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
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
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
Except what steam does isn’t considered bloat to a large swath of users.
Or developers
I’m not sure I agree, but thank you for explaining
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.
Can you articulate how Steam is a monopoly?
Do you mean to say that Steam has a store front separate from the launcher?
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Integrate with just about anything except Linux?
While I liked it, the lack of controller support made me switch to Playnite back in my Windows gaming days.
Playnite is awesome. One of the few pieces of software I really miss having on the Linux side of things.
Once you have it set up, you truly have everything gaming in one launcher. Non-steam-VR platforms, emulators, etc.
And I liked the UI a lot better than Galaxy, too, but that’s more subjective.
Lutris is not a valid alternative for Linux?
No. Lutris is an inconsistent mess of botched amateur level UX. I can barely stand to look at it after using Playnite.
I use steam for everything I can, and bottles to manage my wine environments for anything else.
I’m perfectly happy with lutris and it does everything I want it to do.
After configuring everything there I just import them into cartridges for a minimalistic launcher
Lutris is a passable wine environment manager, surpassed by bottles.
My issues are with using it as a library manager and launcher, which is what Playnite is. Lutri’s UI is absolutely atrocious for actually browsing your games. You don’t use it for that either, apparently.
Everything Lutris does that I might need, is done better by other applications.
At this point, I want to try Playnite + Bottle and see if it’s a suitable combination. Someone is already using this combo? Pro and cons?
Have they fixed integrations? A few years ago, all integrations consistently were breaking one by one,which made the usage very frustrating
A lot of these are specific to the integration. I had to uninstall the steam one and then install a newer fork.
It’s weird how ruthlessly it tears down battle.net for its interface, but doesn’t even mention it for steam
I like steam’s UI. Only thing that I wish it was better is steam forum’s UI. I wish it was more like lemmy, where you can better see who answered you. Other stores don’t even have forums, except maybe for GoG, I’m not sure about that one.
search for steam forums has the worst ui they could have possibly made, quotes of posts are completely fucked
I generally agree with you but watch this video, it’ll show what steam could look like
It’s kinda the same for EGS. They added a bunch of things like achievements, user scores and critic scores, but no mention of those.
This doesn’t take away that it runs like a buggy mess sometimes. I just hate false equivalencies
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.
Shame there’s no HGL or Lutris…
yeah I mean who can compete with family share. wait what. one person being on means the library is unavailable???
Ya I never understood that. I can understand that one game being locked while someone is playing, but everything is ridiculous
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.
Steam always or lutris if push comes to shove
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
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
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.
(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)/¯
Heroic Games Launcher
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.
Unless it’s changed in the last year or so, Windows store stuff doesn’t show up, because it’s not a normal executable. You needed UWP hook to import them to Steam.
Launchbox has got you covered.
The Armory Crate SE app on the Asus Ally does a great job launching games from all the different stores/launchers.
I’ve been wondering how hard it would be to get it working on another PC.
Launchbox. But the 10foot controller interface is behind a paywall with a weird scheme.
I think it depends on what type of controller. Dualshock 4s and Dualsenses are natively supported by Windows and you don’t really need DS4 anymore to work with Launchbox. Xinput controllers may need a special driver.
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.
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!
Who could have predicted such a thing? Only every economist on the planet.
It’s higher now, more like 1 USD is around 1200 (black market rate, the ‘real’ value) The problem per se is not that the store is in USD now, but that during the transition many games abandoned regional pricing and set their prices to the default, which is the american value. So for example the game Jedi survivor is now listed at USD70, and with taxes it comes around to ~USD110. I’m working full time as an accountant, and that’s a third of my monthly salary, which is completely unaffordable.
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.
