Does anyone know what is to become of disc based Games for Windows live titles when they take the service down next year? I have a bunch of boxed titles (Batman Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3 Ultimate edition etc... the'r codes do not work on steam. Will I then inherit several useless discs and codes?

Soon? But when you do you'll get AC GOTY on steam which is nice.

Registering CD keys

We are aware of the issue some users are experiencing when attempting to register CD keys (retail, GFWL, etc) and are investigating this issue further. We thank you for your patience.

@lkpower: It depends on what Bethesda does with Fallout 3. It would be nice if they would patch out GFWL and add steamworks support to it, but for a lot of the older titles that had GFWL it doesn't seem likely.

My guess is they will send those codes over to Steam and let them activate on there. If not, then I guess it will just be buyer beware for anyone that buys a new game. Same as those boxed copies of MMOs that were shut down over a year ago that are still sitting on some retail shelves. It's always a sad/depressing thing to see walking down the video game aisle at most boxed stores.

Isn't it just the store that's shutting down? As far as I know the service itself will still be up.

I can only think of 3. Fallout 3 and Gears of War. (The batman games had it patched out if I recall)

It would really suck if those games no longer work in some way, but I already played Gears of War without logging into GFWL because it never worked. I think it just disables online features that you dont actually care about. Same with Fallout 3. The game still works without it.

I'm more curious about Dark Souls. I hope they patch it out, but I'm not sure who's hosting that games online stuff. That one seems more complicated. It would really suck if that game wont work anymore.

The service will go down in 2014. I hope most, if not all, become Steam redeemable if the devs/pubs don't want to patch it out entirely.

If the price rises the way that copies of Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth 2 did, then WHOO HOO!

Do you know how awesome it is to have 12 boxed copies of BFME2 right now? Those fuckers are worth some SCRATCH!

This article has a detailed list of certain titles and what the current plans of the relevant developer is. And this is a reassuring article about Capcom titles.

It sounds like developers will either have to remove GFWL from a game entirely or use an alternative (such as Steamworks) for the title to continue to work. I'm only assuming this from what I can scratch together from the news though. Another issue is the question of X360 controller functionality. If a developer simply removes GFWL presumably that could remove the ability to play that game with a controller unless they patch controller functionality back in.

I don't think Microsoft has officially announced the closure of the service yet so that might explain the uncertainty at the moment. If anyone hears anything more solid, I would love to know.

Hopefully it'll be like Bioshock 2, and we'll be able to use the GFWL key in Steam

I agree but I think it depends on what each developer decides to do. They won't all necessarily do the same thing.

Just read this update on Rock Paper Shotgun . Basically they are keeping the service on life support which means it will continue to support GFWL games for now. No one knows what Microsoft ultimately intend to with the service, but my guess is they will relaunch it into something new at some point.