# Boycott Games for Windows - Live



## Faun (Jul 22, 2008)

*www.ngohq.com/images/livesucks.jpg​ *Boycott Live? Why?*
We have decided to start a boycott campaign against Microsoft’s Games for Windows – Live service because it’s violating our rights as consumers. Microsoft is pushing hard to make online PC gaming exactly like the Xbox’s. They want us to pay additional costs to subscribe to their Live service, and pay more monthly fees for a gold account, or to use the *barely/non-working Silver account*. Even if a gamer surrenders his soul for the attached fees to Microsoft; he may not even be able to purchase a subscription because the Live service is only available in 26 countries out of the 196 countries. This means that gamers from 170 countries are currently unable to purchase gold subscriptions even if they want to.

These two main issues put the future of online PC gaming at serious risk. This is what convinced us someone needed to start a boycott campaign against the Games for Windows – Live service. This became imminent to preserve online gaming and gamers rights. Of course Microsoft is a multi-millionaire corporation and they probably won’t care about this boycott, but game developers and publishers are more vulnerable to boycotts, and therefore we will target them instead. Sega, Eidos and THQ already signed to bring more Games for Windows – Live titles. The clock is ticking, now it’s the time to stop it.
*
Online PC Gaming was always free!*
From the early days of gaming, playing online was always free. There were several exceptions, like World of Warcraft but that doesn’t justify monthly fees. We buy games; we pay for the entire game! Both singleplayer and multiplayer. Asking for additional fees is simply “milking”, and it is unacceptable. Paying $50-$60 yearly just to access Live service is simply unfair and unjustified. 

PC games are expensive enough, some of them have in-game ads, and charging additional $50 for a yearly subscription is a rip off! This is 100% additional fees, since most of the latest PC games cost around $50. If we already paid for the game, why the hell should we pay this extra $50 bucks? This is not Xbox here, this is PC baby – don’t try to milk us, we are not a bunch of cows.

When we purchase a game, we feel that we should purchase the ability to play this game when and where we like, not just rent the use of parts of it. We already pay enough for the Windows operation system, and if Microsoft implements this Live service then it should be part of it. If Microsoft wants to increase its yearly revenue, they shouldn’t do it on our backs by introducing dirty services. We refuse to continue to pay additional fees, especially monthly fees. Online PC Gaming was always free and it should remain free.

*Available Only in 26 Countries? What?!?*
Officially, there are 196 countries on planet earth. But according to Microsoft’s Games for Windows – Live service, there are only 26 countries. Even if we are agreed to be milked like cows, most of us are not even able or allowed to subscribe to the Live service. Yes, that’s true! The Live service is currently available only to 26 countries, putting most of the world population from 170 countries in the dark.

So basically, If your country doesn’t appear in the following list:

United States, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Singapore, Portugal, Norway, New Zealand, Netherlands, Mexico, Japan, Italy, Ireland, India, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Austria and Australia.

There will be no Games for Windows – Live online gaming for you!

If Microsoft’s Live service isn’t available internationally or at least to the leading 100 countries, then it should be pulled! The Live service is not widely available and it’s immature so why should we be forced to use it? Microsoft is discriminating against consumer’s rights by leaving these 170 countries in the dark. This is an outrageous disgrace!

*The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back*
In the last three years, the treatment consumers receive from publishers and developers has gone from bad to worse. For example, some companies have added in-game advertisements without lowering the game’s price tag! Why do we have to pay full price to see ads? 

Another example is abusive DRM. Many Companies are using anti-piracy protections such as SecuROM, Safe Disk and many more. Sadly, around to 99% of times, these protections are totally useless against pirates, and they get around them easily. All this anti-piracy software is doing is abusing/harassing the legitimate customers by its instability, bugs, bogus licensing issues and many other issues. So in conclusion, pirates are playing games, while legitimate consumers have to take **** from some buggy DRM tools. If it isn’t enough, today’s games are buggier then ever due to corporate bureaucracy and stupid deadlines by publishers.

In addition, game developers/publishers are making nasty deals with hardware manufacturers to promote their products. So basically, the treatment consumers receive in these days is simply TERRIBLE, and yet they want us to pay additional fees for nothing? They should be paying us for ignoring our rights as consumers, and for making our systems unstable with their ineffective and buggy anti-piracy measures. They should be renaming their industry from gaming industry to farming industry, this is totally unacceptable.

*LAN Parties and Dedicated servers*
Due to the Live branding, many titles will not offer LAN support and dedicated servers. This may affect the professional gaming community, tournaments and general gaming at all. Microsoft thinks that Xbox is a PC, and they don’t respect the professional community. Not only these lack of features will cause a lot of problems, their Live service interface is bloated, poor and unprofessionaly coded. Microsoft’s Live service is simply immature and totally unfriendly to PC gamers. Don’t let them force us to use their immature service.

*Want to play games? Buy Windows Vista! *
If all these reasons above are still not convincing, Microsoft is using Games for Windows – Live service to promote Windows Vista. Some upcoming titles and even existing titles such as Halo 2 and Shadowrun require Windows Vista to run. The famous pirate group Razor1911 has proved that Microsoft is not speaking the truth, and these titles can technically run on Windows XP. The reason they don’t, is because Microsoft is using this approach to forcibly promote Windows Vista sales. If these titles can run on Windows XP smoothly, and don’t require DirectX10 - why are they forcing us to buy Windows Vista? Don’t let them milk us!

*So what can be done to stop this?*
Boycott Games for Windows – Live titles, developers and their publishers. Don’t let Microsoft and their partners milk us all. Spread the word! Tell your friends, post on forums and let everyone know about Microsoft’s plans. Hit them where it hurts! Punish them with your wallets. Fight for the future of online gaming and fight for all the gamers from the 170 countries that can’t use this service anyway. Show them that you’re unhappy about it on *our forum*, so we can confront publishers.  Don’t let Microsoft and their partners make fun of all of us.

*List of Games to Boycott*
• The Crossing
• Lost Planet: Colonies
• Crysis Warhead
•    Shadowrun
•    Halo 2
•    Viva Pi?ata
•    Gears of War
•    Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
•    Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
•    Universe at War: Earth Assault
•    The Club
•    Hour of Victory
•    Uno

Webmasters and Journalists, you can help as well by linking to this page, and telling your readers about it. Game Reviewers, punish these Live-supported titles in reviews, and don’t give them any score for multiplayer. We call upon all PC gaming sites to join the battle and help us. Help us to promote this campaign against them, so not only the rich can play games online. Don’t ignore this issue and cry later, join the battle now.

Source: *www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=boycott

This is evil subscription era, some gluttons are not satisfied even after swallowing consumers blood 
Take some measures, join the revolucion, or sit back with paying lofty subscription for accessing everything.

I wonder if people still blindly ignore such things  Ooh look its cool, its awesome but bloody sh!t is a backdoor to my data. Its a friggin RFID tag to locate me and bust me in case anybody wants to 

*Evil is evil ! There is no big evil and no small evil.
***i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj44/visio159/RFIDTag.jpg*​


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## warfreak (Jul 22, 2008)

I wholeheartedly support the boycott! 
I paid friggin 1700 bucks for Gears Of War and I haven't been able to play it online ever since I bought it because stupid GFW-Live simply refuses to log me in without the game being updated.When I tried to update it the game simply stops responding after some time.So I'm stuck with singleplayer. Here too I cannot save games unless I'm logged in.
Even Steam has some issues but atleast it has an offline mode where gamers who are only interested in singleplayer can atleast play.(Plus, playing online on steam is a huge bonus)

PAY 1500+ FOR ADVERTISED GAMES?!!! 
There are so many GL based Quake 3 clones out there. They are absolutely free and do not have advertisements(AFAIK).

Yeah the stupid copy protection techniques are a bane only to legitimate buyers. Pirates can easily come up with noCD patches which are sometimes better than the "Official" noCD backups which most of the time cause frequent crashes.


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## praka123 (Jul 23, 2008)

hmmm...


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## FilledVoid (Jul 23, 2008)

I have the Lost Planet one. It came with a 8600 GT I have on my system. I have yet to open the package .


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## amitava82 (Jul 23, 2008)

No one is stopping you from playing on LAN. after all it's also a multiplayer gaming. So, if you don't want to pay for subscription play on LAN. Running massive game server costs money and resources.


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## skippednote (Jul 23, 2008)

Good that i dont have broadband. But i fully suppourt ur boycott


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## warfreak (Jul 23, 2008)

Good News:- GFW-Live Gold is now free.

Source


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## Hitboxx (Jul 23, 2008)

amitava82 said:


> No one is stopping you from playing on LAN. after all it's also a multiplayer gaming. So, if you don't want to pay for subscription play on LAN. Running massive game server costs money and resources.


Oh yeah? Then how does other non-GFW Live servers run? Steam and GFW are the two evils that will kill free online gaming forever in the coming days!

I'm in complete support of the boycott!


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## MetalheadGautham (Jul 23, 2008)

Hell, I don't even HAVE an Xbox 360 (afraid of RRoD).
But I will boycott anyway


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## NucleusKore (Jul 23, 2008)

Boycott.. will never buy these


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## amitava82 (Jul 23, 2008)

Hitboxx said:


> Oh yeah? Then how does other non-GFW Live servers run? Steam and GFW are the two evils that will kill free online gaming forever in the coming days!


lol.. most of them are private servers or free. Go join them. Why are you expecting to join official servers for free? Tomorrow you will ask Warcraft or Everquest MMORPG for free.. And BTW, it's not Microsoft who started Subscription based gaming service and it's not something new. Where were you ppl all these days?


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## ThinkFree (Jul 23, 2008)

I am also supporting boycott.


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## dOm1naTOr (Jul 23, 2008)

amitava82 said:


> No one is stopping you from playing on LAN. after all it's also a multiplayer gaming. So, if you don't want to pay for subscription play on LAN. Running massive game server costs money and resources.



u cant play even MP over lan or save a game progress on GOW, unless u log in...that means one w/o an internet connection cannot even save the progress. Same is with UT3 in which first uve to mae an account[for free] and then only u can save the progress in campaign, but after that u can login offline too atleast for UT3.


But i dun MS will even know bout this boycotting [coz most of us are stlill not using a genuine copy of games]. Yeah, i have some original titles, but i got em after i finished em on 100 bucks discs, and i love the 100bucks one for the simplicity and ease of install. So this boycotte wont really affect MS at all, while the good poor developers willl be in doodo.


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## jal_desai (Jul 23, 2008)

i still prefer PC games... havent even seen a real XBOX or touched it.. but i m still in.

BOYCOTT GAMES FOR WINDOWS LIVE


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## amitava82 (Jul 23, 2008)

OK here is the news:


> Introducing Games for Windows – LIVE, the free gaming service built for Windows that makes great Windows games even better.  With Games for Windows – LIVE, you get an online identity – called a gamertag – and a friends list that works across multiple games, the XBOX 360, and even the Zune music service.  You can easily find and communicate with your friends online with text and voice chat.  Earn achievements and Gamerscore that lets you track and compare your accomplishments.
> 
> Play multiplayer games with your friends, or play against new opponents online using our exclusive TrueSkill™  matchmaking system – with other Windows® players or with or against XBOX 360 players (in supported games.)
> 
> All of this is possible today – and at no charge.


Ctrl+C

So, why not stop the FUD?


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## Faun (Jul 23, 2008)

amitava82 said:


> No one is stopping you from playing on LAN. after all it's also a multiplayer gaming. So, if you don't want to pay for subscription play on LAN. Running massive game server costs money and resources.


some game don't come with LAN play (unless you hack and that defeat the purpose of buying it legit), only ONLINE sh!t with subscripton.

I think people still show a frugal nature not a lavish one


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## anispace (Jul 23, 2008)

dOm1naTOr said:


> u cant play even MP over lan or save a game progress on GOW, unless u log in...that means one w/o an internet connection cannot even save the progress. Same is with UT3 in which first uve to mae an account[for free] and then only u can save the progress in campaign, but after that u can login offline too atleast for UT3.
> 
> 
> But i dun MS will even know bout this boycotting [coz most of us are stlill not using a genuine copy of games]. Yeah, i have some original titles, but i got em after i finished em on 100 bucks discs, and i love the 100bucks one for the simplicity and ease of install. So this boycotte wont really affect MS at all, while the good poor developers willl be in doodo.



what? U can play the game and save checkpoints without needing an Internet conn all the time. U can create an Offline account and play in SP. I havnt played it yet but my bro finished it.


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## warfreak (Jul 23, 2008)

With the 1.1 patch for UT3, you can save progress without even creating an account. Infact UT3 is one of the few games which comes with absolutely negligible protection. You don't even need the DVD to play the game. This being a game from the same Epic games who made GOW.

BTW no one noticed. I've posted that G4W-LIVE gold subscription is now free.
SOURCE


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## ctrl_alt_del (Jul 24, 2008)

@warfreak and Amitava: Heh Heh! I noticed that no one seems to take a note of the fact that GFW-LIVE is free now! All seem to jump on the bash-MS bandwagon without actually thinking about it. 

Plus, most of the games here on the forum are pirated copies anyway. Forget paying for LIVE, people don't even think they should pay for the games in the first place!!

Hypocrites.


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## lywyre (Jul 24, 2008)

This idea sucks. First I spend some money to buy a game title and then I have to spend more money to play it. I am boycotting it.


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## RCuber (Jul 24, 2008)

^^ dude.. its free now, read Post #15


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## ctrl_alt_del (Jul 24, 2008)

@lywyre: ROTFL! Thank you good sir....you just drove home my point!


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## FilledVoid (Jul 24, 2008)

> Tomorrow you will ask Warcraft or Everquest MMORPG for free.


You *Can* play for free if you have the game message me and no it doesn't involve anything Illegal I believe. 

I recall Lost Planet forums mentioning the ability to save progress offline in Single Player but I never tried. So I I understand this correctly. 

Oh by the way the Source has removed their post I believe and mention that its free also.


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## Faun (Jul 24, 2008)

tehehe on 22nd itself it went *FREE*

now thats good


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## gxsaurav (Jul 24, 2008)

some people will never stop FUDing about MS


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## Faun (Jul 24, 2008)

^^some will never shun the servitude :

We are consumers and not a perpetual chicanery


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## threeonethree (Jul 26, 2008)

i say boycott microsoft.

edit: oops .. just read its free. (puts bfg away)


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## hellgate (Jul 28, 2008)

i dont buy original games.so i aint gonna cry bout paying MS for Live.


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## ctrl_alt_del (Jul 28, 2008)

And it's because of people like you, more and more game companies are shying away from PC as the main platform.


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## hellgate (Jul 28, 2008)

^^^   why blame me when most r doing the same thing.


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## k6153r (Jul 28, 2008)

I've boycotted all games except from my favourite, RockStar. Everything they make is a masterpeice.


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## FilledVoid (Jul 29, 2008)

> ^^^ why blame me when most r doing the same thing.


I guess because when posting it on the the forum it gives you the look that you would download games even if they came at Rs 100. . Of course I'm not saying you would. But your post makes you sound that you would.  The logic is if everyone bought the games then Developers would  *supposedly* release games with much lower prices. Although I seriously don't see this happening.


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## hellgate (Jul 29, 2008)

even if every1 bot the games they wudnt bring down the prices of the games cuz they u think that even if they sell the games for 1k ppl r still buying them then why reduce the price?

FYI b4 coming to Delhi i used to surf thru MO and u cant xpect me download 4-8GB thru MO.had to buy them for 60 bucks per DVD.so if i get the original for 100 bucks i wud surely buy them.also i do hav some original games.


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