Shame there's no HGL or Lutris...
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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EA App is not even a little bit better than Origin. Offline mode straight up doesn't work in the EA App, which has been reported so many times and ignored. You can't move your installation to another drive like you could with Origin. You can't gift games or DLC to your friends in the EA App like you could in Origin. EA apps sucks so much that when I recently purchased Mass Effect Legendary Edition for the ridiculous deal of 90% off (on Steam), and then remembered I would have to use the EA App to play it, I immediately refunded it. Given a choice, I would happily go back to Origin. I hate the EA App so much. It deserves a negative score.
yeah I mean who can compete with family share. wait what. one person being on means the library is unavailable????
I've always thought that was something they had to put in place to place publishers. I mean, sharing is basically the same as stealing, right? So they had to make it really dumb in order for pubs to go along with it?
I doubt it. It makes it essentially useless nowadays to given how many single player games have a online requirement.
Ya I never understood that. I can understand that one game being locked while someone is playing, but everything is ridiculous
Steam always or lutris if push comes to shove
If you're going to try and compete with something like Steam, you need to actually compete.
Most launchers are storefronts at best and nothing else. Often the buying experience isn't even good.
I would like to see Steam broken up so it is just as a storefront as well
Do you mean to say that Steam has a store front separate from the launcher?
why?
Monopolies
As the comment section points out; it’s impossible to compete with steam because they have so many adjacent perks
And all software should only ever do one thing, otherwise it’s bloat
Obviously the unpopular opinion with the neckbeards, but I agree with you. I don't understand the blind love for Steam. I mean it's an effective platform I guess, definitely the better one for sure, but they all are pretty unnecessary. Steam definitely is pretty monopolistic. But whatever, everyone also enjoys paying $1200 for video cards from the same two suppliers, that were a quarter of that price not more than 6 or 7 years ago.
I really wish people would stop calling successful companies "monopolies". Mono = 1. As in a single company operating in a market.
Most often it involves anti-competitive practices also, which Steam has absolutely none of.
The competition just sucks. All of them. Which this article articulates beautifully.
If by "broken up" you mean you'd like to see another company actually make an attempt to compete with them by providing value to their customers instead of trying to exploit them like cash cows while simultaneously locking them into their shitty launcher, I absolutely agree.
By broken up I’d like to see the community, workshop, chat system, achievements, and marketplace all be separate companies
That would be better for everyone
Why? All those features already exist as separate companies. Discord for chat, Nexus for workshop, like 5000 places run their own marketplace etc.
How would it be better for everyone if you have to set up 5 separate things? That's currently the issue with Epic's launcher that it does nothing other than let you buy games so it doesn't provide the value Steam does.
Because then they would plug and play with whatever service you use
Oh, you can already do that with Discord with the in-game overlay and anyone else is free to implement stuff like that too. If you mean that there should be a open source alternative for the Steam client then you can check out Lutris, it can be used to launch steam games.
More evidence that there is no reason for steam to have these features
What evidence? If you prefer alternatives, then those are available
It's clear why people prefer Steam: it has good features. But the other launchers should complete by making better features not forcing Steam to remove features.
Other services exist to achieve those things so it’s not necessary for them to do it
Not necessary, no but it adds value to it's users and thus making their platform the most popular.
Like Epic's launcher is the perfect comparison for this: It has the bare minimum features available to sell games and people hate it for it's lack of features. It's not necessary for Epic to add those features but clearly people value those in their choice of platform.
Which they shouldn’t have the option of
It’s like saying Amazon and Walmart are better than a local shop because they offer more/are cheaper
They shouldn’t be allowed to compete at that size
I’m not sure I agree, but thank you for explaining
Except what steam does isn't considered bloat to a large swath of users.
Or developers
Is there a universal launcher like Lutris available for Windows? I was looking to build a gaming HTPC and want to interface with it with just only a controller, just like a console.
Playnite. Combines all games from all connected launchers into one and configurable/themeable to your hearts desire
I use Playnite. It automatically adds all you games from all famous launchers, lets you add games manually, download the meta data for it and has theme and plugin support.
Does steam count? I use it to launch non-steam games.
From other launchers like Itch, Epic & GOG as well?
You can add them as shortcuts. UWP need a tool to set them up in steam, but you can do them too.
They'll still need to open the other launchers to run, but it's about as close to seamless as you'll get. You can make Windows log in automatically, not lock when it sleeps, and launch to steam big picture mode. It might take a search or two to set up, but after it's (minus windows being windows) relatively out of your way.
You can do the same with Linux, but you lose anticheat games and setting up other launchers is more work.
You don't need any extra tools. A basic function of Steam is "Add non-Steam Game" it's the little + symbol at the bottom left of the window. Find the .exe of the game you want to add, click, and it's in your steam library now. You'll want to add custom artwork, but it works. If the game launches in a separate launcher, that launcher will launch from steam of course.
(not for windows, OS) Maybe have a look at Bazzite? It's supposed to be a SteamOS but Fedora based. I've been meaning to have a look at it eventually, so i dont know how it actually is, maybe it's garbage for all i know
There is ChimeraOS too, based on Arch.
The problem with Linux is that you will always have to tolerate a nontrivial section of games being straight-up unavailable, of games breaking, running suboptimally and requiring hacky solutions to run, and the complete absence of first-party support from hardware manufacturers and game developers. It's not suitable for HTPCs despite having terrific UI unfortunately.
I'm hoping it gets to the point where lutris/proton/other compatibility layers are automatically sorted out by the OS and whatever you install would use what it needs. Maybe a fool's dream ¯\(ツ)/¯
Launchbox. But the 10foot controller interface is behind a paywall with a weird scheme.
Playnite.
Seconding Playnite, works stupidly well with everything from emulators (it can even download and install them to folders from within if you want that), and with add-ons shit gets wild
Sadly steam is no longer a viable platform for purchasing games in Argentina, so I have to disagree with this article
Sadly Argentina is no longer a viable country, so steam had to disagree with being involved.
Was is ever to begin with? In any case luckily the Microsoft store still has competitive prices so we still can use that
Probably pre CIA Coup. But the issue is the here and now.
For those out of the loop and don't care to check, Argentina and Turkey have had very volatile currencies for years now. Developers had to constantly update the pricing on those countries because the currencies keep losing value. So Valve decided to ease the burden on the developers and let them set the pricing based on the USD. That price then get converted to the local currency based on the exchange rate. When the exchange rate is 1 USD to ~800 peso it's no wonder that game prices are insane.
ding ding ding, winner!
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