Stardock’s Brad Wardell has never shied away from impulsive outbursts, but his latest is definitely one for the record books. When asked about his thoughts on Games For Windows Live, the outspoken CEO gave Microsoft quite the tongue-lashing.

“I started out as a big Games for Windows Live advocate,” he said. “I intended for Elemental to be on Games for Windows Live, but then as we got closer, the Xbox group took it over more and more. And they have things where, oh, if you want to use Games for Windows Live to update your game, you have to go through [their] certification. And if you do it more than X number of times, you have to pay money. It's like, ‘My friends, you can't do that on the PC.’”

“On the console, I don't have to update my game because an anti-virus program got an update and is now identifying my VB scripts as viruses and I have to apply an emergency patch. That would just add insult to injury. We've had to upgrade our games plenty of times over the years, not because we found some bug, but because some third-party program, or driver, or whatever screwed it up. If Games for Windows Live maintains that strategy and they take over, I'm done. I'm not making PC games. I would be done.”

We’d really miss Wardell if he left the PC gaming biz. We might also shed a tear or two for everything we know and love about PC gaming, as GFW’s regime would almost certainly snuff that out. But we’d miss Wardell more. Definitely.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/stardock_boss_%E2%80%9Cif_games_windows_takes_over_i%E2%80%99m_done%E2%80%9D

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I understand him completely. Games For Windows Live SUCKS BALLS !

It's one of the most terrible things ever pushed onto gamers on the pc market. It's like DRM

Universe at war Earth Assault had a patch sitting in wait at microsoft for more than half a year which ended up killing the online portion of the game compeltely due to some bugs in the previous update.

PC gamers don't want more restrictions. And that is all gfwl is. Restrictions on a open platform. You don't do that... Atleast people wont take shit like that lying down.

Wow, I feel I should go and buy more Stardock games just for the sake of it.

That is an unholy Hell of a thing to say.

I can see where he is coming from, though.

I don't know much about Games for Windows Live, but it does not sound good.

These guys made that space strategy game rite?

well steam still a wide "success".
and its preferred of windows games.
i wish the developers would give up the .net like developing and go back to making games like they should. c and opengl.
but all the nice tools probably make that a problem.
also this would help developers go on mac+linux game and remove lack windows feature that lock games into microsoft OS pcs.

I didn't know about the patches thing, it's even worse then

It's not a surprise that there's only one exclusive PC game that uses GFWL, and even the devs didn't want it

GFWL has a lot of problems, and most of them are related to the fact that it wasn't made for PCs and it's totally restricted to the Silver membership features. the fact that the lastest release was focused on putting the Marketplace in-game just show how committed they are to improving the service... for themselves.

Sins of a Solar Empire?  They were the publishers.

Why does MS have to ruin EVERYTHING with this kind of crap. Wasn't the big thing about PC gaming always that it was free from the restrictions of console games? Maybe Nintendo would be up your ass about this or that in your game but if you made it on the PC you could do whatever you want. You could have R rated content, hell you could have X rated content; you could have free online multiplayer using whatever matchmaking system you wanted, you could release games with heavy DRM or DRM free...the world was open and things were good.

Now suddenly with Games for Windows the PC is just another console. It is, in many ways, secondary to the 360 and by proxy gets all the BS that made consoles second banana for game development. The same approval process, the same backwards upgrade process...its only made worse by how horrible MS is to deal with since they're always trying to graft just a little more money off customers and pull developers into that game.

From online play costing money (which it doesn't on the Wii, PS3, PC, Mac, iphone, DS, PSP, PSPGo, Ipod Touch or anything else I can think of), to approval processes for patches (and strong encouragement for small game additions costing big money, anyone remember 3 dollar horse armor?) to a subjugation of the interface to the horrid windows live sign in crap to huge fees for using the program at all or for doing anything that makes MS look bad (IE it costs a lot extra to make a 360 game that takes 2 DVDs because it makes MS look bad for not using Blu Ray).

It is just ridiculous and even worse then Steam which I also dislike. If everything could be done stardock style with a simple to use (and NOT required) store like impulse that sells great games with no DRM that you can download as often as you want (to save hard drive space) I would be thrilled. I've spent at least 200 bucks on stardock games between Galactic Civilizations and expansions, Demigod, Sins of a Solar empire and more and would REALLY hate to see them pushed out because of all the BS Microsoft has inserted into a type of gaming that was fine without their "help" for 2 decades.