Microsoft's ill-fated PC equivalent of the Xbox Live service, Games for Windows Live, stopped delivering updates in 2014. While many games quickly withdrew from the service, others dragged their feet; seven years later, in 2020, several Capcom games were no longer available on Steam, thanks to a scrap of Games for Windows Live code that was actively breaking them.

As PC Gaming subreddit user DedSec_Pearce highlighted, the affected games were "Lost Planet 2," "Lost Planet," "Extreme Condition Colonies Edition," "Lost Planet 2", "Lost Planet 2", "Lost Planet 2: Extreme Condition Colonies Edition", "Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City", "Street Fighter 4" (but if you buy the Ultra version, it Street Fighter 4 (but it works fine if you buy the Ultra version), and Street Fighter X Tekken. Upon finding the respective Steam page, the following message appears:

"We are aware that some customers may be experiencing issues related to Games for Windows LIVE while installing the game. We are temporarily disabling the purchase option on Steam while we investigate this issue further. We will keep you updated on the progress of our investigation. We ask for your patience."

The only problem is that it has been 600 days since this message appeared. This stretches the definition of "temporary" very thin. In particular, as user Powler notes in his Steam review of Street Fighter X Tekken, some of these games are still broken; the GFWL service no longer exists, so when you launch the game, you get a DRM overlay and a sign-in loop," it says in 2020. At the time, there was even a window to purchase games in broken state: "This is completely unacceptable and it is unbelievable that this product is still being sold in its current state."

It may be understandable that these particular titles are not high on Capcom's priority list -- "reviving the servers for these games that a handful of people play" would not sell at any meeting. However, one has to sympathize with those who are deeply invested in these games. Earlier this year, PC Gamer contributor Kerry Brunskill wrote a love letter to "Lost Planet 2," which he has vague memories of playing on Xbox 360.

PC gamers who were fans of these titles will have to resort to fan patches or piracy unless Capcom breaks its long silence. The fact that the defunct Steam page looks like an obituary is a sad reminder of how fleeting gaming can be; Steam may seem permanent at this point, but what about 20 or 30 years from now?

Moreover, even well-intentioned acts of preservation can leave players in the lurch for loving a dead game too much, as Atlus did last year when it sued two fans who managed the servers for "Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online." While I don't expect Capcom to hire lawyers to defend "Lost Planet 2," the lingering threat would certainly encourage preservationists to keep things secret.