Games For Windows Live Rises From Its Grave to Haunt Lost Planet 2

Games for Windows Live has been officially dead for more than three years with, with support for Microsoft's first attempt at a PC gaming platform ending in July of 2014. Many games that once used the service have moved on to Steamworks or been rereleased in different versions in order to avoid the perils of being tied to dead DRM. Lost Planet 2 is not one of those games, and several Steam watchdogs noticed earlier today on SteamDB that the game had been pulled from sale.

https://twitter.com/RobotBrush/status/894624579758567424

Considering the game is a mostly online affair and players are tied to servers even in single player, some feared the worst about the game's future. However, after we reached out to Capcom, a note was posted on the game's Steam community with the following message.

Hello Lost Planet fans,

We apologize for the removal of Lost Planet 2's "Add to Cart" button on the Steam Store page. This removal is temporary as we work on replenishing the Games for Windows Live (GFWL) keys that are supposed to come with purchases of the game. We will issue an update to this announcement once GFWL keys have been restored. We apologize for any inconvenience!

Best Regards,

CAPCOM USA Customer Support

So, the game is not being removed from sale permanently, and it was never removed from Xbox 360 and PS3 stores at all. In this case, it's just a reminder of the grim past of digital distribution.

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Quick Thoughts

It's kind of ridiculous that GFWL is still causing problems for games that didn't jump ship years ago, but here we are. Considering the game's population rates and its mixed reception upon release, it's doubtful that the current form of Lost Planet 2 will ever get a patch to remove Games for Windows Live. It's up to Microsoft and Capcom to continue generating keys, but how long before even that doesn't make sense? DRM can be a nasty business sometimes.