Having one launcher isn’t a problem for me. Steam’s OS’s launcher even allows me to launch GOG games through Heroic without even really launching Heroic.
Where it starts being a problem is when individual games need their own launcher…
I see the launcher as the system menu in a console…
I’m not a fan of Steam or any launcher really but they have some useful features like friends lists and multiplayer updates. I don’t miss the times of downloading individual patches and having to insert a disc but nowadays has its own problems like “online” requirements for singleplayer and being forced to update. Thankfully GOG exists and some devs still offer DRM free versions and that’s my priority now.
Persona 3 Reload, it’s absolutely sucked me in! Had tried to play the Portable version on Vita a few years back but never got into it. Helps that it runs smooth as butter on Steam deck, super easy to pick up and play with the sleep mode - dangerously so.
Playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and just finished Act 2 today. Kinda not sure about this one.
The prologue was a complete slog. Just stuck at level 2, basically no options to do anything, fights taking hours because the enemy and you constantly miss each other.
Act 1 was a lot better, you gain levels at a decent pace and grow a lot more powerful (compared to the prologue). There were a few challenging fights, I think most or all of them optional, so it wasn’t too bad. Except when you’re “stuck” in a tiny room with no space to maneuver, and enemies that use AoE attacks. Also, permanent debuffs, that you don’t have the tools to remove yet, unless you buy expensive items from a vendor. Fantastic, just like Kingmaker.
Then Act 2 started alright, still had a couple of “trap areas”, that you probably shouldn’t visit as soon as you find them. Then in the later half it got a lot slower, nothing really to explore, and you’re mostly waiting and slowly building your Crusader Army to clear the way. Kingmaker was similar, but only in the later Acts, when you’ve basically done everything, and you just need to wait for the next big event. While this wasn’t as extreme (not by a long shot), it’s a bit worrying that this stuff is already starting this early into the game.
Anyway, Act 2 didn’t end badly, it was actually fun, since you get a lot of power, relatively quickly, so I’ll keep playing. If there’s another one of these super slow periods though, where you’re just waiting around, I’ll either cheat/mod to make it more bearable or drop the game, depending on how I feel at the time.
Apart from that, the game is still extremely buggy, even after all these years of patches. It’s probably even worse than Kingmaker. I’m playing in Turn-Based mode and I regularly just lose turns with characters, which is just frustrating. The enemy aggro system/mechanic is also kind of terrible and possibly also broken. It’s really surprising just how much better Rogue Trader is in that regard. It still has a bunch of bugs, but they are relatively minor.
All the talk of games ownership and preservation overlooks the fact that I can play my first steam game today, while so many of my disks have been lost to time.
And let’s not forget how much bullshit came with those disks. DRM schemes up to and including root-kits. Serial # and activation codes. And don’t forget, though you had physical media, what you actually owned was a licence.
Games get updates far more often than they did back in the 90s and 00s. If your game is installed, it’s pushed to you automatically. If it’s not installed, the next time you install it, you’ll be on the latest version.
Installing a game is passive compared to inserting the next disc, fishing out the serial key, etc. You just click download and walk away for 5 minutes. Likewise, as games are very large these days, you can easily uninstall and reinstall games on limited drive space very easily from the same UI.
Cloud saves. They’re always nice to have. You can rig up something like it if you’ve got the networking and scripting know-how, but once again, it’s just passive through a launcher like Steam.
There’s a lot to be said about the longevity of network multiplayer games that allow you to self host and port forward, but Steam and its ilk mean that the average person never has to learn how to do that ever, and it’s more secure for the end users for Steam to take on the burden of facilitating the connection.
With things like Steam’s Big Picture Mode, you can navigate an entire library and jump from game to game with nothing but a controller.
Launching a game via Proton, whether in Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, or Steam, is just easier and more automatic than not using a launcher.
All that said, there’s a lot of value to GOG for never requiring the launcher (but they make an annoying exception for network multiplayer games).
One reason is Achievements. You need software to track it, and it is better to let the platform do it and consolidate all the common code and related UI, but that means there would be a platform process (e.g. Steam launcher / GOG Galaxy) running in the background to process them.
Out of all the features Steam offers, the most useful is probably just automatic updates. Much better than having to go check for an update myself and maybe even redownload the whole game every time instead of just the changes.
Also Steam Workshop, multiplayer (if it goes through Steamworks), controller fixes, screenshot and recording functions, chat, forums, etc.
It can be convenient. You’re going to launch the games somehow, whether that’s clicking files in a folder or running a command. If you have a bunch of games it’s nice to see them neatly organized in one place with nice visual representation. Non-launcher options tend to either get unwieldy or require more customization work.
The Steam launcher does a whole bunch of other useful things, like managing saves, setting up Proton, tracking play time and achievements, connecting to friends, integrating the store. It’s not hard to see why people like the convenience.
It is annoying when it goes too far… like individual games that insist on having their own launcher.
Heroic is a nice middle ground. GoG gives you simple downloads, that you can then choose to access through Heroic.
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.
I may check out this GOG eventually. Accounts, subscriptions, micro transactions, and criminal proprietary extortion are why I stopped gaming for the most part. For me, it has been full-source or fuck off for a long time. I cannot fix stupid in anyone else but me. I will not support criminal extortion and bank account skimming scams. They only exist because people have no real moral depth and self respect to say no.
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