GFWL client, can't retrieve purchase history

You know Mister Maka, customer service 101 is not staying completely silent for 2 weeks at a time, right? Even if all you're doing is popping on briefly to say, "we're trying to track this down, please bear with us," that's better than just not saying anything.

It's pretty clear that this is a somewhat widespread problem. There's 4 people with it in this thread (and 81 upvotes), and I've seen several more similar threads on other forums like Steam and IGN with dozens of unique posters. Maybe it isn't universal,
but it isn't a one-off problem, either. I know bugs like that can be really tricky to resolve, so I get that you can't just wave a wand and make it all better - but still, letting us know we're not being ignored is still a good idea.

 

I don't think it's a bug. I bet they figured they could silently kill off the GFWL download servers and no one would notice. Many of us have a lot of $ sunk into that platform, so denying us access to our purchases is crazy.

 

I doubt it, honestly. They would be in a position to know better than anyone how many people still play games that require those servers. If the numbers were really low enough that they felt they could anger us without much cost, they'd announce the fact
they were doing so and weather whatever minor outcry occurred - most gamers wouldn't care much because they aren't still playing those old games anyway, and the few of us that do would just have to get over it. Doing it on the sly gains them nothing - if
they did do that, and it became obvious (as it would, if this problem WERE universal), they'd get into much more trouble in the gaming press when that happened, because then a whole bunch of people would get upset on principle for the shady move of doing it
without saying anything.

No, this is a software error of some sort, and they haven't been able to (or haven't bothered to) fix it yet. I know next to nothing about how Microsoft has things set up, but it wouldn't surprise me if this was the result of a hardware migration. Maybe
the numbers of us playing these old games is now low enough that it doesn't make sense to maintain dedicated servers for unpatched GFWL titles, so they've set up virtual ones on the XBox One hardware. Something didn't go perfectly in the migration (as is
almost always the case), and now there's this back end error causing some percentage of legitimate users from being able to properly connect to them. Tracking down a bug like this is actually really hard, and they're probably not putting a super-high priority
on it - I suspect the number of people actively affected by it is only in the hundreds or thousands, and the bulk of their customer base for gaming is in the tens of millions. They've probably only got 1 or 2 engineers even trying to isolate the problem,
if that, and even customer service folks like Mister Maka here probably have higher priority issues to address because they affect more people.

 

Hey everyone!

Thanks a ton for your patience on this. We've reached out to the appropriate team in regards to this issue and we'll be taking a look deeper into it. When we have more information, we'll be sure to reach back out and update you. Thanks a ton for your patience
with this!

 

Hey again everyone!

I wanted to drop in to see if you're still experiencing issues. We were able to successfully access purchase history after testing it recently. Keep us in the loop

 

Seems to be working now!

Thanks for the quick turn around! Last time it took about 6 months to fix.

 

Thank you! Mine is working just fine now! Time to get gaming! Thank you so much for getting this resolved.

 

So...I seem to be halfway there. The paid DLCs (this is Fable 3 we're talking about, by the way) do indeed work now where they wouldn't before - though I had to download them again through the GFWLM client, rather than their getting recognized from the
Steam install. Once I had done so, though, they seem to be working properly now. Additionally, getting those installed seems to have done...something...to the free DLCs, as the in-game shop now displays them correctly (they have the proper 3D images, rather
than generic icons). But I still cannot actually use any of them - when I try to download any of them, I still get an error saying "Can't retrieve information from Live. Please try again later. Error code 80153003" The error code varies, but the rest of
the text is always the same. I've read elsewhere that the in-game store doesn't work properly anymore since it was never coded to point to the right server after GFWL shut down, but I cannot see any of the free DLCs in my available downloads in the GFWLM
client, either, just the paid ones that have their own product keys (which I entered on XBox.com while trying to get them working earlier). Presumably those free DLCs are tied to the product key for the main game, but when I try to enter that into either
the client or the website, it is not accepted as valid - probably because I already used it to activate them game when I first installed it.

So, how do I get these other DLCs (the Highlander outfits and tattoos, the extra dye colors, the Yule outfit, a couple weapons, a set of hairdos, another dog breed potion, and the 5-star dog potion) working?

 

As a follow-up, it seems at least some of the free DLCs are kind of working? The pair of weapons (a hammer and a rifle) showed up as gifts once I unlocked the ability to carry weapons in the story - but they still appear in the store. And the Yule hat
showed up at random as well - I didn't get it as a gift, it was just in my wardrobe - but the rest of the outfit is still not available. But that's it so far. None of the clothes (the Highlander outfits and the rest of the Yule suit), hairs, or tattoos unlocked
when I reached the first chance to buy new cosmetic items in the story, and the dyes didn't unlock when I unlocked those in-game, either. Same for the red setter dog breed potion - I got the ones that were paid DLC, but that free one has still not appeared.

 

Nothing downloads through steam except for the main game. Steam is really confusing for some alt-client games. It will say the DLC is 'installed' (checked) in steam, but all it really is is a key for GFWL. It actually doesn't matter from the steam end whether
or not these DLC are 'installed'. You have to redeem the keys steam gives you back on GFWL (today: xbox store or win8/10 app, redeeming keys in GFWL does not work last I checked).

You are seeing this DLC in game (although not available) because some of the free DLC files are actually downloaded with the paid DLC downloads. Lots of things are downloaded with traitor's keep IIRC, but only unlocked when you 'download' them for real from
GFWL.

Also download in game through the dashboard does not work, everything must be downloaded through the GFWL client outside of the game first. Then it will be available once you reach certain points in the game.

To add further frustration, if you plan to play this online (The servers were amazingly still up last I checked, although no one is ever playing) both players must have the EXACT SAME DLC installed. You will get an error about not having identical DLC if not,
and it will not let you co-op. Since traitor's keep gives achievements, I just kept only this one installed for playing online (although I could never find anyone to play with).

 

Yes, I figured this out, albeit the hard way.

At least for some things. That seems to be what happened with those 2 weapons, and the Yule hat. But the Highlander outfits and tattoos haven't shown up, and neither have the dyes or dog potions. I suppose it's possible these don't unlock when they did
in the 360 version of the game, but I remember pretty clearly being able to wear the highlander gear as soon as the wardrobe was unlocked in the Sanctuary. I've now gotten both the Dwellers and Brightwall loyal, though, and am about to head to Bowerstone
to meet the Resistance, and all those things are still locked for me. The free DLC weapons unlocked as soon as I was able to equip them.

I'll keep this in mind in case I decide to bother trying to do co-op, but I wasn't really planning on it. If I did, I'd likely be enlisting my brother, who should have the same version of the game. I'm not really that interested in multiplayer as a rule,
though.

 

So is there a method to getting those other DLCs? Maybe someone at Microsoft could add them to my gamertag, since they're free and supposed to be bundled with the base game anyway?

 

Any chance of getting this sorted out at all? At this rate I'll finish the game again before I ever get these working.

 

Still waiting for some kind of response here.

 

So, in the vain hope that starting a fresh game after the server problem was already resolved might address this, I did just that today, but, for the most part, no dice. I DID see several gifts supposedly appear right after leaving Sabine's enclave of the
Dweller camp on my first visit there, which I'm guessing was meant to be the missing clothes and tattoos, but when I went to the Sanctuary there was nothing at the gift table, and it otherwise played out exactly as it did before - upon escaping the castle
I got the dog appearance potions, after arriving in Mistpeak, I got the Soldier outfit and the Yule hat, then the hammer and rifle arrived once melee and ranged weapon types unlocked while under the Academy getting the music box. I quit after returning to
Brightwall, but I have no reason to believe it will change if I keep going.