Seriously? A phone? Well that makes everything better then doesn't it. Of course! Why does everyone keep trying to build community systems, from Live to Steam to PSN, when I can just phone up every one of the dozens of people on my friends list every time I want to get a game of Left 4 Dead together?

So first, that was a tremendously long run-on sentence which was very difficult to read. And second, I'm going to humour you even though you're pulling this two weeks later, and just post some responses I've made previously. Since you have (as I said), completely ignored pretty much most of the complaints against GFWL.

So does your eyesight literally go black the moment you see anyone detailing the long list of issues that GFWL has?

"Don't confuse XBox Live policies with GFWL; I would ask for any evidence that indicates developers using GFWL must go though the same sort of certification process as XBL games. Otherwise I think you're dipping into overzealous speculation on that one. "

I'm just testy because every time someone says they personally haven't had a problem with GFWL, they almost always suffix it with a comment about how the other people are clearly "haters", "bandwagon jumpers", "Steam fanboys", "don't know how to use a computer", or are otherwise any of 100 other varieties of idiot.

So... anything to actually add? Or was it just your intention to say that people who voice that they have problems with GFWL are so very clearly just angry and idiotic troglodytes, as you would appear to be casting here?

Well let's see:

One possible reason that Gears won't work for you is because their MS certification "expired", at which point the game simply stopped functioning.

Since when was it the case that if I've got issues with GFWL, it's because I'm a "hater"?

It doesn't. It merely has interoperability between itself and XBL for things like achievements and friends lists. It doesn't make porting a game to PC any easier, and comes with a frack-tonne of additional headaches like mandatory MS certification on all patches and updates (which takes months, and costs each time. Up…

I fail to see why having them all in one place would add to their value, any more than it does for GFWL. I don't see that all-in-one listing on GFWL either (correct me if I'm mistaken), I just see some kind of meaningless aggregate score with the option to see achievements for individual games.

Pretty much agree with all of this. And personally, I'll go one further.

No I'd say gamerscore doesn't have any value. Or at least no more than a Steam achievement, or any other "achievement".

They appear to be trying to push metro as the default interface for Windows 8, whilst making moves to deprecate the standard desktop. And the interface between the two is less than stellar.

Personally I've had complications with most of the GFWL games I've played. The only one I didn't so far is with Fallout 3. Gears of War, both Batman games, DoW2, Halo 2, had exceedingly annoying problems with ALL of them at some point (or consistently), and all owed to GFWL.

I've run into this problem quite a few times.

Two reasons:

My problem with GFWL isn't technical issues (although if we're going to go there, yes, I've had those as well. Including it eating savegames in THREE separate GFWL games, and constant back-and-forth with a patching system that is absolutely terrible).

I made a pretty large post detailing my issues with GFWL. You can find it here:

Might've been nice for Arkham Asylum, if it didn't eat my savegames for it. And Arkham Asylum as well. And THREE times for my PC version of Gears of War.