I give up

[niaboc]

I downloaded the 4gig of game because age of empires was fun back in the day. Once it finished downloading i realised it was Games for Windows Live.

I've had some experiences with this program before and honestly, If you paid a team to write a worse, more confusing, time wasting and frustrating program, they could not do it...

After trying for 45 minutes just to launch the game I give up. I've lost count of the different error's I've run into, and overcome, just to find more errors.

The client demands a key that doesn't come with the game, complains your account is 'offline only' without explaining how to fix, the client says 'error connecting to the service', giving a retry or troubleshooting option (bonus fun, clicking troubleshoot has windows7 say it doesnt know why games for WINDOWS is complaining). The support section of their website had none of the information i needed (had to check steam forums for users ideas), and the 24/7 live help service on their site just made me wait for 10 minutes before telling me noone was there to answer my questions.

I have no idea why valve is associating with games for windows live, but this has been the most frustrating experience in my gaming life this year. Off to uninstall ...

[xguild]

Its unfortunate that this was even nescessary, I mean to me a steam game should be a steam game. If you want to connect us to some other network do it automaticaly with our Steam Account. Microsoft Live is a mess, which is exactly why this game was DEAD before it even started and a weekend after it hit Steam its one of the top sellers on steam. These developers and companies have to realize that the battle for gaming social networks is over, steam won. Make peace with it people!.

Just some advice on your technical problem. Go to the Microsoft Live website, buy the free game (age of Empires Online). This will give you the CD key. Than enter in the CD key when you launch it from Steam. This worked for me and solved the various errors and connection problems I had.

[Catalept]

When I try to sign in to Marketplace (because hey, doing that before launching the game is one of the numerous magical incantations that may or may not get GFWL to actually work), I get this:

"It appears you've found a glitch in the system".

Oh. Yay.

I feel sorry for GPG. They've been scammed :(

[MS Ryz0n]

When I try to sign in to Marketplace (because hey, doing that before launching the game is one of the numerous magical incantations that may or may not get GFWL to actually work), I get this:

"It appears you've found a glitch in the system".

Oh. Yay.

I feel sorry for GPG. They've been scammed :(

If you're getting that in the center of the GFWL marketplace client it just means its not loading the marketplace (aka xbox.com) page properly. You should still be able to go to your downloads tab.
The GFWL client used to have a separate marketplace of its own, and when it was merged with the xbox marketplace (i.e. xbox.com) it can have some issues displaying properly depending on regions.