He's aware of the problems, but that was the point of what he was writing. The issue here is that Games For Windows is being forced fed into games meaning you can't get around it. Because of this, the writer is unable to do what he's supposed to be doing.

Also, the problem with simply avoiding Windows Live is that it would mean avoiding any game that it's forced to work with. I'm not sure here (since I don't own one), but does anybody know if you're forced to use Windows Live if you buy a GFW enabled game (like Fallout 3) through Steam?

Otherwise, yes, I've been trying to avoid GFW thus far myself. I feel that was a ripoff when they first introduced it and only since they made it free has it felt like it might be worth the hassle of buying a GFW game (though I haven't bought one yet).

Games for Windows had a fee originally for gold and MS dropped it.

this guy is stupid, he is trying to run live through the game instead of the client instead. The client has the add-on and not live through the game. He should have never received the game for free considering how smart he is.
/end rant

Unable to do what he's supposed to do? When I'm at work, I don't get to use a lot of excuses to miss assignments. This in particular would never fly at anywhere I have worked:

Checking on how other game journos were doing revealed that the only proven fix was to completely re-install Games for Windows, then redo all the updates presumably. It’s at that point I decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort. Early reports suggest the DLC is less than two hours long and weighs in at a 350MB download – if I spent much longer fiddling then I’d have spent more time installing it than playing it.

So other journalists managed to fix the problem and get their reviews out, but this gentleman has principles and that says he just can't deal with this problem for over two hours because then it would be longer trying to install than actually playing it. That's very professional. What I find the funniest is that this was his last solution when checking on the internet for people that have fixed this should have been his first, as opposed to fiddling around and interrupting his entire office's work dealing with a minor issue for almost two hours.

It seems to me you can avoid Windows Live if you want the game. Didn't the gentleman say it's on Torrent sites? That sure seems like a ridiculously easy way for a guy that legally owns the download code for it to acquire a quick working copy for a review, don't you think? However then he would have had to actually do his assignment, instead of wasting time getting nothing done and publicly letting Bethesda know he will not be reviewing their game they were nice enough to provide him with for those purposes.

The reason you need Live Windows to download this and not Fallout 3, which is on Steam, is because Microsoft paid for this DLC. Excuse them if they don't want it to be purchased on a competitor's service. Maybe MS should let the Playstation 3 crowd get the DLC they paid for also.

Lol. Another mess up by microsoft. How interesting. So Microsoft is going to lay off 5,ooo employees and Apple has actually trippled there market share % in the last couple of years. Could it be because of stuff like this, or perhaps vista or just maybe both of them put together + 100 other mistakes that have screwed people and pissed them off to the point of looking for another product.

Anyway back on subject, I used to do a lot more pc gaming till I got like 3 games in a row over a 6 month period that did not work correctly and always had problems with 1 thing or another while consoles dont have these issues. So I feel were this guy is coming from.

I agree that he could have done a better job on getting the problem to work, I'll conceed to that as one of the first things I do is start searching google and forums for an idea of how to fix a problem I'm faced with. My standpoint here with GFW is that it's been limping since it came out and there will still be GFW enabled games and you'll have no choice if you want to play those games. Now that it's free it can get some slack, but I don't believe it's worth using over games utalizing something like Steam.

No, looks like it still requires Windows Live even if you torrent it (a quick google search for comments on torrent sites). Doesn't look like you could bypass it like you could EA's DRM on their latest games by torrenting. Thus, you'd have to work with Windows Live and create an account.

I also looked for GFW on Fallout 3 through Steam, it's basacially like buying the disk from a retail store so you'd have to install and work with Windows Live (like the Konami/GameID for MGS4). What I was asking was similar to EA's DRM being in disk versions of the game and not through Steam (I wasn't asking about finding the DLC).

LOL.  Yeah, this 'journalist' is pathetic.  GFW might be crap, but that doesn't excuse you from doing your job.

For one, if the client is how it should be there should be a way to get add-ons through the game even if it just kicks you back to windows and prompts you a little box that says buy or enter key here. Most steam games with a community feature has this.

Also I have seen LIVE PC ran through a game. DOWII is a perfect example and is the major reason I will never even play the demo. It makes you register a LIVE account. Well f that.

You do know that Bit-Tech is the leading review company for hardware and software in the UK right... you calling him pathetic doesnt work since his columns are typically amazing.

And he will have a review of the expansion sometime in the future.

I thought about these things too.  

Also, could there have been a problem with authentification or something given the fact that he was dealing with something that was (I think) pre-release.

It's hard for me to justify trashing an entire entity for problems experienced by one individual, especially, as Onyx says when it comes to PCs where an almost infinate amount of factors can affect the outcome.