The cold dead hand of Games for Windows Live has pulled 5 Capcom games into the abyss for 600 days and counting
Games for Windows Live—Microsoft's ill-fated PC equivalent to Xbox Live's service—stopped receiving updates way back in 2014. Many games pulled out the discontinued service splinter early, while others dragged their feet. Seven years later came the kicker: in 2020 several of Capcom's games were made unavailable on Steam, thanks to the scraps of Games for Windows Live code which were actively breaking them.
The games impacted by this—as highlighted by user DedSec_Pearce on the PC Gaming subreddit—are Lost Planet 2, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Colonies Edition, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Street Fighter 4 (though you can purchase the Ultra edition, which still works fine), and Street Fighter X Tekken. If you find their Steam pages, you'll see the following message:
«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.»
The only issue is it's been 600 days since that message went up. That's stretching the definition of 'temporarily' very thin, especially when some of these games still remain broken, as user Powler mentions in a Steam review of Street Fighter X Tekken:
«Special thanks to Games for Windows Live (GFWL) and Capcom's lack of concern, I cannot in good faith recommend purchasing this port. The GFWL service no longer exists so you'll start up the game and see the DRM overlay go into a signing in loop,» they wrote in 2020. It seems that there was even a window where you could even buy the game in its busted state back then: «This is
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