It's more of a choice beetween crocodile eating your leg and crocodile eating both of your legs.

Both are restrictive DRM methods but steam is slightly less PITA than GfWL or Ubicrap.

lol, Shio, you never fail to put a smile to my face.

Good news for gamers as in many ways Fallout 3 was ruined thanks to GFWL. The number of occasions where I couldn't access my save games. Steam is definately the better service.

Not sure why MS even bother with their half-hearted efforts with GFWL. Most of the time they don't want to release games on PC out of fear they'll take away from 360 sales, then they try and force us to use GFWL for certain games and announce Fable 3 on DD via GFWL. Stop with the half-hearted efforts and make the service something to be proud of instead of the 360s ugly step-sister.

I thought GFW was simply a label. I don't think I've seen a new PC game at retail without the GFW label for the last year or so.

As for Fallout 3 and GFWL, I'm thinking it was because MS wanted to push GFWL as a service and probably organised something with Bethesda. Not sure what the advantage to MS was unless they felt some sort of threat from other distribution systems like Steam.

Awesome, the retail box versions of the game will connect to Steam?  I love it.  I like being able to download the game from Steam if the disc gets screwed up and I also love being able to take advantage of retail store deals and have the game work with Steam.  I always kinda wished I could pay an extra few bucks and have some of my other games that I bought outside of Steam, work with it (the games that are available in the Steam store anyway).

I give this thread a 9.7.

This is actually a good news (didn't read the OP) but I prefer my digital content on Steam over Games for WIndows Live (which made me fucking hate Microsoft after trying to get my cousins GTA IV saving work).

This is really good for PC gamers that didn't enjoy what they got out of Fallout 3. I still don't see how this is a huge blow, or even a medium blow for Microsoft though. MS has practically abandoned PC gaming, so unless a gaming blow affects the 360, it just can't be a large blow to them. They just don't care anymore. If they did, they would be trying harder to make an impact in the PC world. They're continuously doing whatever they can to separate themselves from that world and bringing their formally large PC releases closer to being console series. Their GFWL thing is nothing more than sticking their toe in the pool at this point.

Microsoft need to be careful, though, their core Windows business is the big money maker, the 360 is piddling in comparison. There are a lot of PC gamers who are only using Windows because that's where the games are. If OSX or Linux get much traction in that area, they could stand to lose a lot of revenue. Valve porting Steam  and a bunch of games to OSX (possibly followed by the same to Linux) could be the start of a very slippery slope for them.

True, but gamers are really only a small slice of the pie when it comes to the OS market.

Maybe so, but it's a cumulative effect which can end up snowballing.

Who'd have thought Valve would port Steam and a bunch of games to OSX even just a year ago, especially after Newell's remarks about Apple's lack of enthusiasm? Now, along with Blizzard and id, all three of the really big PC devs are making native OSX games, there's less reason for a few million Mac gamers to buy Windows licenses and a good spur for other developers. It seems likely that Valve will do the same for Linux, so there goes another portion of former Windows gamers, and the start of a new self-sustaining ecosystem.

Nature abhors a vacuum and Microsoft's wilfull and rather stupidly shortsighted neglect of PC gaming has created exactly that. The days of Age of Empires, Freelancer, Mechwarrior and Flight Simulator are long gone, along with Bioware to EA and GfWL's a total turd.

There's plenty of money to be made by canny developers even in the relatively niche OSX and Linux markets and growth there will encourage others to jump on board. It won't bring Microsoft to their knees, but I can't help feeling a parallel with the browser market where Microsoft's hubris and lack of development of IE led to FireFox first gaining a foothold, then taking off and taking huge chunks out of them, followed by others- such as Chrome- weighing in and gaining traction as well. Their obsession with keeping Sony out of the living room could prove to be their biggest folly yet.