PC gamers, does this bother you?

If you’ve visited a few gaming forums lately, you might see players sounding off over THQ’s Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, a new fantasy strategy epic for the PC. What’s the issue?

If you've visited a few gaming forums lately, you might see players sounding off over THQ's Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II, a new fantasy strategy epic for the PC. What’s the issue?

It's not the game-play found in this Canadian-made title that's the problem — in fact, Relic Studios’ new game has garnered an impressive score of 85.40%, averaged out from 31 publications listed at GameRankings.com — but the mandatory Windows Live ID registration is irking some players.

You see, Dawn of War II requires players to sign up for a Games for Windows – LIVE profile (Windows Live ID) if they don't have one already — even to play an offline, single-player game. If you don't sign up, you can't play the game.

We thought we'd go to the source to find out why this is required.

THQ's reply was as follows:

Yes, it is mandatory to create an offline profile to play single player campaign. But, this is done entirely the in-game through the GFWL [Games for Windows Live] guide, meaning it doesn’t need an Internet connection and doesn’t require any registration, password, email, etc. The reason for this is primarily the Achievement system [earned during game-play] as the Games for Windows – LIVE Achievements system is tied into LIVE enabled profiles and are bound to player's gamertags. Users that do not create LIVE enable profiles are missing out on some really cool features of the platform. Past games that utilized GFWL did not do this, and many gamers would go hours before realizing they had to start all over to begin earning achievements.

Michael Wolf, the Games For Windows Live senior marketing manager at Microsoft, confirmed this decision was due, in part, for Achievements, but also notes signing in to a profile makes it easier to download and import additional campaigns should THQ make "DLC" (downloadable content) available in the future. "In past PC games, when a Windows Live profile wasn't required, there were some issues with downloadable content because it wasn't associated with a gamertag" says Wolf. "We want to prevent that from happening again, so the best solution was to require you to log into a profile or create one if you don't have one already."

Wolf says the experience is similar to an Xbox 360 title that requires the gamer to choose a profile before playing a single-player game, but concedes it's a relatively new procedure for computer gamers.
"Microsoft didn't tell Relic [the game developer] or THQ they have to do this" adds Wold. "It wasn't a mandate from us, but we did recommend it to avoid future issues."

As to what Microsoft does with this customer list, Wolf says Microsoft has strict privacy guidelines in place and if a player elects not to receive communication from business partners, they won't, nor will the company disclose user information to third parties without explicit approval.

What do you think about this?

Filed Under: Games