if I've not already spent enough time playing that game.

Or so we thought... certainly, Games For Windows Live seems to think I've played more than enough, and so it will not allow me to play any more.

Arse.

I could rant near-endlessly about the horrors of the process, but instead I'll simply point you to another game-journo's similarly painful experience, over at Rock Paper Shotgun. I was lucky enough to be given a download code for it (the perks of being in the industry), so at least I was spared the pain and indignity of the whole Microsoft Points farce.

And services like GFWL, and even Steam, are now being recruited in the fight against PC game piracy, which isn't making things any easier. Fair enough, the process of sending out pre-release code, or even just sending out final code early, to journos might be considered a weak spot in controlling a game's disemination, but the countermeasures are fiendishly annoying.

Take Dawn of War 2. I've been playing a preview (see issue 98, onsale in about a week and bit, for deets), but to get that up and running was an epic process of GFWL fuck-uppery, which has left me with two seperate GFWL installs and two accounts. Having one is annoying enough, but two? Especially as I am left with the lingering suspicion that the modifications that allow DoW2 to run are what's getting in between me and Operation Anchorage.

And isn't the whole point of DLC the fact that it should be free?

It's unsurprising, perhaps, that in these dark economic times that those within an organisation who underperform are going to be finding themselves without a job. It's telling, then, that in a recent round of layoffs at Microsoft, one of the 5,000 or so scalps belonged to the head of GFWL, Chris Early.

Hopefully his replacement, Ron Pessner, can iron a few bugs out of the system. In the meantime, gamers are going to be staying away from GFWL as much as they can.

We don't blame them.