Games for windows live (linux)

[kiwi]

Didn't this get removed? Currently running Arch and it keeps kicking me off before starting:

• tried downgrading it but the performance is poor and won't run though steams GUI (has to run like an EXE)

tried just applying this command:

 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command% 

along with winetricks

 WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/12210/pfx" winecfg 

along with FusionFix.

The game can launch with a fresh install with the commands/mod above and R*'s launcher does work but it looks for saves for windows live, if I cancel it will boot me out if I can't find any it boots me out, damned if I do damned if I don't.

[kiwi]

Already deleted the root GTA IV dir, re-downloading.

[Yujah]

GFWL has nothing to do with it: upon not finding savegames for the current RGL-edition of the game (in Documents/Rockstar Games/GTA IV/Profile/<your-rgsc-id>) the RGL just offers to scan your disc for existing locally stored savegames from the old GFWL-edition of the game, as used to be stored somewhere under your user's AppData:

Your Social Club profile has no save date on disk for Grand Theft Auto IV. Would you like to scan your computer for existing save data from Games for Windows - LIVE?

Whether you allow said scan or not, in your Proton case certainly it won't find any, and it upon doing such simply goes on to start the game -- which for you seemingly fails but not then due to any of the foregoing.

GTA4 is not a Steam Play supported title; you've had to enable "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" in Settings -> Compatibility. For any such title you are on your own; for most such titles you may expect badness; for specifically GTA4 you can expect things and most specifically the RGL to be not broken as an exception.

That said, I just tried GTA IV on current Steam Play on an Ubuntu 22.04 base and for me it currently starts (although it's unplayably choppy). I.e., dunno what would be your current issue on Arch and your hardware, but it's in any case not to do with that GFWL savegame stuff.

[kiwi]

Turns out you were right, it's just a windows game; got it to work with a virtualized windows machine under KVM so that's a win for me. Gonna downgrade this later.

[Yujah]

Unless one's hobby is "Gaming on Linux" rather than "Gaming" (or "Linux") I'd say that's an eminently sensible solution -- and even if simply having a secondary system with Windows for the purpose could be still eminentlier...

Careful that also a downgraded version of GTA4 is going to have issues with FPS over 30; over 60 most importantly. For the current "The Complete Edition" the advise is installing FusionFix, but if you downgrade you're going to have to take care of things yourself.

For an incomplete list of issues see https://github.com/GTAmodding/GTAIV-Issues-List/issues/112. All are as applicable to a downgraded GFWL-edition as to the current RGL-edition (and to the Xbox One, Series, PS4, PS5, ...)

[kiwi]

Yeah everything works fine with just FusionFix on a VM, have a few stutters here and there but I'm on a mech hard drive so that's probably a bottleneck or could be the VM; nothing too terrible though. No errors with GFWL anymore.