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Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

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Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#181

Post by ummonk »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #174
BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

Steam- * Just works * It's simple * Cloud saves all of my games (with a few exceptions when the game developer doesn't enable it for whatever reason, this has only been for a few games so I'm not sure why) * Family sharing - this is HUGE for me. I can't re-buy every single game for my kids, so the fact that they can just play a game I purchased on their own account when I'm not online is an insane life saver. * Steam…

To add to all the things you mention that just work, it's also a social network - a lot of games make it easy to setup multiplayer games with Steam friends. For these games, you don't have to go through the work of linking with friends' game accounts for every game you play.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#182

Post by chungy »

rtpg wrote: post #178
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of weird how the same companies that can squeeze all possible computational abilities and use every tick that exists to force a computer to show amazing graphics with complex logic behind can't make a simple GUI. Well, even Steam nowadays is kind of a wrapper for a browser.

To be fair steam has always been a wrapper around a browser for its store content etc. Maybe the outer chrome has been pulled into that though…

In early Steam days, the store and community pages where handled by using mshtml.dll, with most of that ported to Chromium when they launched Linux and Mac OS versions.

I'm pretty sure the "new" Steam UI (the current one) is fully ported to basically be like an Electron app (I don't think it's literally Electron, but same concept).

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#183

Post by sam0x17 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #52

Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many! I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all its new games from Steam to get people to use Orig…

It's mainly the economics of "If you don't ship on steam, you miss out on the steam market" imo

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#184

Post by martinald »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #161
ivraatiems wrote: post #52

Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many! I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all its new games from Steam to get people to use Orig…

It's kind of weird how the same companies that can squeeze all possible computational abilities and use every tick that exists to force a computer to show amazing graphics with complex logic behind can't make a simple GUI. Well, even Steam nowadays is kind of a wrapper for a browser.

Is that really surprising? Even a simple GUI is not that simple these days.

This was reinforced recently when an incredibly good software engineer I knew recently got stuck with a problem. It ended up being a networking problem but his understanding of anything deeper than basic DNS settings was approximately zero. I was actually amazed given I assumed from his other knowledge that he would have a similar understanding of deep network concepts.

I think this happens just as much in companies. Yes, they may have 100s of insanely good graphic programmers who can do crazy low level stuff with shaders on GPUs, but do you know how to build a set of scalable and extendable web services to power a GUI app, with localisation, payment methods, 2FA, etc. I have seen some absolutely insane APIs written by game devs before, basically reinventing the wheel to pull a news feed in.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#185

Post by polski-g »

BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

If you want to release a game for the PC not via Steam, you are free to do so.

You cannot release an app for iOS absent iOS app store.

That's the problem. Apples becomes the gatekeeper instead of your own technical prowess

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#186

Post by spullara »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #174
BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

Steam- * Just works * It's simple * Cloud saves all of my games (with a few exceptions when the game developer doesn't enable it for whatever reason, this has only been for a few games so I'm not sure why) * Family sharing - this is HUGE for me. I can't re-buy every single game for my kids, so the fact that they can just play a game I purchased on their own account when I'm not online is an insane life saver. * Steam…

Wow, this is basically a description of the Apple App Store.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#187

Post by Hjfrf »

dzqhz wrote: post #142
ryandrake wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I already have a "launcher" for my programs. It's called my computer's operating system. I don't understand why I should need to run a program just to have it run another program.

So you can conveniently buy, download and update certain programs.

Those could be a package manager and a web page.

Microsoft did this to themselves by not having a standard package manager installed by default.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#188

Post by m4rtink »

BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

At least in some circles Steam gets bonus points for Linux support and actively contributing to various related open source projects, such as Wine and various GPU drivers and tools.

Sure, thats needed for Steam Deck these days, but other vendors basically not support Linux at all, let alone contribute back!

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#189

Post by KiranRao0 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #161
ivraatiems wrote: post #52

Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many! I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all its new games from Steam to get people to use Orig…

It's kind of weird how the same companies that can squeeze all possible computational abilities and use every tick that exists to force a computer to show amazing graphics with complex logic behind can't make a simple GUI. Well, even Steam nowadays is kind of a wrapper for a browser.

Unverified Rumor, so a healthy grain of salt is required:

A friend at a large GPU maker was mentioning that a lot of "squeezing all possible compute abilities" for games are in the driver, rather than in the game itself. Which is why you'll often see significant performance improvements with driver updates after a game has launched.

It makes sense as it's in the GPU makers' best interest to have the maximum performance, or else they'll be crushed in benchmarks.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#190

Post by WithinReason »

Ekaros wrote: post #111
mey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The block chain may be able to validate a license to a copy of the game, but that doesn't encompass hosting/delivery of content. The actual content of NFTs, tiny PNGs, are still hosted behind a URL. Putting 60+GB AAA titles out there for all time isn't something a Blockchain itself can solve. I also don't know how IPFS people would feel if they became the CDN for commercial software.

Torrents are a thing, but still I won't give my bandwidth for something I paid good money for. Just no.

I would if it meant paying 30% less
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