Well, damn.

At first I thought this to be a terrible joke considering the date, but nope; today Codemasters announced and released DiRT 3: Complete Edition on Steam, and it is completely free of Games for Windows Live.

For those that don’t know DiRT 3 has been almost entirely unplayable for a long time now on Steam because the game required Games for Windows Live to operation, a system which no longer exists. Fans have been clamoring for Codemasters to release a version of the game free of Microsoft’s now dead system. Even to this day forum threats, Tweets and more would be sent Codemasters way, asking for them to bring DiRT 3 back, but it seemed like it would never happen.

“First up I want to say sorry for just how long it has taken to move DiRT 3 to Steamworks and I would also like to thank you all for keeping up the pressure on us to move it over. Every day I have over a hundred notifications on my Steam account, there are threads thousands of comments deep about it and countless Tweets and Facebook messages – while you’d think it would be the kind of thing that would bug the hell out of me, you’d be wrong.” a statement read on the official Steam page

That wasn’t all, though, as the statement also revealed that current owners of DiRT 3 would get this new edition, which includes every piece of DiRT 3 DLC ever released, for free:

“As a thank you for your patience over this last year we’ll be upgrading everybody who owns DiRT 3 to the DiRT 3 Complete Edition, which will include all of our DLC for no extra cost.”

if you already own the Steam version of the game the Complete Edition will appear in your library for download. Those who own the game on disc can follow the instructions on the page to redeem the game’s code.

Personally I really enjoyed DiRT 3, so this is great, and entirely unexpected, news. I may just have to see about picking it up again. What about a review, just to commemorate the release?