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Steam has a ridiculously terrible UX, and somehow it's still better than all of the others like Epic and Origin. I'm amazed at how many billions are spent on th

Steam has a ridiculously terrible UX, and somehow it's still better than all of the others like Epic and Origin. I'm amazed at how many billions are spent on these stores but basic UI design and features still can't get implemented. This is probably the most valid question of "what exactly are all those devs doing?"

Jaygles 5y ago
I shed a few tears when they decided to make Steam an electron app. It used to be so responsive and snappy even on old computers. And now almost every UI action has significant latency.
- paco3346 5y ago
  I've had the opposite experience. Ever since they switched to WebKit it actually works for me. Previous to that it was always so sluggish.
- hn8788 5y ago
  I ended up going into settings and changing it to low bandwidth and low performance mode to make it feel similar to before.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Technically Steam isn't using Electron but CEF.
pengstrom 5y ago
Valve have been nothing but competent and financially successful. In sure they know exactly what they're doing, and it's not optimizing for customer ergonomics.
- 542458 5y ago
  I disagree on the “nothing but competent”. They have done things like left critical zero click RCEs open for years without patching them. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-steam-gaming-platform-rce-vulnerability https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-ste... People who have left valve often report that the organization is extremely dysfunctional. https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-... From where I’m standing, Valve looks like a company cursed by success. They have the advantage of controlling the world’s biggest PC game distribution platform (an advantage that is self-sustaining due to network effects), and as such have a fountain of near infinite money. This allows them to run an extremely inefficient organization without suffering the consequences that most companies would.
  - ljm 5y ago
    I used to think Valve's approach to management (to essentially remove it) sounded like a great idea. But now it feels to me to be more of a curse than a blessing - there's a machine that prints money and what's the point of trying to kick off any project when no one has any real skin in the game and can abandon it when they get bored?
- bob1029 5y ago
  Valve have been resting on the laurels of their prior successes and are destined for the dustbin of history if they don't start innovating again. The gaming market has grown incredibly competitive, and statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. The most depressing thing about Valve Software is that they are a privately-held corporation and have far more agility than the likes of EA, ATVI, et. al. There aren't quarterly earnings calls or other confining economics that would spook away investors if an ambitious AAA project were to be announced this Monday.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    >statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. That's basically a non-issue. Steam has had a ton of random shit in there for years and people still prefer it to all of the other stores. It's in fact preferable to have too much than too little. GOG might have DRM-free games and a fancy launcher that combines ALL of your game libaries from different launchers (GOG Galaxy is pretty neat), but it doesn't really benefit me when Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't on sale there.
  - COGlory 5y ago
    Valve is absolutely innovating in a way that can only be done by companies that are privately held. They are laying the groundwork for a shift from Windows to Linux. They are playing a veeery long game there.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling issues, weird software bugs that require you to install something obscure and run 4 different commands to get that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.
Hamuko 5y ago
Why does the Epic Games Launcher even have a Home page when it always opens on the Store page? And why is there an option "Hide Game Library" but there's no option "Hide Game Store"?
blfr 5y ago
It seems like all update/stores suffer from that. How can apt update; apt dist-upgrade be so snappy and pleasant to use, whereas graphical frontends seem to hang, spin the fans, return little to no information about what is happening, and be terrible in general? Windows 10 is particularly annoying since I don't even know how to force the update now because it seems to be dead set on doing it magically in the background at the least opportune moment.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  As far as I can tell, Steam’s main window is a web browser, upon which their web app “Steam” provides the experience we all suffer today. No doubt it has benefits for cross-platform work minimization, but they don’t seem to care how shoddy an experience it provides.
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Steam does use CEF but I don't think the UI rendering itself is actually what is causing slowness. The backend logic as well as services are native code
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I’m still working trying to figure out why steam downloads seemed capped significantly slower than my general download speed
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Make sure "Settings -> Downloads -> Limit Bandwidth To" is unchecked. If you checked something describing your internet speed after first install it'll throttle to that and I think the highest option in that menu was still 100 Mbps. Steam downloads default to bytes per seconds (option for bits in the same menu as above) so keep that in mind as well. In that menu you can make sure the download region is appropriately set to one near you too, I haven't had a problem with the autodetection for this personally though. If all of the above is in place and it's still slow make sure you're not running into a single core throughput issue. The encryption and compression can be quite taxing. I can pretty easily hit 1 Gbps on a 5950X but some of my laptops can't due to their CPU.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
I can't wrap my head around this one either. Yes, Steam UX is horrible, every action takes 2 seconds to complete, even opening the home page takes 2 seconds when Steam is already running. They haven't even bothered to put up a loading spinner, it's just a black screen. And yet, somehow, Epic is even worse. Doing anything in Epic you have to look at black screen for like 5-10 seconds, and you never know when it has crashed versus when it's eventually going to finish doing whatever thing it was doing for 10 seconds. But the absolute worst thing about Epic Games Store is that it steals 5% of my CPU cycles whenever it's running. That's right, when I'm playing a game I purchased on Epic, the game runs 5% worse (assuming it's CPU bottlenecked) because Epic Games Store needs 5% of my CPU to do nothing, all the time.
- manigandham 5y ago
  These stores and games now include some pretty invasive DRM and anti-cheat software. That's probably what's causing the CPU usage.
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    Ok, I'll bite. Why does the DRM and anti-cheat software need to run while a game is not running?
    - raptorfactor 5y ago
      Because if I can just load my own driver before you load your anti-cheat driver it significantly lowers the difficulty of defeating the anti-cheat. Whoever gets into ring0 (or below) first usually 'wins'. So for example Valorant's anti-cheat leverages a hypervisor which is always-on, and then an additional client which runs when you launch the game. The situation is similar with the ESEA counter-strike client. I just refuse to play games with measures like that. Especially given the fact ESEA got caught deploying a bitcoin miner with their client. These games always have cheaters anyway, so what am I giving up all that privacy and security for?
      - 5y ago
29athrowaway 5y ago
Origin feels really bloated and in need of optimization. The Steam client has some nice features like Steam Link, which you can use to stream to a smart TV by installing the app.
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
I like it. Steam is fast and fairly lightweight compared to the competition. It boots the games and lets me buy new ones, that's all I want.
smoldesu 5y ago
Steam's UI sucks. Steams UX is fantastic though, at least in my experience. They'll do everything in their power to put you in control of your software, inviting you to tinker and poke around with it if something needs to be fixed. It also does most of the leg-work when setting up Wine in Linux, so most Windows games are just install-and-play. Their payment system is friction-less, their recommendation system is actually half-decent, their CDN is relatively fast... there's not much that Steam fails with, besides it's social features and general UI shortcomings.
- manigandham 5y ago
  How would you not be in control? It's files on your drive, you can always tinker around with the software regardless of how it's installed. Their payment system doesn't even support multiple cards saved at the same time, but having a checkout and using a CDN is ecommerce basics that any hobbyist can setup. That's a very low bar for UX.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Being able to move games, add extra library locations, scan and fix broken directories (eg. when your drive is failing and you're only able to copy 90% of the game uncorrupted) is immensely valuable. The Epic Games store doesn't have libraries nor a 'locate' feature, so if you want to move a game you have to go to the existing game folder in Windows Explorer (no Mac or Linux by the way[0]), move it to a temporary directory, start the install in the new directory, 'cancel install', move your game files to the directory the launcher just created, and then 'resume' the install. Only then can you move and have the launcher recognize the new location without having to redownload the entire game. 0: https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap (it's not even in 'future development' which includes other long-requested features like a shopping cart from 2019)
    - tracedddd 5y ago
      You can also specify custom launch parameters from the GUI.
swiley 5y ago
It's not better than gog. I generally don't buy games that are only available on steam because it's just so fucking bad.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rtpg 5y ago
It is bonkers to me how bad stores are in general, except for Steam. Nintendo’s e-shop is so slow, and the PlayStation Network stuff is soooooo impossible to use that it usually takes me at least 2 tries to buy a thing even when I want it. Do these companies not realize that this loses them money?? My dream would be to do a gig of performance tuning for these companies on their store platforms, cuz they clearly need it.
junon 5y ago
We were going to compete with steam at one point but after a bunch of research decided against it. Unfortunately, the critical mass problem is almost always the reason why nothing gets innovated anymore. We would have had an objective better experience for users and devs/publishers alike but the chances of success were next to nothing given the cost of migrating for both sides. Really sucks.

Jaygles 5y ago

I shed a few tears when they decided to make Steam an electron app. It used to be so responsive and snappy even on old computers. And now almost every UI action has significant latency.

paco3346 5y ago
I've had the opposite experience. Ever since they switched to WebKit it actually works for me. Previous to that it was always so sluggish.
hn8788 5y ago
I ended up going into settings and changing it to low bandwidth and low performance mode to make it feel similar to before.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
Technically Steam isn't using Electron but CEF.

pengstrom 5y ago

Valve have been nothing but competent and financially successful. In sure they know exactly what they're doing, and it's not optimizing for customer ergonomics.

542458 5y ago
I disagree on the “nothing but competent”. They have done things like left critical zero click RCEs open for years without patching them. https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-steam-gaming-platform-rce-vulnerability https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/valve-belatedly-fixes-ste... People who have left valve often report that the organization is extremely dysfunctional. https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-... From where I’m standing, Valve looks like a company cursed by success. They have the advantage of controlling the world’s biggest PC game distribution platform (an advantage that is self-sustaining due to network effects), and as such have a fountain of near infinite money. This allows them to run an extremely inefficient organization without suffering the consequences that most companies would.
- ljm 5y ago
  I used to think Valve's approach to management (to essentially remove it) sounded like a great idea. But now it feels to me to be more of a curse than a blessing - there's a machine that prints money and what's the point of trying to kick off any project when no one has any real skin in the game and can abandon it when they get bored?
bob1029 5y ago
Valve have been resting on the laurels of their prior successes and are destined for the dustbin of history if they don't start innovating again. The gaming market has grown incredibly competitive, and statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. The most depressing thing about Valve Software is that they are a privately-held corporation and have far more agility than the likes of EA, ATVI, et. al. There aren't quarterly earnings calls or other confining economics that would spook away investors if an ambitious AAA project were to be announced this Monday.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  >statistically speaking the steam store has the most garbage out of all the stores combined x100. That's basically a non-issue. Steam has had a ton of random shit in there for years and people still prefer it to all of the other stores. It's in fact preferable to have too much than too little. GOG might have DRM-free games and a fancy launcher that combines ALL of your game libaries from different launchers (GOG Galaxy is pretty neat), but it doesn't really benefit me when Mass Effect Legendary Edition isn't on sale there.
- COGlory 5y ago
  Valve is absolutely innovating in a way that can only be done by companies that are privately held. They are laying the groundwork for a shift from Windows to Linux. They are playing a veeery long game there.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling issues, weird software bugs that require you to install something obscure and run 4 different commands to get that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.

Hamuko 5y ago

Why does the Epic Games Launcher even have a Home page when it always opens on the Store page? And why is there an option "Hide Game Library" but there's no option "Hide Game Store"?

blfr 5y ago

It seems like all update/stores suffer from that. How can apt update; apt dist-upgrade be so snappy and pleasant to use, whereas graphical frontends seem to hang, spin the fans, return little to no information about what is happening, and be terrible in general? Windows 10 is particularly annoying since I don't even know how to force the update now because it seems to be dead set on doing it magically in the background at the least opportune moment.

floatingatoll 5y ago
As far as I can tell, Steam’s main window is a web browser, upon which their web app “Steam” provides the experience we all suffer today. No doubt it has benefits for cross-platform work minimization, but they don’t seem to care how shoddy an experience it provides.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Steam does use CEF but I don't think the UI rendering itself is actually what is causing slowness. The backend logic as well as services are native code
the_only_law 5y ago
I’m still working trying to figure out why steam downloads seemed capped significantly slower than my general download speed
- zamadatix 5y ago
  Make sure "Settings -> Downloads -> Limit Bandwidth To" is unchecked. If you checked something describing your internet speed after first install it'll throttle to that and I think the highest option in that menu was still 100 Mbps. Steam downloads default to bytes per seconds (option for bits in the same menu as above) so keep that in mind as well. In that menu you can make sure the download region is appropriately set to one near you too, I haven't had a problem with the autodetection for this personally though. If all of the above is in place and it's still slow make sure you're not running into a single core throughput issue. The encryption and compression can be quite taxing. I can pretty easily hit 1 Gbps on a 5950X but some of my laptops can't due to their CPU.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

I can't wrap my head around this one either. Yes, Steam UX is horrible, every action takes 2 seconds to complete, even opening the home page takes 2 seconds when Steam is already running. They haven't even bothered to put up a loading spinner, it's just a black screen. And yet, somehow, Epic is even worse. Doing anything in Epic you have to look at black screen for like 5-10 seconds, and you never know when it has crashed versus when it's eventually going to finish doing whatever thing it was doing for 10 seconds. But the absolute worst thing about Epic Games Store is that it steals 5% of my CPU cycles whenever it's running. That's right, when I'm playing a game I purchased on Epic, the game runs 5% worse (assuming it's CPU bottlenecked) because Epic Games Store needs 5% of my CPU to do nothing, all the time.

manigandham 5y ago
These stores and games now include some pretty invasive DRM and anti-cheat software. That's probably what's causing the CPU usage.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  Ok, I'll bite. Why does the DRM and anti-cheat software need to run while a game is not running?
  - raptorfactor 5y ago
    Because if I can just load my own driver before you load your anti-cheat driver it significantly lowers the difficulty of defeating the anti-cheat. Whoever gets into ring0 (or below) first usually 'wins'. So for example Valorant's anti-cheat leverages a hypervisor which is always-on, and then an additional client which runs when you launch the game. The situation is similar with the ESEA counter-strike client. I just refuse to play games with measures like that. Especially given the fact ESEA got caught deploying a bitcoin miner with their client. These games always have cheaters anyway, so what am I giving up all that privacy and security for?
    - 5y ago

29athrowaway 5y ago

Origin feels really bloated and in need of optimization. The Steam client has some nice features like Steam Link, which you can use to stream to a smart TV by installing the app.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

I like it. Steam is fast and fairly lightweight compared to the competition. It boots the games and lets me buy new ones, that's all I want.

smoldesu 5y ago

Steam's UI sucks. Steams UX is fantastic though, at least in my experience. They'll do everything in their power to put you in control of your software, inviting you to tinker and poke around with it if something needs to be fixed. It also does most of the leg-work when setting up Wine in Linux, so most Windows games are just install-and-play. Their payment system is friction-less, their recommendation system is actually half-decent, their CDN is relatively fast... there's not much that Steam fails with, besides it's social features and general UI shortcomings.

manigandham 5y ago
How would you not be in control? It's files on your drive, you can always tinker around with the software regardless of how it's installed. Their payment system doesn't even support multiple cards saved at the same time, but having a checkout and using a CDN is ecommerce basics that any hobbyist can setup. That's a very low bar for UX.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Being able to move games, add extra library locations, scan and fix broken directories (eg. when your drive is failing and you're only able to copy 90% of the game uncorrupted) is immensely valuable. The Epic Games store doesn't have libraries nor a 'locate' feature, so if you want to move a game you have to go to the existing game folder in Windows Explorer (no Mac or Linux by the way[0]), move it to a temporary directory, start the install in the new directory, 'cancel install', move your game files to the directory the launcher just created, and then 'resume' the install. Only then can you move and have the launcher recognize the new location without having to redownload the entire game. 0: https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap (it's not even in 'future development' which includes other long-requested features like a shopping cart from 2019)
  - tracedddd 5y ago
    You can also specify custom launch parameters from the GUI.

swiley 5y ago

It's not better than gog. I generally don't buy games that are only available on steam because it's just so fucking bad.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rtpg 5y ago

It is bonkers to me how bad stores are in general, except for Steam. Nintendo’s e-shop is so slow, and the PlayStation Network stuff is soooooo impossible to use that it usually takes me at least 2 tries to buy a thing even when I want it. Do these companies not realize that this loses them money?? My dream would be to do a gig of performance tuning for these companies on their store platforms, cuz they clearly need it.

junon 5y ago

We were going to compete with steam at one point but after a bunch of research decided against it. Unfortunately, the critical mass problem is almost always the reason why nothing gets innovated anymore. We would have had an objective better experience for users and devs/publishers alike but the chances of success were next to nothing given the cost of migrating for both sides. Really sucks.