​

"2009. I'll never forget it, It was the year when that grisly "Games for Windows Live" service was required to play games.
Soon after in 2015, the news was out to the whole world revealing that the game couldn't be played on Steam, and it was the fault of a secret viral experiment conducted by the international technological enterprise, Microsoft, and its GWL virus."

Almost 15 years have passed since its original release in 2009, and now; almost 10 years since its inclusion on Steam, Resident Evil 5 finally had its "Games for Windows Live" requirement removed with an update released on February 27th, 2023. RE5 still required to have the GWL service installed on PC, and without it the game wouldn't launch. Players who bought the game on Steam, or even those that had the original PC port from 2009 (as I do), should have stumbled into this issue when the service went defunct in 2014, a years before RE5's official re-release on Steam in 2015. Players still had options to bypass the GWL requirement, in the form of a mod to allow it to run, but it was still something the user had to go out of their way to fix. Now, with the Feb 27th update, Steam users can simply download the game and it boots without the previous GWL prompts and struggles.

RE5 not only got its GWL requirement removed, but it also re-introduced split-screen co-op into the game, a feature which wasn't available for PC. The changelog for RE5's update goes as follows:

- Removed Games for Windows Live support.
- Will support local split screen co-op.
- Some other minor bug fixes.

Some users report that new extra settings were added into the game's options, like the FOV settings from console re-releases, and being able to extend the in-game view when playing split-screen (instead of the letterboxed view).

The updates don't end there, though, as the original Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 6 also got updates available alongside RE5, seems like they all got released in the same update bundle (which I found out the hardway, when being kicked out of playing RE4 just for the update to download, and then to had my progress blocked due to not being able to launch it for using the HD version, having to redownload it). However, for RE4 not much documentation has been shared regarding what the update did specifically, as it seems RE4 only had its .exe modified, and users with the HD project might require to reapply the whole project again.

As for the black sheep of the bunch, RE6 seems to have gotten the largest update of the bundle, with around 300-400MB in size, and this one added around 15 tracks from the Digital Soundtrack, as well as new wallpapers, a digital artbook for the game in PDF (alongside other PDFs for the soundtrack as well), and an update to some of the game's language ARC files.

With all these updates, it might be worth jumping back into the Over-the-Shoulders trilogy of RE in preparation for the RE4 Remake.

 

[Kioku]

Oh my god yes. Can run through RE5 again!

 

[Jayro]

Why hasn't Steam done a mass "Games for Windows Live" removal across the board yet? Many games are still unplayable. I wasn't able to play Bioshock or GTA 4 for the longest time because of that GWL trash.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Surprising move. Though when they already have resident evil 4 remake around the corner, why touch the old version anyway? Still, not having to deal with microsoft games for windows live finally done, that shouldn't have taken this long, that was like FOUR OS UPDATES AGO. We're at windows 11 now, not still using windows 7.

Reminds me that Resident evil 2 & 3 remake got updated to remove support for direct X 11 and only support 12, just so they can add HDR and those extra effects. Least it was added to the beta downgrade. Too bad they didn't update Resident evil 4 5 & 6 to have that huh?

 

[SugoiEndeavor]

Does this mean online co-op is no longer supported in RE5?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Does this mean online co-op is no longer supported in RE5?

I'm pretty sure it still is, it's simply the split-screen that was never supported on the PC version from what I know.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Now do Lost Planet

 

[ShadowOne333]

Why hasn't Steam done a mass "Games for Windows Live removal across the board yet? Many games are still unplayable. I wasn't able to play Bioshock or GTA 4 for the longest time because of that GWL trash.

Are there still many games which require GWL?
I knew of RE5 since that's the one I owned that had it, but I am unaware of others.
Still though, this seems like a Capcom thing and not a Steam thing, since RE4, 5 and 6 all got updated on the same batch, but I could still be wrong.

 

[raxadian]

GWL was such a nightmare, am glad it died.

 

[Jayro]

Are there still many games which require GWL?
I knew of RE5 since that's the one I owned that had it, but I am unaware of others.
Still though, this seems like a Capcom thing and not a Steam thing, since RE4, 5 and 6 all got updated on the same batch, but I could still be wrong.

I'm not sure how many games in Steam still have GWL blocking players from playing the games, but they all need patched out.

 

[MariArch]

Thank God. That was really dumb when I went back to play this game with a friend

 

[Ryab]

View attachment 356231
​

"2009. I'll never forget it, It was the year when that grisly "Games for Windows Live" service was required to play games.
Soon after in 2015, the news was out to the whole world revealing that the game couldn't be played on Steam, and it was the fault of a secret viral experiment conducted by the international technological enterprise, Microsoft, and its GWL virus."

Almost 15 years have passed since its original release in 2009, and now; almost 10 years since its inclusion on Steam, Resident Evil 5 finally had its "Games for Windows Live" requirement removed with an update released on February 27th, 2023. RE5 still required to have the GWL service installed on PC, and without it the game wouldn't launch. Players who bought the game on Steam, or even those that had the original PC port from 2009 (as I do), should have stumbled into this issue when the service went defunct in 2014, a years before RE5's official re-release on Steam in 2015. Players still had options to bypass the GWL requirement, in the form of a mod to allow it to run, but it was still something the user had to go out of their way to fix. Now, with the Feb 27th update, Steam users can simply download the game and it boots without the previous GWL prompts and struggles.

RE5 not only got its GWL requirement removed, but it also re-introduced split-screen co-op into the game, a feature which wasn't available for PC. The changelog for RE5's update goes as follows:


Some users report that new extra settings were added into the game's options, like the FOV settings from console re-releases, and being able to extend the in-game view when playing split-screen (instead of the letterboxed view).

The updates don't end there, though, as the original Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 6 also got updates available alongside RE5, seems like they all got released in the same update bundle (which I found out the hardway, when being kicked out of playing RE4 just for the update to download, and then to had my progress blocked due to not being able to launch it for using the HD version, having to redownload it). However, for RE4 not much documentation has been shared regarding what the update did specifically, as it seems RE4 only had its .exe modified, and users with the HD project might require to reapply the whole project again.

As for the black sheep of the bunch, RE6 seems to have gotten the largest update of the bundle, with around 300-400MB in size, and this one added around 15 tracks from the Digital Soundtrack, as well as new wallpapers, a digital artbook for the game in PDF (alongside other PDFs for the soundtrack as well), and an update to some of the game's language ARC files.

With all these updates, it might be worth jumping back into the Over-the-Shoulders trilogy of RE in preparation for the RE4 Remake.

The capitalization is going to kill me.

 

[RyRyIV]

Now I'll finally buy RE5 on Steam! With all the hassle of dealing with GWL, I just never bothered when I had copies for Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

[ShadowOne333]

The capitalization is going to kill me. View attachment 356277

I think you can change the naming when going into each game's Settings/Properties.

 

[Ryab]

I think you can change the naming when going into each game's Settings/Properties.

Nope you can't

 

[KingVamp]

Didn't even know this was a thing.

 

[Ryab]

Are there still many games which require GWL?
I knew of RE5 since that's the one I owned that had it, but I am unaware of others.
Still though, this seems like a Capcom thing and not a Steam thing, since RE4, 5 and 6 all got updated on the same batch, but I could still be wrong.

GTA4 did until like a year ago.

 

[CanIHazWarez]

I'm guessing this means my GFWL version save is gone for good? I tried to import it months ago, but despite all my efforts, I could not get it to work. I think I even found a local copy on one of my drives, but it was encrypted or a different format or something that wasn't a drag-n-drop replacement. I'm glad I pirate most of my game now, so I don't have to deal with stuff like this.

 

[Ryab]

I'm guessing this means my GFWL version save is gone for good? I tried to import it months ago, but despite all my efforts, I could not get it to work. I think I even found a local copy on one of my drives, but it was encrypted or a different format or something that wasn't a drag-n-drop replacement. I'm glad I pirate most of my game now, so I don't have to deal with stuff like this.

Pretty much any save that was on GFWL has been gone for a long while.

 

[ShadowOne333]

I'm guessing this means my GFWL version save is gone for good? I tried to import it months ago, but despite all my efforts, I could not get it to work. I think I even found a local copy on one of my drives, but it was encrypted or a different format or something that wasn't a drag-n-drop replacement. I'm glad I pirate most of my game now, so I don't have to deal with stuff like this.

I think the problem is not your save file, but rather Steam's save format.
Search around for the RE5 Trainer software, in it you should find an option to disable the checksum or the Steam file save structure, that's what's keeping your save file from being imported properly iirc.