[Wine] Re: Game for Windows Live and Wine

[Bob Wya]

s3a wrote:
> You make a good point Bob, I didn't know that. So, then I suppose an alternative avenue should be explored such as making a generic GFWL like the generic Internet Explorer and Wordpad already in Wine. I don't know the details well so I could be saying stupidities but the point is, there is probably more than one way to get those games to work and we should look into it. Also, if Wine perfectly implemented the Windows API, wouldn't this constant updating of GFWL be irrelevant?


The only work around is "hacks" that mimick GFWL so the phone back to MS doesn't happen. I refer you to GTA IV on AppDB, etc. for details of this. Probably the best direction to go - as GFWL is seriously the spawn of Satan himself  8) 

As an example some games, such as STALKER: SOC, work reasonably well in Wine **today**. The Steam version works fully without any cracks, etc. It is in Valve's interest to keep the Steam client working with Wine (so Steam client updates are not "designed" to break compatibility with *nix/Wine). This  buys the company "free market share" without Valve development costs.

But targets like IE6,7,8, although tightly with MS Windows might work **eventually**. These are "static targets" as updates are not forced (but desireable for security reasons obviously!!) However it is not in Microsofts interest to maintain Wine compatibility for GFWL - in fact quite the reverse (to retain their stranglehold on the PC games market w/ DirectX). Wine could fully implement the Windows API - but how it return the same hashs, etc. for operating system files?? So it will **never** fully support such products as GFWL, Punkbuster, etc. (that can use low-level access to files to verify that the OS is "genuine").

Just my personal thoughts - but probably true!

Bob