From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
Steam sucked, really bad. For 8 years, maybe? Maybe more? It takes time to build something, but consumers demand everything immediately.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
Steam has been offering third-party titles since 2005 but still had no shopping cart as of 2008.
So 3 years? How long did that take epic? About the same time almost 2 decades later?
deleted by creator
Yea no
People complain because the EGS launcher is shit and not getting better in any meaningful way. Plus all the anti consumer shit that they do.
EGS didn’t come out last year. Heck GOG galaxy is fairly decent and it’s not even required and they have a fraction of the budget. And guess what a lot of people like and support them.
Origin is still bad and so is whatever Ubisoft’s launcher is called.
edit: for the record I didn’t say that steam was the best launcher, but I have found the launchers for world of warships and warthunder to be serviceable
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
Yeah I agree. I don’t play Blizzard Activision games for other reasons, but the battle.net launcher was by far the best.
I don’t get why, when PC gamers spend thousands to get a quick, smooth machine, that they put up with the shitfest that is Valve. I mean, it’s 2023 why is the UI still a website? Why is it that I can’t stop the news from popping up? And it’s so damn unresponsive and laggy.
well, I don’t think battle.net is the worst launcher