Following the news that Bioshock 2’s been stripped of Games for Windows Live, Codemasters have announced that they’re removing the outdated service from Dirt 3. The DRM system developed by Microsoft is due to be shut down on 1 July, 2014. When it goes offline it will stop many of the games using it from working.
Codemasters are working to replace the Microsoft technology with Valve’s similar tech, Steamworks. This will keep Dirt 3 wrapped up in DRM but it will also keep the game running.
Codemasters tweeted that they’re working on migrating the game to Valve’s service:
@TweetingTommy32 We are working on it but it may not be until the new year.
— Codemasters (@Codemasters) November 9, 2013
The developer was pressed about other games in the series which are using Games for Windows Live, namely Dirt 2, but they didn’t offer any further news. Hopefully they’ll port Dirt 2, too, because that was a simply ace little rally racer. Hell, even if it wasn’t a good game, it seems wrong that a game could become unplayable due to something outside of a player’s control. If our games can brick because a system is shutdown then we’ve no security for our purchase.
Of course, moving Dirt 3 to Steamworks doesn’t provide protection for gamers. There’s nothing to say Steamworks won’t get shut down in a similar fashion in future. If it did, again, gamers would be in a state where their game stops working for reasons completely out of their control.
We learned that Games for Windows Live was shutting down in August. An update to Age of Empires Online’s Support Page revealed that “Games for Windows Live will be discontinued on July 1, 2014. Although it is available through Steam, Age of Empires Online requires features of the Games for Windows Live service. You can continue to enjoy all the features of Age of Empires Online as the service will remain 100% operational until July 1, 2014 when the server will shut down.”
The post was deleted shortly after being posted but we managed to snatch a copy. Hopefully this year we’ll hear a lot more developers announcing they’re disentangling the Games for Windows Live guff from their games.