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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.
It takes 20s to start and 5s to shut down on fast hardware.
I just timed mine. Less than 7 seconds to start up, less than 1 second to shut down.
My PC is fast, but nothing amazing. CPU is i7-8700K, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a gen 4 nvme limited to gen 3 speeds.
Weird. I have a Ryzen 9 5900HX (about Ryzen 7 3700 performance), Radeon RX6800M (15% slower than RX6700XT), 32GB DDR4 RAM, and a 2TB 970 Evo Plus SSD, which is 40% filled right now.
I know a lot of the recent increase in the launch and shut down time of Steam has to do with this stupid splash screen. It waits for the network for about 8s even though I have good Internet, and takes a long time to do other stuff as well.
I wonder what you played because it’s the complete opposite for me, I got fed up with steam and old games so I started buying old ones exclusively on GoG because they do come with community patches.
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Steam vr has been simple for me, with multiple ways to launch into vr. Either launch the specific game I want to play first in VR mode, or justaunch steam vr and select the game from inside the VR room.
My steam VR works fine, what’s the issue with it?
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.
There are many hills to die on about what is wrong with the world and I dont think steam is among the first one should choose imo. But yea, there are things that could be better with steam even if I personally havent had problem with it. Its just that valve not being just as shitty as other corporations seems to be the best we can hope for. I rather have them than nothing or something worse.
Over three decades of gaming and almost as much of software engineering means I’m pretty weary of things with unecessary dependencies on an external 3rd party, because they’re bound to stop working when that external 3rd party decides to stop supporting it and/or goes bankrupt.
In my experience this is not a “might happen” thing, it’s an “it always happens” one.
(This was actually a well discussed subject around Steam back in the day when it first came out: all games with DRM that depend on a server on the Internet maintained by a 3rd party will sooner or later stop working when that company doesn’t feel like supporting it anymore, and this is inherent to that DRM architecture rather than Steam specific)
I would hardly call “dying on a hill” to prefer to not be dependent on some external company’s mid-level manager’s decisions about what’s “outdated” for stuff I would like or need to keep on working.
That is true. I shall try to keep your point in mind actually, I should add this to the list of things i need to consider about backing stuff up and preserving things I can that might disappear.
That’s definitely a Windows issue and not a Steam issue.
So far it’s just a warning from Steam that it will happen on the 1st of January 2024, and it’s definitelly not an issue with Windows: Valve is chosing that the Steam launcher will not be supported in a specific Windows version anymore, and because most games bought via Steam check with Steam on startup in order to start - even when that’s not at all required by the game itself - it might mean (depending of how they do it) that games will simply refuse to start even though the game itself was and still is 100% compatible with that version of Windows.
Will they stop working, or will the launcher stop working? I haven’t tried all my titles, but I know many of my older games launch fine without Steam kicking them off.
I am waiting to see what happens, since we’re not yet at the 1st of January (it’s for 2024, not 2023 - sorry for forgetting to point it out)
This is about games that check with Steam when they start to see if you’re authorized to launch them, even though it’s not the game itself that needs anything from Steam, and Steam is just the DRM layer.
Steam says they will stop supporting the Steam Launcher for Windows 7, so does that mean only the application frontend stuff (the store, downloading of games you bought and so on) or does it also include the components used by games with Steam as DRM to check if you’re authorized to run them?
I suspect it’s the latter (since Windows 7 is now all of 5% or so of the installed base and the legislation about digital purchases is crap so they’re not forced to refund your for removing your access to the games you bought, so they could get away with it), but hope it’s only the former.
It would be hilarious (in a near insane wierdly laughing kind of way) if I had to use a pirate hacked steam DLL to play my own games from Steam.
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.
I’d say i have 1/4 unplayed games, maybe little less because I have many games that I played before steam started tracking gametime. But most of those are from family share anyway. I find it insane how some people just buy games and never even install them.
And I know there is no way I would be getting anything back if steam suddenly shut down, you are effectively buying a licence to play anyway instead of full ownership. But this is the world we have to put up with and steam is the least shit thing about how game industry works nowdays. Without steam I effectively just couldnt play games by now, which is also kind of troubling. Though if steam never existed and there had been nothing like it, managing all the games would have been nightmare even if you ignore updating them.
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/155tkw0
Takes from gamers never change. They’re always, consistently, horrible meme-takes.
Manual updated are an hassle
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…
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.
These both work on Windows, to my knowledge
The vast majority of freebies are DRM free…
I’m not referring to DRM.
Launchers are a form of DRM, get DRM free games and you won’t need a launcher.
I’m still not referring to DRM. I’m saying Epic is a shitty platform that I hate enough to pay money to avoid. Get some reading comprehension. Further, you’re not even entirely correct.
Man, if you hate him so much you should take the freebies that they pay money for and not buy anything from the platform.
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).
Love itch.io. it’s what got me into games.
Itch.io has an API? For integration in unified launchers.
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?
rubbing nipples furiously n…no!
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.
It’d be another big player, it’s not going to be some indie startup that suddenly breaks out into the light to dazzle everyone. And all the other players in this space have their own, worse, storefront and launchers…
Just imagine uplay, but with steam/valves loyal userbase and therefore everyone else sold their games on it. shudders
I mean, who cares? Like having 15 launchers is not a real thing for most gamers I know. It’s saved in a cloud server under your profile. Just uninstall after you’re done with a game.
What mismanagement? What hijacking?
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.
On the other hand though, Steam Input is really powerful for remapping inputs and setting up controller maps to use for keyboard and mouse games. I’ve never had trouble with it apart from with an old handheld PC that registers its built in controller as an Xbox 360 controller instead of Xbox One
That’s totally fine but it should be opt in, or just prompt you when you launch the game for the first time. It doesn’t ask and then actively breaks things for some users.
Yeah it could definitely be more interactive, but then it would annoy users for the entirely opposite problem. I can see the complaints now in my head: “Steam prompts me about Steam Input before every single game I play! I get it valve” or similar (you and I both know the person would be ignoring some “don’t remind me” option
Exactly. And it’s completely unnecessary.
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laughs in multiMC
Nah get on Prism
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
Didn’t know that, thanks for the info
That’s why I use Playnite
Oh good, it’s like a launcher for my launchers.
Jokes on you but that is what it actually is.
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.
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!
DOOM
DOOM II
DOOM III
DOOM
DOOM Eternal
Ah yes, DOOM… Which is not DOOM IV, because that was a separate project that has been cancelled.
[sad demonic noises]
Really liked it, too bad it’s not for Linux
Heroic launcher
Playnite is sick. I’ve spent a ton of hours writing my own themes to customize it and set up categories for all of my games. And by that point I don’t even want to play the game I opened it for anymore lol
–skip-launcher
Absolutely adore Larian for this one on Baldur’s Gate 3 tbh
There’s a lot to like about how BG3 functions.
Agreed
The clear solution is a single centralized launcher for all these launchers.
Playnite does a great job at this. GOG Galaxy isn’t bad either last I checked.
And after some years, launcher-launcher-launcher
Here is the solution: https://apps.gnome.org/Cartridges/
Can someone do this for game launchers?
I love my launchers, I love to play!
I love more and more clicks each day.
I love my DRM, it is the best!
I love security and all the rest.
I love my software and its location, not having physical software is salvation.
I love my ads, they hold my attention, to spend more money is my intention!
I think my launchers are really swell, there’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to spend money on a microtransaction, its price is merely a microfraction
I love my local computer and its remote software;
I hug it often though it won’t care. I love each program and every distant file.
I’d love it more if I could download even more a while.
I’m happy the software is there, not here. I am. I am.
I’m the happiest slave of the launchers, I am.
I love these launchers, I love all the different cliques.
I love sharing personal information, I need my fix.
I love my launchers – I’ll say it again – I even love those friendly men.
Those friendly men who’ve come today,
In clean white coats to take me away!
Lol, thanks! 👍
I will say that I’ll take the lesser evil of having an unintrusive launcher for a game that pops up after I select play in Steam (Creative Assembly, Larian, etc.) which can then be closed after the game starts than go back to when everyone wanted you to install a bloated distribution platform to play their specific game (Looking at you Stardock, Uplay, etc.).
Absolutely. It is refreshing to start BG3, see the launcher pop up quickly, and watch the loading splash come up right after you choose DX11/Vulkan.
There are, however, many other problems in that game.
But in the shadows of Playnite, one more launcher was made.
One launcher to bind them.
Reason number 217 why pirated games are better.
I do not like opening multiple game launchers. You are crazy
🤓
local dude comes back after 4 months to send a nerd emoji to an innocent commenter
🤓
Now how about we get an Office launcher
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Achievement unlocked: Starting to Excel
Would you like to share this Gaming Moment™ with your friends? Yes / yes.
This is why I buy most of my games from GOG.
The launcher (GOG Galaxy) is entirelly optional, so I don’t use it at all and just download the installers for my games (and keep local copies in an external HD in my NAS).
