Remember times when there were no launcher? Just double click and you’re running the game. Good times indeed.
Steam was considered an abomination when it was released. Drm and a launcher to run HL2? GTFO.
Yet here we are where everyone loves Steam. Its no surprise other companies wanted to follow knowing that in 20 years, a horrible consumer policy could become beloved.
When it was released? Steam ran like shit for me until probably 2017. It’s finally a usable piece of software.
I also prefer steam because steam comes with a lot of benefits. If steam was still just a launcher and nothing more, I think most people would take issue with it today. That’s just not the case, though.
Easy way to manage games, huge sales, support forums, easy way to manage friends, steam workshop, support for pretty much every controller, fast download servers
And one thing that people probably don’t realize, is that steam will work with developers to implement patches. Many times when I play old games I’ll go to PC gaming wiki and see that I need a few patches and mods to make the game work, but the wiki will say that those patches and mods were implemented into the steam release. It’s really nice.
Interesting. I’ve only had Steam since 2017 but currently it’s the slowest it’s ever been.
It takes 20s to start and 5s to shut down on fast hardware. This is 6x slower than the electron-based open source Heroic launcher. It’s also 20x slower than opening a web browser, considerably slower than opening Word, LibreOffice, unmodded Factorio, Kdenlive (a full-featured video editor), Cities Skylines 2 (known for poor optimization lol), or even the 11GB Quartus Prime (used for programming FPGAs) It’s not far off from Windows itself.
The only apps slower to open than Steam are large games, some pro-level software, and the absolutely horrific MS Teams desktop app and Epic Games Store.
Do you even use steam? There is reason why its so loved. Everything else they bring is good enough price for me for steam being a launcher and drm.
Only problem I have with steam is worrying what will happen if valve goes bad or disappears in the future. But I hope it has sunk in to them by now that they will get much more money by being customer friendly and nice instead of being pieces of shit like some of the competition. I still hope that gog will become good competitor to steam.
Steam will stop working in Windows 7 from the 1st of January.
So decades of games that run perfectly fine on older computers (some lauched as little ago as a couple of years) will stop working if you got them on Steam.
Meanwhile in GOG you can get offline installers which will keep on working forever and ever in the hardware and software the game is compatible with.
Have Steam = be forced periodically to update your computer to keep on playing something you’ve had for ages. (Mind you, the workaround is to use Linux to play steam games, but people should not be forced to install it and deal with it just to play games from the previous generation - which are still fine as games go, since the gameplay is great and the additional eyecandy for more recent hardware does little to improve gameplaying fun - and in fact are not forced to if they got the games from GOG).
You most definitelly traded something quite big for the moderate convenience from Steam, it’s just that you pay it in a delayed way and think “this is great” all the way till then.
On a functional level, I think the obsession with ownership is overrated. If you collect physical media, for the sake of collecting, sure. On steam though, we all know you’re lying if you say you’ve played half the shit in your library. Maybe a quarter to any meaningful level.
That being said, I love watching the people who think they’re going to have some claim to a mass refund if it did shut down.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/155tkw0
Takes from gamers never change. They’re always, consistently, horrible meme-takes.
It still will launch a launcher if it needs to, but at least you can see all of your games in one place
Which is absolutely a must if you have a huge library across multiple platforms. How else will I find out if that indie gem in the latest Humble Bundle is already in the library somewhere?
Joking aside, Playnite is especially awesome if you like admiring a collection in gallery view. The “sorting title” feature is exactly what we need in a day and age where publishers don’t give a fuck about proper naming schemes.
They be like:
- Game
- Game II - Electric Boogaloo
- Game 3: Definition of Insanity
- Game™, the Return of Shenanigans
- Game V; “Definitely the Last One”™
I just want my collection displayed in the proper order, stop that shit!
Heroic is pretty good too. Supports a lot fewer stores than Playnite (only Epic, GOG, and Amazon at the moment), but it doesn’t require any of the original launcher to be installed in order to download and play any games (with a few exceptions, such the the Star Wars games on Epic which still require the original launcher due to some fuckery).
Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and on the latter two, will even help you set up and configure Wine automatically in order to run your Windows games.
I made an Epic account years ago for the freebies. I’m not sure, but I’d bet I never played a single one.
If you claimed all of them you’ve got some seriously great games in there… Control, Subnautica, Alien Isolation, all the Tomb Raider games, Evil Within…
The entire BioShock collection, Rogue Legacy, Pathfinder Kingmaker, XCOM 2, Yooka-Laylee and Y-L and the Impossible Lair, Several Warhammer games, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, Star Wars Squadrons, Bridge Constructor: The Walking Dead, Fallout 1, 2, 3, NV, and Tactics, Guacamelee and Guacamelee 2, Homeworld 1&2 Remastered, KSP, and of course LAWN MOWING SIMULATOR!!!
Edit: I almost forgot PC Building Simulator with the IT Expansion!
I’d rather pay to not use that godawful platform. Yes I know that’s stupid in certain ways but my hate for Tim Swiney is simply that strong
There are ways to skip their launcher entirely amd use alternatives. Legendary and heroic launcher for example on Linux, there are probably some on windows as well.
Same. I even played some of them. Still never gave them a red cent because their launcher is an offense to all mankind.
Their launcher is perfectly acceptable and even requires less inputs to launch games than Steam as the games you’ve installed are listed in the menu on the left that’s always visible. Steam has become a mess that’s full of bloat and useless features that only exist to profit from whales and gambling addicts.
Dont buy games from AAA publishers and you mostly have steam or GOG.
Better yet. Buy them from Itch.io directly, since indies are better anyway.
You don’t even need one for GOG - GOG Galaxy is totally optional and you can download absolutelly run of the mill offline installers for all games on GOG which do not require the installer or any network access, and you even keep the forever and ever (so all your old games are still installable and run on an old gaming computer with the old OS, so long as the hardware hasn’t died).
Hot take. Steam sucks. I would rather have 10 launchers than deal with Steam’s mismanagement of game resources and hijacking my peripherals.
Oh and there is no financial advantage to it. They can track and use your gaming info and sell it. Just like Netflix.
So what you’re saying is… you want EA to be the dominant force and directional pioneer in PC gaming.
Do you also masturbate to pictures of the Comcast logo?
That’s a leap. EA sucks. There are plenty of games out there and there are plenty ways of managing them better than steam. Especially if you know your way around a PC.
I can second the hijacking thing. Steam has its own controller input driver (?) it installs which sometimes clash with the actual drivers for the controller, which can lead to games registering input twice or not at all etc.
You can disable it but sometimes it randomly seems to re-enable itself and it’s super annoying.
The curseforge launcher is the worst launcher I’ve ever used. Best launcher imo is PolyMC, it’s a fork of MultiMC that adds a bunch of really nice features like being able to download mods directly from the launcher.
PolyMC now is PrismLauncher
The original team was kicked off the Github Repo and made a new Fork the called PrismLauncher
It was quite the Drama
