5 ms·

Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all. They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.

by kgwxd 5y ago

vorpalhex 5y ago
Steam is a real value add, enough that I use it for non-steam games. Not only with proton or the controller db, but save-game sync, multiplayer invites, their server browser, and everything being tied to my login. Even managing my game library on steam is pleasant! And the social features they have are.. actually pretty useful. Having a friends list of people who I game with is nice, as is the ability to have low friction conversations.
- snailmailman 5y ago
  Another huge factor is the built in steam discussion forums. Any problems or questions with the game? There’s a dedicated forum for every game, easy to access. Sure lots of games have their own forum or subreddit, but smaller indie games sometimes don’t. I’ve even gone to the steam discussion forums for games that are on Steam but I own elsewhere.
hombre_fatal 5y ago
Dunno, I can log into Steam and still download and play any game I've ever bought with all sorts of features like global controller configuration and syncing saves between my desktop and laptop. What's the better way?
munk-a 5y ago
I personally disagree, I don't want to downplay the power of having stand alone applications - but having one application that can help me matchmake in games and helps keep all those games up to date while clearly (and non-obnoxiously) advertising new features or DLCs for those games. Steam does this things really cleanly and I don't want to return to the world where each application has to self-update whenever I launch it.
oblak 5y ago
And what would that "other way" be? Let me guess, another launcher, or simply no launcher, no updates, no "cloud" saves, etc. Downloading games off Steam is easier than pirating them. If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Definitely not the same with movies and music which tells me they don't want it to be that easy.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  > Definitely not the same with movies and music which tells me they don't want it to be that easy. It actually is, it's just called "streaming" instead of downloading*. For a very long time, Netflix was the go-to place for any movies, and piracy was on the decline. Now all the old media companies (who have even bigger god complexes than game studios) are doing the exact same thing everyone in this thread is discussing with alternate launchers, and creating their own streaming services. And piracy is suddenly back on the rise. Only time will tell whether this will play out the same way as the OP, or whether the flexibility afforded by inherently streamable format will allow them to succeed in splintering where game studios failed. *Two notes on this: 1) it's a benefit afforded by having a much more linear data format 2) despite what HN commenters may believe, it's only a small percentage of users that care about owning content rather than being able to conveniently access it)
  - 1_player 5y ago
    > For a very long time, Netflix was the go-to place for any movies, and piracy was on the decline. In the US, maybe? Because here in Europe Netflix or any other streaming service has never been the go-to place for _any_ movie. You get to watch what they offer today, but if you want a specific movie, tough luck. Steam is the place to be for 99.9% of PC gaming, anywhere in the world. This is why gaming piracy is pretty much dead while people are still downloading movies and tv shows to this day.
notjustanymike 5y ago
People always forget what a pain in ass it was to download patches before Steam existed.
- account42 5y ago
  OTOH with Steam you can generally not choose to avoid patches you don't like, even with single-player games.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  With "just don't do it" being perhaps the most common solution.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    But then people forget that the bugs back then were just as bad as today, you would get crashes literally every 15 minutes, and some were hilariously malicious - Pool of Radiance (late 90's version) would straight up nuke your C:\ drive if you uninstalled it from the non-default location.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      to be fair, steam is not above wiping your disk in similar scenarios: https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Especially when it came to mods - since auto-updating wasn't a thing mod devs were a lot more happy to tie their mod to a specific patch of the game and just refuse to support other versions. There's something to be said about this making modding more accessible since you weren't committing to long term support patches as the game evolved... but it also made things a royal pain.
haunter 5y ago
> They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way This is like the famous Dropbox comment "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"
- monocasa 5y ago
  It's not. Complaining about something that only exists to strategically hedge against a competitior's dominance but just gets in the way at the user level is not the same as the infamous Dropbox quote.
  - recursive 5y ago
    > only exists to I've used the file verification and repair feature many times. It's also a convenient place to enumerate the games I have access to so I can download them on a new PC.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      Just because it has some useful features doesn't invalidate the fact that the only reason it exists to the management that's in charge of it is as a hedge against Valve. They don't care if it's a net win for their users or not until it gets so bad that people stop buying their games.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I think there's plenty of room for pessimism when it comes to the games industry. But Valve has (when not occasionally making games which, let's face it, isn't very often these days) become a business dedicated to the business to selling games. It offers a platform that has provided several innovations for usability to consumers ahead of competitors (it isn't continuously playing catchup - they're proactively investing) and it provides a relatively low barrier to entry for publishing a game in a pretty visible manner. I'm not certain if you ever lived with Gamestop and EBGames as your main source of purchasing games but it was pretty much impossible for small devs to get noticed that way - so small devs ended up posting their games on the internet (which was quite a strong limitation in terms of size) or trying to get on various ShareWare/Demo disks that'd circulate with magazines. I'm sure this isn't the absolute best timeline, but it sure beats a land where Origin and UPlay successfully beatup Steam and we're all forced back onto walled gardens. And it seems sustainable, the second largest platform (IMO) out there is GOG which is owned and operated by CD Projekt Red - it seems like game studios see a lot of utility from owning a mostly open platform like this.
duskwuff 5y ago
> They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way. Centralized software install/update, with a good CDN behind it, is a pretty huge advantage. Even if you don't care about any of the other features of the Steam launcher, that one alone is worth it. Having every publisher run their own download servers means they're much more subject to getting overloaded under heavy demand, or becoming permanently unavailable if the publisher goes out of business.
Ekaros 5y ago
Nah, that is like using Linux without package manager. Sure you can do that, but manual work is considerable. And generally I think Steam staying alive is much more likely than random places serving stuff. Even if it were DRM free. Just looking at history quite many services have come and gone on PC.
dtech 5y ago
A central place where you can always could download your purchased games, saves and mods and automatically installs patches is an enormous benefit.
jcranmer 5y ago
Launchers are bundling roughly 4 main services into one: (a) automatic update, (b) storefront, (c) mod portal, and (d) social networking. The most important services are of course the first two, and in this sense, you can think of them as basically something like apt, but built with software that requires you provide proof purchase before downloading it. This helps explain why having to use multiple launchers provokes such frustration among users--it means you basically have two package managers running on your system. Maybe if software update were a part of standard OS services, it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it isn't [on desktops], another platform providing such services becoming popular for doing so shouldn't be surprising.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all. They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.

by kgwxd 5y ago

Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all. They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.

vorpalhex 5y ago

Steam is a real value add, enough that I use it for non-steam games. Not only with proton or the controller db, but save-game sync, multiplayer invites, their server browser, and everything being tied to my login. Even managing my game library on steam is pleasant! And the social features they have are.. actually pretty useful. Having a friends list of people who I game with is nice, as is the ability to have low friction conversations.

snailmailman 5y ago
Another huge factor is the built in steam discussion forums. Any problems or questions with the game? There’s a dedicated forum for every game, easy to access. Sure lots of games have their own forum or subreddit, but smaller indie games sometimes don’t. I’ve even gone to the steam discussion forums for games that are on Steam but I own elsewhere.

hombre_fatal 5y ago

Dunno, I can log into Steam and still download and play any game I've ever bought with all sorts of features like global controller configuration and syncing saves between my desktop and laptop. What's the better way?

munk-a 5y ago

I personally disagree, I don't want to downplay the power of having stand alone applications - but having one application that can help me matchmake in games and helps keep all those games up to date while clearly (and non-obnoxiously) advertising new features or DLCs for those games. Steam does this things really cleanly and I don't want to return to the world where each application has to self-update whenever I launch it.

oblak 5y ago

And what would that "other way" be? Let me guess, another launcher, or simply no launcher, no updates, no "cloud" saves, etc. Downloading games off Steam is easier than pirating them. If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Definitely not the same with movies and music which tells me they don't want it to be that easy.

LordDragonfang 5y ago
> Definitely not the same with movies and music which tells me they don't want it to be that easy. It actually is, it's just called "streaming" instead of downloading*. For a very long time, Netflix was the go-to place for any movies, and piracy was on the decline. Now all the old media companies (who have even bigger god complexes than game studios) are doing the exact same thing everyone in this thread is discussing with alternate launchers, and creating their own streaming services. And piracy is suddenly back on the rise. Only time will tell whether this will play out the same way as the OP, or whether the flexibility afforded by inherently streamable format will allow them to succeed in splintering where game studios failed. *Two notes on this: 1) it's a benefit afforded by having a much more linear data format 2) despite what HN commenters may believe, it's only a small percentage of users that care about owning content rather than being able to conveniently access it)
- 1_player 5y ago
  > For a very long time, Netflix was the go-to place for any movies, and piracy was on the decline. In the US, maybe? Because here in Europe Netflix or any other streaming service has never been the go-to place for _any_ movie. You get to watch what they offer today, but if you want a specific movie, tough luck. Steam is the place to be for 99.9% of PC gaming, anywhere in the world. This is why gaming piracy is pretty much dead while people are still downloading movies and tv shows to this day.

notjustanymike 5y ago

People always forget what a pain in ass it was to download patches before Steam existed.

account42 5y ago
OTOH with Steam you can generally not choose to avoid patches you don't like, even with single-player games.
jcranmer 5y ago
With "just don't do it" being perhaps the most common solution.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  But then people forget that the bugs back then were just as bad as today, you would get crashes literally every 15 minutes, and some were hilariously malicious - Pool of Radiance (late 90's version) would straight up nuke your C:\ drive if you uninstalled it from the non-default location.
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    to be fair, steam is not above wiping your disk in similar scenarios: https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 https://github.com/valvesoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671
- munk-a 5y ago
  Especially when it came to mods - since auto-updating wasn't a thing mod devs were a lot more happy to tie their mod to a specific patch of the game and just refuse to support other versions. There's something to be said about this making modding more accessible since you weren't committing to long term support patches as the game evolved... but it also made things a royal pain.

haunter 5y ago

> They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way This is like the famous Dropbox comment "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"

monocasa 5y ago
It's not. Complaining about something that only exists to strategically hedge against a competitior's dominance but just gets in the way at the user level is not the same as the infamous Dropbox quote.
- recursive 5y ago
  > only exists to I've used the file verification and repair feature many times. It's also a convenient place to enumerate the games I have access to so I can download them on a new PC.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Just because it has some useful features doesn't invalidate the fact that the only reason it exists to the management that's in charge of it is as a hedge against Valve. They don't care if it's a net win for their users or not until it gets so bad that people stop buying their games.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I think there's plenty of room for pessimism when it comes to the games industry. But Valve has (when not occasionally making games which, let's face it, isn't very often these days) become a business dedicated to the business to selling games. It offers a platform that has provided several innovations for usability to consumers ahead of competitors (it isn't continuously playing catchup - they're proactively investing) and it provides a relatively low barrier to entry for publishing a game in a pretty visible manner. I'm not certain if you ever lived with Gamestop and EBGames as your main source of purchasing games but it was pretty much impossible for small devs to get noticed that way - so small devs ended up posting their games on the internet (which was quite a strong limitation in terms of size) or trying to get on various ShareWare/Demo disks that'd circulate with magazines. I'm sure this isn't the absolute best timeline, but it sure beats a land where Origin and UPlay successfully beatup Steam and we're all forced back onto walled gardens. And it seems sustainable, the second largest platform (IMO) out there is GOG which is owned and operated by CD Projekt Red - it seems like game studios see a lot of utility from owning a mostly open platform like this.

duskwuff 5y ago

> They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way. Centralized software install/update, with a good CDN behind it, is a pretty huge advantage. Even if you don't care about any of the other features of the Steam launcher, that one alone is worth it. Having every publisher run their own download servers means they're much more subject to getting overloaded under heavy demand, or becoming permanently unavailable if the publisher goes out of business.

Ekaros 5y ago

Nah, that is like using Linux without package manager. Sure you can do that, but manual work is considerable. And generally I think Steam staying alive is much more likely than random places serving stuff. Even if it were DRM free. Just looking at history quite many services have come and gone on PC.

dtech 5y ago

A central place where you can always could download your purchased games, saves and mods and automatically installs patches is an enormous benefit.

jcranmer 5y ago

Launchers are bundling roughly 4 main services into one: (a) automatic update, (b) storefront, (c) mod portal, and (d) social networking. The most important services are of course the first two, and in this sense, you can think of them as basically something like apt, but built with software that requires you provide proof purchase before downloading it. This helps explain why having to use multiple launchers provokes such frustration among users--it means you basically have two package managers running on your system. Maybe if software update were a part of standard OS services, it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it isn't [on desktops], another platform providing such services becoming popular for doing so shouldn't be surprising.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]