Squeaky Clean: Dirt 3 Rinses GFWL Out, Gives Free DLC

Codemasters have taken Dirt 3 [official site] to the valet service, clearing out almost four years of crisp packets, newspapers, melted ice lolly goop, dried mud, travel sweet tins, and Games for Windows - Live guff. In what turned out not be a hilarious April Fool's prank, yesterday they released a version of their racing game with GFWL cut out and Steamworks boshed in.

Folks should be able to add GFWL copies to their Steam library, and as a nice bonus everyone who owned it will receive the Complete Edition that includes seven DLC packs.

Folks who already had Dirt 3 on Steam should now find both a new DiRT 3 Complete Edition and ye olde GFWL version sitting in their Steam library, Codies community manager Lee Williams explained in a blog post. Why would you ever want that GFWL version? Well, Williams says, "Due to the differences with the two versions unfortunately your save files will not be compatible with each other. We know it sucks and we are sorry but it was unavoidable."

If you got Dirt 3 as a boxed copy or other GFWL key, you should be able to drop that key into Steam to add it to your library and get the Complete Edition. It seems a few folks are having trouble with that right now, but Codies are trying to track the problem down.

Giving everyone all that DLC (a load of cars and tracks) is a nice move. There's no easy way to transfer DLC from GFWL to Steamworks versions, so publishers need to decide how they'll handle that. Only a fortnight ago, Capcom did it the wrong way, telling folks they'd need to rebuy on Steam any DLC they might have owned. Booo.