Hooray.
It looks like Dark Souls may finally be decoupled from Games for Windows Live, as the FromSoft title now has a set of Steamworks achievements. There’s a NeoGaf thread on the subject over here, and you can have a look for yourselves if you have a copy of Dark Souls installed on Steam.
You’ll see a shiny new set of locked achievements like the image above.
While Games for Windows Live hasn’t yet been removed from the game, this step would suggest that FromSoftware intends to move the game to Steamworks. Publishers Bandai Namco have previously indicated that they were looking at alternatives to GfWL.
That would be great news for the game, whose multiplayer aspects on PC have long been hampered by the overall rubbishness of the Games for Windows Live system. Dark Souls 2 doesn’t have flawless multiplayer connections by any means, but the switch to Steamworks for the sequel certainly seemed to help matters (along with, you’d imagine, updated net code.)
One thing to be aware of with this apparent upcoming change is that it may have the unwanted side-effect of corrupting saves. That happened when the Batman Arkham games converted from GfWL to Steamworks, much to the annoyance of many. If you can, take some back-up saves with DSFix and hope they’re either not affected or can be converted to work.
Update: This is definitely happening. The latest history for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die on SteamDB lists a new build titled “NOG4WL.” It’s not live at the time of writing, but removal of Games for Windows Live is clearly under way.
