Five games have not been fully functional for more than 600 days thanks to Microsoft’s “Xbox Live for PC.”

Games for Windows Live (which we now refer to as GfWL) last received an update in 2014. Many games used it for their multiplayer modes, but many had dropped out before the service was shut down. In 2020, however, came the gut punch for titles that continued to use GfWL. Several of Capcom’s games became unavailable on Steam, as the long-defunct service’s code made the Japanese company’s games unplayable.

On Reddit, you can read about the five games that have been down for more than 600 days due to GfWL: Lost Planet 2, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Colonies Edition, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Street Fighter IV, Street Fighter X Tekken. Street Fighter IV Ultra Edition works without any problems, so the problem here is with the base game, and the “colony-free” Lost Planet: Extreme Condition is GfWL-free, so there is an alternative, but the others have no such loophole. If you visit the Steam page for the games in question, you will be greeted with an error message saying, “We are aware of an issue that some customers may be experiencing during game installation, which is related to Games for Windows LIVE. We are temporarily disabling the purchase option on Steam while we investigate the matter further. We will keep you informed of the progress of the investigation. Thank you for your patience,” Capcom wrote.

However, we’ve had the same issue ever since, and the exception was Resident Evil 5, whose co-op has since been officially made operational by the Japanese company (and we wrote about it). Business-wise, Capcom may not be restoring the games in question because it’s not worth their time and money for some players, so in the case of Street Fighter X Tekken, for example, the GfWL interface for the legal copy pops up in the main menu and remains in an infinite loop, leaving the game unplayable.

So if you want to play, you either go for fan patches or download it as a pirated version. If the game isn’t sold on Steam by Capcom, it is acceptable… and on the SFxT Steam page, you can see that the base game is not available for purchase, but the DLCs are. That’s not fair…

Source: PCGamer