Okay, I fucked up. I created a local profile in order to play Dark Souls, but partway through I panicked since it looked like a proper online profile was being made instead (stupid interface) and somehow while I was going back and forth between information screens, the option to associate an email and password with the profile disappeared.

What the heck happened? And how do I fix it?

Yes it's pain in the ass to operate that pos...

The way i always got around anything related with gflw is to download a game called tinker (free game from the client) after i installed the stupid client. For some stupid reason it downloads the client updates and account info with the game you downloaded not on fresh client install.

In your case delete gfwl and install it again if it gives you too much trouble, focus on creating account. If it still gives you pain try the tinker trick. I kinda forgot how local profiles worked either...

I gave up on GFWL.

I have a retail copy of Fallout 3 and I owned all the DLC on GFW. after 30 minutes pissing around with it I bought the GOTY on steam, problem solved.

Re: topic at hand, I have nothing to add that relates.

I'm essentially the same. GFWL does weird stuff. It often wants itself to be updated to update itself, or it will shut itself down while trying to update itself.

I remember Batman AA took over an hour to get GFWL working right. Another game -- maybe bulletstorm? -- took just about the same amount of time. I remember Bulletstorm (if that was the game) being especially hard because you had to press a key in the game to get GFWL to get to the screen that it needed to get to, but the GFWL update window prevented any activity from happening in the game. The whole thing was infuriating.

I no longer use any GFWL games at all. It's just too difficult.

AFAIK, GFWL has been discontinued, so you should have different problems with MS' replacement. I got pissed off by the fact that MS would insist on using DRM even when the content wasn't DRM protected. Meant like a week wait for one of the FO3 DLC.

I'm not sure if there were patches to remove the DRM or how that was handled, I think I only had like one or two games, both of which were subsequently replaced by other versions.