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Games for Windows Live - what am I supposed to do now? BESIDES buying them all over again

Anonymous
2025-02-16T23:22:14+00:00

Hello Community,

I got: Halo 2, Resident Evil 5 Gold, Fallout 3 GOTY, and GTA IV; all of which are Games for Windows Live.

Now, it's 2025 and the service was Discontinued, I GET IT.

So, are we throwing the proverbial towel here??? There is nothing you can do? Nothing? Not even a mod? not even some sort of "Games for Windows Live Migration Service"? One final patch/update?

Probably not, because, who is going to get paid for it? We paid for the games, someone already cashed that check and ran, is this right so far?

Ok, stay with me on this....

GTA IV, I installed on this new PC I build, and tell me why..... the activation code that came with my PC version.... still Windows Live btw.....

I go to the Rockstar Social club which my Xbox/Microsoft account was linked waaaaay back then........ the code..... when I "redeem it"?

Basically registered the game for download! the code that came with my copy of GTA IV - Games for Windows; it redeemed it thru Rockstar games; why? how?

What in "The Woz"'s name is that???

So, those keys had to be in some databases. If Rockstar picked them up and validated them, are you saying nowhere in Microsoft those license or product keys were.... I don't know, ARCHIVED???

To be clear, remember you had to: install your game, install GFWL during install, have a Microsoft/Hotmail/outlook/Xbox account, sign in to GFWL, and activate said product key that came with the game.

And you mean to tell me that product key never truly registered under your Microsoft email? At all?

I don't know, food for thought.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Gaming

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-17T03:41:13+00:00
    • You're referring to disc base versions, and this is a complaints section post, yes ?

    Anyway, just by way of conversation....

    The dread and widely reviled GFWL was unceremoniously dropped by MS so far back I can't remember.

    The mass confusion and anger was more far reaching in those early days as MS hadn't organized with most of

    the game developers\publishers to make it possible to redeem disc based codes on their sites

    (those few that already had their own site) or Steam, for a copy with GFWL patched out.

    Long term, not many would wish for a return of GFWL though

    Opportunity for online activation has improved on over the years, but GTA4 was one of the early ones that could be redeemed on Steam.

    (I remember installing GTA4 from disc as having one of, if not the most convoluted activation processes ever.

    Not only did it require GFWL, but it used a key activation system that required jumping through a few hoops

    that I recall being very frustrating when still on 56K Internet.

    Main reason I stuck with using a noCD was because I wasn't sure if my mods would still work with the Steam download,

    and the only thing that wouldn't work without GFWL at the time was multi-player mode.)

    I ended up having having to activate GTA4 on Steam after installing Win11 though. Led me to finally finish the game after stopping

    when my apartment got bombed (Win7 era). Worth the wait though. I was able to get much better graphics with modern hardware,

    and surprise, most of the mods were still working.

    Since the launch of Win10, MS has similarly barred disc based games that use SafeDisk and SecuROM copy protection

    for 'security' reasons.

    Using a noCD fix\hack was the main way to circumvent this issue with SafeDisk, but many of the SecuROM games have had

    SecuROM patched out to make them playable. No such luck with SafeDisk games as far as I know, which are far more common.

    One such SecuROM game is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. I've been using a noCD fix with this game for years

    (I've used them forever with all of my disc based games anyway), but with more recent iterations of Win11, and probably Win10 too,

    some of the noCD fixes have stopped working, and this is one of them.

    Coincidentally, I've just finished downloading Dark Messiah of Might and Magic from Steam as we speak.

    While this is an UbiSoft game, the disc based version is actually linked to Steam, but I had never activated it on Steam because

    at that time it wasn't mandatory with this game and I was still on 56K internet and hated Steam almost as much as GFWL.

    .

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