Vote with your wallet then. Stop buying games from terrible companies. Oh right, you prefer to just rant and literally change nothing in how you live life.
Games don’t typically state when they use game launchers. By the time you find out you’ve probably already bought the game. Ubisoft and EA are the only companies I can think of that have truly awful launchers that make me not buy games from them anymore.
Paradox games have a launcher and it doesn’t bother me. Very minimalistic. I also haven’t bought anything on release since the Wii first came out. People always bitch about little things so it’s hard to know how bad something is until I experience it first hand. I personally won’t play anything by Ubisoft or EA because they’re bad companies that make bad games. I’d put up with their shitty launchers if they had something truly unique to put aside my dislike for them, but they haven’t yet. A bad launcher isn’t enough to make me not buy a game. It’s simply a large deterrent.
Which is absolutely a must if you have a huge library across multiple platforms. How else will I find out if that indie gem in the latest Humble Bundle is already in the library somewhere?
Joking aside, Playnite is especially awesome if you like admiring a collection in gallery view. The “sorting title” feature is exactly what we need in a day and age where publishers don’t give a fuck about proper naming schemes.
They be like:
Game
Game II - Electric Boogaloo
Game 3: Definition of Insanity
Game™, the Return of Shenanigans
Game V; "Definitely the Last One"™
I just want my collection displayed in the proper order, stop that shit!
Playnite is sick. I’ve spent a ton of hours writing my own themes to customize it and set up categories for all of my games. And by that point I don’t even want to play the game I opened it for anymore lol
Heroic is pretty good too. Supports a lot fewer stores than Playnite (only Epic, GOG, and Amazon at the moment), but it doesn’t require any of the original launcher to be installed in order to download and play any games (with a few exceptions, such the the Star Wars games on Epic which still require the original launcher due to some fuckery).
Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and on the latter two, will even help you set up and configure Wine automatically in order to run your Windows games.
That’s a leap. EA sucks. There are plenty of games out there and there are plenty ways of managing them better than steam. Especially if you know your way around a PC.
It’d be another big player, it’s not going to be some indie startup that suddenly breaks out into the light to dazzle everyone. And all the other players in this space have their own, worse, storefront and launchers…
Just imagine uplay, but with steam/valves loyal userbase and therefore everyone else sold their games on it. shudders
I mean, who cares? Like having 15 launchers is not a real thing for most gamers I know. It’s saved in a cloud server under your profile. Just uninstall after you’re done with a game.
I can second the hijacking thing. Steam has its own controller input driver (?) it installs which sometimes clash with the actual drivers for the controller, which can lead to games registering input twice or not at all etc.
You can disable it but sometimes it randomly seems to re-enable itself and it’s super annoying.
On the other hand though, Steam Input is really powerful for remapping inputs and setting up controller maps to use for keyboard and mouse games. I’ve never had trouble with it apart from with an old handheld PC that registers its built in controller as an Xbox 360 controller instead of Xbox One
That’s totally fine but it should be opt in, or just prompt you when you launch the game for the first time. It doesn’t ask and then actively breaks things for some users.
Yeah it could definitely be more interactive, but then it would annoy users for the entirely opposite problem. I can see the complaints now in my head: “Steam prompts me about Steam Input before every single game I play! I get it valve” or similar (you and I both know the person would be ignoring some “don’t remind me” option
You don’t even need one for GOG - GOG Galaxy is totally optional and you can download absolutelly run of the mill offline installers for all games on GOG which do not require the installer or any network access, and you even keep the forever and ever (so all your old games are still installable and run on an old gaming computer with the old OS, so long as the hardware hasn’t died).
The launcher (GOG Galaxy) is entirelly optional, so I don’t use it at all and just download the installers for my games (and keep local copies in an external HD in my NAS).
This is a rare console W over PC. All your games are just there. No additional launchers or log ins, no waiting 30 minutes for the game to update because you havnt opened that launcher in months.
They’re capable of supporting mouse and keyboard. For some reason most games just don’t. Like on my PS5, anything that uses a mouse style menu, I can use a mouse to operate. I can also use a keyboard to type in input boxes with anything. But the only game I can fully play with a M&KB I’ve tried so far is Call of Duty. Which is nuts because Stellaris, Civilization and City Skylines are on this system, too, and they would very much benefit from full M&KB support.
I don’t have a PS5, but I have a couple Dualsense controllers. Some games BLOW ME AWAY on controller. Returnal with haptics and adaptive triggers? INSANE. I wouldn’t play it with any other control method.
Consoles have exclusives. I much rather download an extra launcher than have to pay $400 for very similar hardware to use their special launcher to play a game. Also, if you have physical games, you have to deal with changing those out. PC, you're already on your PC so you just play the games you wanna play. Also, basically every time I've tried to play something on a playstation with someone, their PS needs and update and the game needs an update. PC games just update without me paying any attention to them on their own.
They do. If I want to play one game, then I have to grab the disk and put it in its specific console to play it with its launcher. There's some exceptions, like gamecube games can be played on Wii's using its hardware and launcher. But if I want to the play a PS4 game, I have to switch to that hardware and the PS4 launcher. On PC, at least I can use retroarch as a single unified launcher for many consoles instead of buying several consoles to use each of them as a distinct launcher and steam for most everything else. No switching to the PS# launcher to run some things and the Switch launcher for different games. Even if a game has its own dedicated launcher on PC (probably enough reason for me to not bother playing), its still better than having to physically swap hardware to use its launcher.
The whole heckin console is your launcher. So now you need another whole box IRL for the other launchers. Be sure to fiddle with your TV’s source selection button that for some reason can never work the way we expect.
No it’s not, different hardware isn’t equivalent to different launchers. Because if it was you could say the same exact thing about PCs.
The point is, on console whether you play a ubisoft game or EA game or Microsoft game, they all are launched from the same native launcher.
And I literally don’t even own a modern console and play all my games on PC, so have no buyers remorse. So please stop with this infantile platform war bullshit. I’m assuming you’re a grown-ass man, so please act like it.
Another big win is game licences work for anyone using the console for all games. While some PC publishers require each individual user to buy another copy of the game in order to keep separate profiles. Looking at you, Ubisoft
If you’re a parent, you can create a family group with your Microsoft account. Add each child’s Microsoft account under yours. Purchase the game on your account. Login to your account on your childs PC to install it. Log out and then login to your childs account. They’ll be able to play it.
Limitations? They will not have access to any DLC. It’s limited to one child. If you have more than one child, too bad.
No additional launchers or log ins, no waiting 30 minutes for the game to update
That happens on consoles all the time. Don’t play your modern console (switch or newer) and the same thing happens. I avoid Xbox now because every time I go to play it’s a 30 minute wait for system and game updates. -and my Xbox is hardwired Ethernet to 300 mbs service so it’s not slow Internet
I even booted up my switch before family visiting on Thanksgiving because I knew it would want an update. At least Switch was nice by making it optional.
I’m not though. Unless you open every launcher for every game whenever you open you PC then you still have that problem.
If I’m using my xbox regularly than that one game I havnt played in 8 months is going to stay updated. The same isn’t true for PCs. I use mine every day, but the other week when I went to load up world of warships for the first time in a while I had a 12gb update because it has its own special launcher, so I just said fuck it and went to a different game.
I use dedicated cpu cores and other tweaks on my setup to reduce game input latency. Steam is always the 1 fucking program that randomly starves my remaining cores for absolutely no reason
It’s such a garbage-tier app and always has been. Credit to Valve for busting open online app stores, but I have no idea why people like Steam so much.
Absolutely hated it when I was forced to use it. Nowadays I don’t mind that much anymore. But if a game needs to launch another launcher first, that drives me crazy.
Looking at you, EA and Ubishit.
I got into steam because I could (using modded files) download valve games for free. It was like piracy but without the torrenting and gameboxart.jpg.exe shenanigans.
Then I liked Counter Strike, and portal was coming out… and now I have a few thousand bucks in games.
Still don’t like having to run a nanny program to be “allowed” to play the shit I paid for. But steam is the best of that garbage pile.
I got into it because I got Total War Napoleon (another annoying launcher with the Total War series nowadays…) and didn’t realize beforehand that you needed an Steam account for it.
I came around to appreciate the storefront and library for my purchased digital games. But as you said, I don’t want to have to run a nanny program to play my games. Especially my single player games.
That’s what I like about gog though, I can just download an offline installer for my games from them. Although I think by now even they have games on their store that require launchers.
That’s what I always find funny about the EGS hate crowd… They complain about the features it didn’t have at launch (that it now has) but in the end having to launch any launcher pisses me off, might as well use the one with the least garbage! No Valve, I don’t need fucking trading cards with my games!
Steam has a whole lot of useless features compared to Epic or GOG Galaxy, it’s the most bloated launcher available at the moment. Do you need cards and tradable items linked to your account to play your games?
What’s funny is that if the roles were reversed Epic would be accused of trying to monetize whales and gamblers, but no one bats an eye because it’s Valve doing it.
It’s clearly not part of this discussion because you can’t compare the user experience on Linux when the product you want to compare to doesn’t exist on it.
Also, you can just shut up if you can’t have a discussion without insulting the people you’re talking to, no one asked you to take part in the first place since clearly you’re trying to derail the discussion.
In a discussion where we’re comparing the user experience of two products we need to compare them in an environment where both products are working so the user can experience them both.
I don’t know how you can’t figure that out but here we are.
One of the most modable games ever if you know what you’re doing. In the install I have on my pc the only original file remaining is the .exe, its closer to 20Gb rather than the original 750Mb. Unfortunately the old mod repository died years ago, I have some backed up plus the ones I wrote but its maybe 1% of what was out there.
One neat thing is how robust the engine is, throw it enough power and it has no issue with huge models, or breaking universe.
Some old screenshots I found: imgur.com/a/FILLe0n(Pic uploader seems to be down unfortunately)
I don’t have many of the raw mods anymore, but I do have a ton of modified versions in my install of the game. Mostly modified from me moving around hard points and adjusting parameters to improve balance. I could probably share my entire install somehow, I’m pretty sure it’ll work out of the box on most computers at least up to Windows 10.
You could do some dirty things in Bridge Commander. If you disabled the enemy shields I believe one of the actions you could take was transporting people off the ship.
Honestly that tactic is kind of universe breaking - imagine the thing to do is just beam the bridge crew into space with a large transporter; such an easy way to totally knock out a ship.
No launchers at all? They do help to organize the game library, synchronize saves across devices, enable achievements and friend lists, make it possible to share game libraries, install all your games from a single place, have a shop to discover new games. Steam even provides basic APIs for games to enable multiplayer. Many of these things could be baked into the game, though that would be extra work some devs might not do.
One centralised launcher? Such a monopoly might lead to problems such as higher prices / less money for game devs (especially the good indie studios that don’t have negotiation power), less innovation around that launcher and less effort towards a good experience with few bugs etc.
The problem isn’t launchers like steam or origin etc. it’s that when you install a EA game with steam you end up launching both steam and origin to play. Same with Ubisoft and Uplay.
The game should run without the specific launcher, so that it works with any launcher. Not this launcher inception nested dolls bullshit we have today
startrek.website
Aktywne