@ddoggbritt16 Republic Commando! That's an AWESOME game! If there is one pure squad-based FPS Star Wars game that should ever get a remake/sequel, it's this one, outstanding stuff! I wasn't too hot on the idea of an Imperial Commando sequel idea they had in the works at some point, maybe the SPOILER "lost" red guy could work for the rebel alliance and hunt down the other guys with his own squad, would be awesome.

There's a new countdown on the Steam site with what looks like a Steambox announcement: Also, the purple sphere now looks like an embryo with something forming in the middle, probably a new Steam logo, Half-Life 3 (haha) or Gabe Newell, Linus Torvalds, Nvidia and a penguin all dancing the kumbaya. Link: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

Escape from Butcher Bay is an excellent game and having those people finally make a proper sequel is awesome news. Didn't play Dark Athena and didn't hear good things about it but hey, I personally think the original game is the best part of the Riddick universe, more can only be a good thing!

For a minute there, I though the guy in the screenshot was Garrus.

This game is awesome, seriously awesome. It's surprising how good writing, visual design and voice acting can combine with gameplay to be so emotionally engaging. And all with a bunch of square polygons as protagonists!

@edinko @chronocommander Smart people also know that this is a clear violation of the EULA and you loose achievements (yes, they're a part of the game experience for quite a lot of people). Besides, why risk a ban if you accidentally sign in to your online account instead of an offline account (the only ones that could work with a crack anyway) for a product you paid for? This still does not solve the encrypted save issue either, only enables modding in some cases and replaces one bunch of headaches with another (which reinforces GFWL's serious flaws as a platform either way).

@Cloud_imperium @chronocommander That method would definitely work if the game is started without GFWL. If (like me) you have an existing save in an online account with achievements, the save is essentially locked to the account and the ability to authenticate into it as the save can't even be copied to another account. Backing them up involves not only keeping a copy of the save files but also the XLive files of the client. Haven't found a save extractor tool either. Also, some of these games feature better deals off Steam, Batman for example got more heavily discounted earlier at GetGames with a GFWL key activation that does not work on Steam.

@Dav_id83 @chronocommander I don't like the client either, about the only advantage it has over the competition is that it loads during game launch, so by the time you're at the start screen you're logged in and ready to go instead of waiting for a heavy client to start up first (Steam does that when launched on demand). Overall though, if it could be safely removed without compromising saves that would be the best.

Valve has its resources primarily focused on Steam and a small stable of popular titles with highly active multiplayer and modding scenes, all of which also double up as promotional venues for Steam. As discussed by the person who sold Origin to EA a few years back, running a successful digital store and development outfit on a relatively small team is very hard with your best coders et al being dedicated to your growing business. Now, Steam is great and Valve does make great games, but insanely long dev times rarely work out in favour of any game (StarCraft 2 being an exception) or story-focused franchise like HL so if they're ever going to get this out of the door, they'd better really concentrate on it and do it while people still care (and quite frankly, I think many have stopped).

If GFWL itself shuts down in the next few years and we lose saves because of the ridiculous encryption on all user game files just because logins won't work anymore, there will be some serious rage. I just hope they release a tool to extract saves in such cases. Batman and Bioshock are some examples of great (and in some cases very long) games shackled to GFWL, can get quite irritating.