Why Relic dropped Games for Windows Live in Dawn of War 2: Retribution

Dawn of War 2 Retribution guards eaten thumb

Dawn of War Retribution is almost here. It won't be using Games for Windows Live. We've been talking to Relic about their decision to drop the service and go with Steamworks alone for Dawn of War 2: Retribution.

Producer Jeff Lydell explains why Relic dumped Games for Windows Live. "The biggest reason was making people log in to two different services to play the game was never something we were happy with, but that started with Live. At the time when we were making the decision of which online service to use Steamworks wasn't announced, and then when they did announce, they didn't include the type of network components that we needed, and we would have had to build a whole lot more, whereas Live had that out of the box."

"Then as we got closer to ship it came down from on high that we needed some sort of anti-piracy connection, and out of all the anti-piracy solutions that were out there, the only one that we were satisfied with from a user perspective was Steam because it's the only one that actually gives you the benefit of being able to pull your game down anywhere, install it and not have to rely on the disc, so that marriage was a thing of convenience, then we went through two products. We weren't happy with that split, that you had to register twice, and this time around we were able to take a look at the numbers, and what it would cost for us to do that and it just made sense."

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.