Playfab password isn't saved when opening PA anymore

Every time I open the latest, updated PA Steam edition on Windows 8.1 (also fully updated), I have to enter my Playfab password.

It remembers my username, but not my password. It used to just work.

I've confirmed that it doesn't work even when all mods are disabled with PAMM.

Any idea as to why this is happening?

It never ever remembered my password...

It never remembered the password, but if you start it through steam it should login by itself with an authentication mechanism provided by steam.

There is a mod for that. It warns you it saves it clear as day in a text file though, so it is a security issue if you use it.

What's the mod called? I can't find it in PAMM.

it's not on pamm.

As far as I know I was it's last maintainer (but maybe I know wrong)

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-steal-my-password.60630/

It was never pushed out to PAMM because of the very reasonable security concerns.

In any case, Steam should do all that for you. And does for other people as far as I can tell.

Does Steam itself auto-login for you and it's just PA that won't?

Ah ha! On my Mac is does and always has logged in to PlayFab automatically when I launch the Steam edition of the game. I just built a new rig with Windows 8.1 and it has never automatically logged in to PlayFab with the Steam edition of the game. So nothing changed, I just realized I had two different experiences on two different computers and operating systems.

Any idea why it would fail?

So when you start Steam on your Windows computer Steam automatically logs in, right? And then when you start PA from Steam, it doesn't automatically log into PlayFab?

I figured it out.

In Windows 8.1, the application bar at the bottom of the screen that shows what non-background applications are currently running has been changed to behave more like Apple's combined application-running and application-shortcut bar. So in Windows 8.1, you can right-click on the running application's icon in the bar, and click "pin" to make the icon stay there even when the application is closed, which serves as a shortcut to run the application again. This way you get spatial consistency with your application bar. You always see the same icons, just some are highlighted as "currently running". This is basically a straight copy from Mac OS.

But of course, because Microsoft is doing it, they completely fucked it up, as expected. When you pin any Steam game's icon to the application bar, it's not run in the same way it initially was, and therefore Planetary Annihilation doesn't login to PlayFab. There may be more details to this problem, but I don't care to find out.

As an aside, Windows 8.1 interface is the most confused, ridiculous compromise between a bunch of headless snakes that I've ever seen. In about 20 years they really haven't taken a step forward when it comes to usability, with Apple running circles around them since OS X. But hey, at least I can alt+tab out of games without the computer locking up these days.

that feature exists in Windows 7 as well.
I like it. Never used it for steam applications though. Those I start form within steam.

If you pin planetary annihilation, you are pinning the pa.exe, which doesn't save playfab login info. You would want to pin steam's shortcut

I had guessed that was the case. However, you can only pin applications, not shortcuts with any parameters. The pinning in Mac OS works fine with Planetary Annihilation and PlayFab, so it must have a slightly different implementation.

Even for a longer period of time? Steam basically starts PA with a parameter like this:
pa.exe --ticket 1233456
the login ticket doesn't last forever, but it can last a while, so a quick test that includes the parameter in the pinned item would work, but after a while it would fail.
It needs to start steam, have steam login and then have steam start PA with a fresh login ticket.

It's been working for at least a month on Mac OS. I'll reply here if it ever stops working.

Does it start steam at least in the background when you click it?
If not what is the command line command it executes? (If there is something that looks like a secret key don't post it completely)

The pinned thing in Mac OS is just a link to the executable Mac package, which has a binary inside it that has lots of references to Steam. So when I run it, it loads Steam and then probably runs PA with the correct parameters.

In Windows, the shortcut is: steam://rungameid/<game_id>

I'm sure the pinned thing in Windows is just PA.exe which doesn't actually run the application in Steam context.

Yep I just tested that and Windows indeed only links the application's executable, removing any parameter it might have been started with. Though even if it were to capture them it would not be enough for the steam setup. It needs to detect that steam has started it and then go and link steam with its custom protocol.
I wonder how mac handles detecting that. I mean steam just does what it wants basically and doesn't follow any standards I can think of. Handling any possible setup is virtually impossible.
I guess for Windows you'll need to make a shortcut yourself and add that.
I have 6 shortcuts to PA with different arguments or in different versions in my start menu, though I login by hand. Its still easier than having to start steam or the launcher.

Here's the fix for Windows 7 and 8:
http://forums.steampowered.com/foru...a6c5b6d427464e14e12e24&p=22324674&postcount=2