Spinning mirrors

I wanted to play Bulletstorm again today. I’ve played a pirated version before (specifically to avoid GFWL), but the game was really good and I bought it afterwards. So I hook up my TV to the PC, get some drink and start the game (legit version). “Press Enter”, “This game requires GFWL blah blah press space to continue”. I press Space – nothing happens. Game just goes back to the “Press Enter” prompt. No error, nothing. OK, Internet search time. Oh right, I had “Windows Live ID” service disabled. Too hard to display a relevant error message, eh?

Turned the service on. Huzzah, now GFWL seems to actually do something. “Sign in” it says, so I enter my details. Success! I can now enter my CD-Key. I type it down and I’m informed that there is an update for the game ready for download. Great! Update downloads, and GFWL informs me that I now need to save my progress and exit the game to continue. I can do that… or can I? NO! I can’t even get to bloody main menu, because it still asks me to log in into GFWL! Why?! Even Alt-F4 is futile. Killing the process manually doesn’t do anything good, update fails saying that the game needs to be registered in GFWL first. Really? So what the fuck was I doing for the past half an hour?

I proceed to download the “Games for Windows Marketplace Client” or whatever that’s called. Sign in – “Error 8015403A”. Awesome. It seems I need to accept an updated EULA. Whoa, now I’m logged in. Bulletstorm doesn’t show on my games list, so it seems that registration wasn’t successful. And I got NO ERRORS in game. What the fuck? I try to enter my CD-Key into the “Redeem code” window, but it says it’s invalid. I guess that’s because I have a retail copy.

So, an hour later I’m downloading it off a torrent again (which will take less than an hour). Three cheers for DRM!

Edit: Reinstalled the retail version and tried one last time to give GFWL a chance. Launched the game (without a crack or anything):

And this just sits there. No feedback on what’s going on, no “Next” or “OK” buttons. I obviously have Internet connection. Closing it does nothing.

Cracked the game, works like a charm.

~ by omeg on August 20, 2011.