When Microsoft announced Live Everywhere at last year’s E3, it seemed like a great idea. It was a way to integrate PC, Xbox, and even cell phone gaming so that they supported each other. MS seemed to be showing a lot of determination to strengthen PC gaming with recognizable branding, standardized controllers, and some of the added perks of Live like achievements.

But at GDC MS announced that they intended to marry Live for Windows and Xbox Live subscriptions as a single pay service. This means that to play a Live-enabled PC game, you’ll need to fork over the usual $7.99 a month for the privilege, a privilege that has been free since the beginning of time on PC.

It’s not completely clear if these titles will require Live for online play, or merely offer added benefits to subscribers, but if the former is the case, Microsoft has lost their minds. It becomes not only a question of whether or not consumers will pay, but what the incentive is for developers.

On Xbox, Live is the only game in town. Developers support it because they have to. On the PC, this isn’t the case. Developers can tell MS where to stick their Live. And at what point does a developer say “Hey, you know what would be awesome? If Microsoft got to charge our customers money to play out game! Wouldn’t that be great?” It’s not going to go down like that.

If MS had real insight to the PC gaming market, they’d look at Valve and see how a service like Steam could be married with the features of Live to create a free environment that’s profitable and attractive to everyone. Trying to rape PC gamers out of money because they can force them to pay on a console isn’t going to help strengthen PC gaming, it’ll either be a miserable flop, or a bullet in PC gaming’s head.