5 ms·

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 whe

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?
    - judge2020 5y ago
      The difference is that the price of developing cheats goes up when you need to defeat these measures, and when that happens it means fewer players in the 'cheat for sale' market. There will still be cheaters but much less doing it just for competitive play online. At that point the developer can just learn your business and go after you legally, like Activision has been doing for the past 10 or so years[0,1]. 0: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-30-prominent-cheat-maker-apologises-for-any-pain-weve-caused-to-players-of-call-of-duty-after-activision-legal-threat https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-30-prominent-chea... 1: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160705/09363534897/checking-blizzard-still-suing-hack-cheat-makers-copyright-infringement-yup.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160705/09363534897/check...
    - baobabKoodaa 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'. This is entirely unrelated to Epic Games Store wasting 5% of my CPU when it's running. I can just load my own driver before I launch the Epic Games Store.
  - manigandham 5y ago
    It could also just be a bug in the launcher: https://www.pcgamer.com/a-bug-in-the-epic-games-store-launcher-raises-cpu-temps-on-some-pcs-partial-fix-is-available/ https://www.pcgamer.com/a-bug-in-the-epic-games-store-launch...
- nichch 5y ago
  Epic has no DRM. Steam’s “DRM” is non intrusive and optional. The EGS is a CEF application and is probably less resource efficient than it should be.
hexo 5y ago
thankfully they didnt put up a loading spinner. i would explode. :D
smoldesu 5y ago
Check out Legendary[0] as an alternative to the default Epic games launcher. If you're comfortable with the command line, it will stay completely out of your way, forever. [0] https://github.com/derrod/legendary https://github.com/derrod/legendary
- iamcreasy 5y ago
  Wow, this is really cool. Is there anything similar for Steam?
  - fragileone 5y ago
    https://github.com/dmadisetti/steam-tui https://github.com/dmadisetti/steam-tui is one and it's built in Rust.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Holy shit, thank you for sharing! I've never seen that one before, but it might be the final element I need to put together a no-DE laptop... well, if those Discord TUIs hadn't died off :(

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?
  - judge2020 5y ago
    The difference is that the price of developing cheats goes up when you need to defeat these measures, and when that happens it means fewer players in the 'cheat for sale' market. There will still be cheaters but much less doing it just for competitive play online. At that point the developer can just learn your business and go after you legally, like Activision has been doing for the past 10 or so years[0,1]. 0: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-30-prominent-cheat-maker-apologises-for-any-pain-weve-caused-to-players-of-call-of-duty-after-activision-legal-threat https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-08-30-prominent-chea... 1: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160705/09363534897/checking-blizzard-still-suing-hack-cheat-makers-copyright-infringement-yup.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160705/09363534897/check...
  - baobabKoodaa 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'. This is entirely unrelated to Epic Games Store wasting 5% of my CPU when it's running. I can just load my own driver before I launch the Epic Games Store.
- manigandham 5y ago
  It could also just be a bug in the launcher: https://www.pcgamer.com/a-bug-in-the-epic-games-store-launcher-raises-cpu-temps-on-some-pcs-partial-fix-is-available/ https://www.pcgamer.com/a-bug-in-the-epic-games-store-launch...
nichch 5y ago
Epic has no DRM. Steam’s “DRM” is non intrusive and optional. The EGS is a CEF application and is probably less resource efficient than it should be.

hexo 5y ago

thankfully they didnt put up a loading spinner. i would explode. :D

smoldesu 5y ago

Check out Legendary[0] as an alternative to the default Epic games launcher. If you're comfortable with the command line, it will stay completely out of your way, forever. [0] https://github.com/derrod/legendary https://github.com/derrod/legendary

iamcreasy 5y ago
Wow, this is really cool. Is there anything similar for Steam?
- fragileone 5y ago
  https://github.com/dmadisetti/steam-tui https://github.com/dmadisetti/steam-tui is one and it's built in Rust.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Holy shit, thank you for sharing! I've never seen that one before, but it might be the final element I need to put together a no-DE laptop... well, if those Discord TUIs hadn't died off :(