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.
Its for DRM. The easiest way to check if you actually own the game is to have the game contantly ask whether its connected to the server. The server should have your payment info. If thats not found, your game isnt legit.
Thats why GOG is so good, their games dont have DRM. Meaning you (and pirates) have a BETTER version of the game. Let me repeat that, downloading an illegal copy gives you a better running version of the same game you mightve paid for, because it doesnt have to contantly talk to a server before the game will allow you to do anything.
When you pirate a steam game, youre also downloading a “fake” version of steam, a steam emulator. The way they break DRM for steam games doesnt remove the DRM, but it slightly reduces the issues DRM causes because the server it is communicating with is local and doesnt have to index user files. Your game just asks the steam emulator if its legit, the steam emulator doesnt check anything, it just says that whatever got checked was legit.
Hitman was quickly pulled from GOG for being too big of a compromise on their values. Their only exception to DRM-free is multiplayer that uses GOG Galaxy services.
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
I use Steam Input to set up mouse input on my controller to utilize gyro aiming, which lets me play against mouse players without utilizing aim assist.
And I also set up keyboard inputs on my controller to be able to utilize keyboard short cuts over relying on things like the weapon/item wheel.
Makes it so I get a controller experience that is more mouse and keyboard like that I couldn’t get relying on default controller schemes.
I like the ease of use and services Steam provides. The easy installs/reinstalls, cloud saves, the custom Notes are very useful for me, the library organization, some steam workshop stuff, the community hubs for games are fun shared content, the guides, the discussions, the reviews. All of it makes a nice experience. In general it’s also cheaper than console. Then they made Steam Deck which is possibly my fav console ever.
90's kid myself so I probably don't fit into the old gamer category, but my grievance with launchers is the same with most UI systems: I must figure out how the author expected it to be used, and if there's something that bothers me, finding ways to circumvent or solve it is a quest.
At least with terminal-based tools, or very basic lanunchers, I can find far more easily ways to make launching games ideal, even by bridging to a program or the system's UI.
We don't, really. I certainly grew up without them. It did both good and bad things. It did centralize and simplify some things, but that came at a cost of freedom for more power users. It was great for sorting out dependencies at a time games were still often bad at doing that cleanly on their own for less-technical people. I think it did good things for community, though, particularly for those of us who did not use any modern consoles that had various party/SNS-like features baked in.
I hated being forced to use Steam when it launched, after they shut down WON that was used for CS. I want as little applications running in the background 24/7 as possible.
Steam got better overall, making the 24/7 background application actually useful to keep running (controller support to control desktop, chats, notifications of sales, etc). Nobody else does that tho, and I definitely don’t want to use a different launcher for every fucking game/store.
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.
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…
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