Games for Windows LIVE will not be closing July 1 2014

There have been a number of rumors going around regarding Games for Windows LIVE since a statement (shown below) was found on Xbox.com, in August 2013, stating that Age of Empires Online would be closing on July 1, 2014 due to the closure of GFWL. This caused a lot of panic in the achievement community because the closure of GFWl would result in every achievement on the platform to become discontinued. This statement was pulled shortly after it was discovered, if I remember correctly only a few hours, and nothing much had been heard since.

In the months after the statement, a number of publishers patched their games to use Steamworks and remove GFWL completely from them. This combined with no official statement from Microsoft lead most to believe that there was a good chance that GFWL would be closing in July. As time passed and July 1 grew nearer and nearer it seemed more and more suspicious that there had been no official statement about the future of the service. That statement, however, surfaced today.

According to an article on gameinformer.com that can be viewed here, Microsoft released a statement (quoted below) stating that GFWL will not be shut down on July 1 2014.

"We are continuing to support the Games for Windows Live service. As previously announced, as part of the retirement of Microsoft Points the Xbox.com PC marketplace was closed. Although customers are unable to purchase new games from the marketplace or receive title updates, they can continue to enjoy previously purchased content by downloading them through the Games for Windows Live client as usual. We remain committed to investing in PC gaming in the years ahead, and look forward to sharing more in the future."

In addition to this statement from Microsoft Namco Bandi and 343 Industries also released statements about their games that use the service. A 343 team member posted a statement, that can be viewed here, on the Halo forums stating they will continue to support the GFWL service. Namco Bandai released a statement on their Tumblr page, that can be viewed here, stating that Dark Souls will continue to be supported with GFWL for the foreseeable future. These statements along with the above statement from Microsoft make the future of GFWL look pretty good.

Just a reminder to achievement hunters. Although GFWL will not be closing on July 1, Age of Empires Online will be closing its servers. Make sure you finish up everything you want to do before then, because when the server close the game will no longer be playable.

Other Blog News
I have not forgotten about all the other stuff I have been talking about, I have been dealing with school my extremely incompetent school administration, travelling, and scrambling to finish some of my GFWL games. I will be back home next week and I am going to try and get everything done then and update the site with some new stuff to make things more easy and more tidy. I also plan on posting about all future server closures, rumored or confirmed, in all games with LIVE achievements.