The biggest thing is the updates. If the game can update itself or is no longer getting updates I don’t care about it having a launcher. If I have to go to their website and download a new .exe every time they do an update it is annoying. Steam does provide a lot of other QOL features as well though.
I never liked Steam when it was first released, it was problematic, slowed down my machine and caused me frustration.
Now it’s different. I agree with Gene Newell that piracy is a service issue, I haven’t pirated any games since steam started to fill its library with other non Valve games that I wanted.
I also appreciate the additional features that it brings like the community features and guides and managing updates for me.
It’s not perfect, nothing is, buy I prefer it to managing my own files and updates.
On Linux, running an exe isn’t often as simple as “wine frog-fracker.exe”. It’s usually “proton PREFIX=~/steam-proton-10/ TRICKS=b DXIMPL=1.7.8 blah blah … frog-fracker.exe”
As a result, Linux gamers tend to have launchers even for hobby games they downloaded. Arcade launchers for emulated games are especially common now.
You don’t. When Valve first started with Steam, everybody hated it. I myself held out for a long time, not wanting a useless program hogging resources.
But gradually it became clear that Steam was actually just a game store. Except having to go to a store and rifle through boxes, you could do it from your PC. Yes it launched the games, but that was just like having a single folder with all game shortcuts. Its main purpose was discovering and buying new games.
Other vendors saw its success and wanted a piece of the cake. I think they mistakenly thought the launcher was an important part of Steam’s success, when it was in fact the large catalogue and good discoverability. They use exclusivity to lure customers, but can’t possibly compete with Valve.
Now we are at a point where the landscape is divided again. The majority of games is on Steam, but enough have their own place that the “single folder with shortcuts” became relevant again. That’s where the likes of Heroic and Playnite come in. These are no longer stores to buy games, but are simply a convenient way to quickly start the game you want, regardless of its source.
It’s really easy to forget, but yes, Steam was annoying back in the day. I hated it so much I bought Borderlands 1 from somewhere else in protest. My friends bought it through Steam. The patch dropped and they got it, I didn’t, and I couldn’t play anymore. It finally came later, though. This pushed me to give it a second chance. Now it’s amazing. Apart from some gripes about the UI of Steam itself, there’s not really much to complain about.
I don’t. I was still buying physical releases and renting games from my local video stores until both things died out against my will.
Steam is convienent for the services they provide.
Since the USA is turning to shit, I try to buy from stores outside USA now so GOG is increasingly seeing more of my money. Let’s say Valve falls off or goes to shit after Gabe dies: I’m a skilled pirate so whatever.
Mostly I’m Ambivalent but kinda apathetic about launchers because I can just go and find whatever I potentially lose again elsewhere. A self educated privilege combined with grey morality I suppose. Or a resignation to an ever worsening reality I was born into without my say.
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I don’t. Launching things is my desktop environment’s job.
Since the rise of game publishers’ launchers, I have to use my (desktop) launcher to launch a (storefront’s) launcher to launch a (publisher’s) launcher to launch the game. It’s probably the best example of the yo dawg meme I have ever seen. In other words, ridiculously annoying, not to mention wasteful of my time and system resources.
i’m replaying final fantasy 6 with a retranslation i haven’t played before called ‘revised old style edition’. I’m still in the world of balance but so far the translation is a good compromise between the innacurate warmth of the woolsey script and the dry accuracy of the slattery script. So far it’s my favourite translation, and next up will be the newly translated ‘t-edition’ mod
Final Fantasy Tactics! I’m going to really commit this time, I’ve been trying to beat this game since I was a kid. I never kept multiple saves and always locked my playthrough by saving in the wrong spot while under leveled.
If you’re playing the Ivalice Chronicles version, I do believe they made it impossible to get soft-locked that way thanks to a sort of escape menu for certain battles. Same thing happened to me back in the day and I beat it recently!
My best advice is try to give most of your team a way to revive each other. Chemist, White Mage and Monk. That can buy you a lot more time in the tough battles you could be locked into. Monks are especially OP because they can support and have really strong attacks, like shockwave which can cover the map if the elevation allows it.
I mean steam adds a convenient way to keep your games up to date instead of having to manually patch them. I also was on the anti-steam bandwagon for the longest time until I finally gave in and decided to buy Modern Warfare 2 in 2010. I ended up repurchasing the rest of the Call of Duty games because it was so convenient not needing the discs and not having to locate patches.
Steam is the one launcher I don’t get pissed about having to use because it has so many value add features.
I played PC games since the early 90s, so I am well familiar with how things used to be before steam. And it was fine. I was hesitant to use steam at first, because like you say, I simply didn’t understand the point of it. Sometime after Valve released the orange box, that ended up being the first thing I bought on steam. And back then, some of the first things that I noticed about it was the ease of installing games, and the friends list that let me talk to and play games with my friends. I ended up getting really into team fortress 2, largely because I could play with people I knew, and we could even chat outside the game easily. It was easy to buy other games that these same friends were playing, and then enjoy a different game with them.
I got used to steam and it began to feel convenient, and at the same time, physical media started dying off. Steam let me easily install and uninstall any of my games whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to keep track of any physical media. I don’t have any of my old PC games from the 90s anymore. I have no idea where there went or how I lost them. But they are just gone. However, I still have every game I’ve ever bought on steam.
I’m not a heavy gamer anymore. If I see something I want, it’s easy to just put it on my wishlist and wait until it goes on sale at a price I think is reasonable. If I feel bored, I might open up my full list of games and browse for something to install. My game saves get backed up to the cloud. My controllers just work. Everything related to the gaming experience is integrated into one place, and I like that, it makes it easy. And for the most part, steam kind of just stays out of my way.
I remember when steam launched, and we all fucking hated the “always online” requirement because be all had dialup and switching steam to offline mode was a damn annoying hassle.
Just finished Adventure Time for the first time. Finn’s loss of his arm trying to connect with his selfish father and its replacement with a demon-laden version of himself followed by cold metal is a rich examination of the dehumanizing reduction of man to utility expanded upon by almost every other character (but particularly his disembodied mother). That said, Jake was totally his cure for male loneliness.
You realize that John DiMaggio (most famous for voicing the Scotsman in Samurai Jack and Master Shake('s muscles) in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but has also done some other notable roles such as Elzar on Futurama or Bender on Futurama and apparently like half of the shows that involve voice acting out there) voices Jake as well as Banana guards 1 and 2!?
That doesn’t stop the voices from being annoyingly high and children’s tv coded. I’ve only seen a little bit of the show, but for me that’s an obstacle.
I may try to muddle through and see if I can stand it.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I see there is a lot of features that I have no use for so I never explored (controller stuff, cloudsave, social features, achievements, etc)… I guess auto updates are cool though, but I only play old games anyway :P
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Aktywne