Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

bethesda.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 404 posts

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

#341

Post by 1_player »

hnbad wrote: post #332
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> * Steam sales I think it's worth adding that Steam's (more recent) refund policy is also a big deal. Even if you don't need it, knowing that it's there can influence buying decisions because it feels more like you can "try before you buy" (although this actually involves paying before you get to try and then putting yourself in a situation where Steam could refuse to give you your money back). After using Steam alm…

It is not rare that I buy a game at full price, and it's on sale within a week from my purchase.

In fact Valve has recently decided to shorten the big sales cycle to one every 28 days (plus the small weekly flash sales).

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

#342

Post by selestify »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #204
KiranRao0 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 performan…

It is absolutely the case that drivers contain code to fix errors or optimize away mistakes made in top tier games. This is well-known and often can be demonstrated by renaming the game binary or making other changes. Sometimes this happens with the blessing of the game company, and sometimes it doesn't. Or, sometimes GPU folks will send a team over to help the game studios fix performance issues during their develop…

So it might actually be a good business strategy to just focus on building a popular game, and outsource optimization to the graphics card companies for free?

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

#343

Post by modo_mario »

chungy wrote: post #182
rtpg wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

They use CEF(Chromium Embedded Framework)

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

#344

Post by mmsbdjjkvjj »

Moru wrote: post #314
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Family sharing is a step in the right direction but in the old days with CD:s, you could buy it once and play multiplayer games together with your family and friends. Now you need separate accounts for everyone and a copy of each. In Sweden we pay a tax on each harddrive and other storage media to cover this sharing. It's alled Private sharing tax. It's distributed between creators by some organisation. Steam and oth…

The tax you refer to is for backing up purchased content on external hdd and such only. You seem to misread the law to cover piracy (sharing with friends).

> Privatkopieringsersättning är en lagstadgad kompensation för det inkomstbortfall som kopiering för privat bruk av musik, film och tv från en laglig förlaga medför för kulturskapare med upphovsrätt i de kopierade verken. Ersättningen betalas av tillverkare eller importörer av sådana lagringsmedier som är "särskilt ägnade för" privatkopiering,[1] som tomma CD, DVD, externa hårddiskar, USB-minnen och mp3-spelare.

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatkopieringsersättning

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

#345

Post by lagmos »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #193
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> * Just works I don't game very often, but the way Steam "just works" can't be understated enough. It's not perfect. I've run into weird bugs occasionally, though they were likely the fault of a specific game. However, it's miles ahead of other game launchers I've dealt with. I'm a casual gamer, so if I end up fighting the game launcher and update mechanism for more than a few minutes, I'm just going to give up and…

The 'it just works' part is something that i really struggled with and it tainted my view of stream for good. I absolutely hated when it forced an update download and wouldn't let you do anything about it. tryin to pay a game and then bring forced to wait an hour or something (my internet used to be bad)... was infuriating and ruined many gaming sessions.

I never got a fondness for stream as a result and avoid it whenever possible.

On that note, i was really surprised to find out that epic let's you start plenty of your games without having to open the client. That's a killer feature for me. Family sharing is too.

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

#346

Post by querez »

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…

Also (at least for me): Linux support. This is by far the one killer feature for me.

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

#347

Post by _the_inflator »

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…

I side with you, however in the light of recent advances of Apple, I support any form of platform diversity.

I also believe, that over long Steam might me sold by Microsoft. MS and Google are building a different stack/ecosystem.

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

#348

Post by modo_mario »

enra wrote: post #156
ramesh31 wrote: post #27

I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back in the day, but now it's just another annoying launcher that segments my friends lists.

Battle.net is probably the only launcher that is quite as reliable and high quality as Steam. One example is that you can start playing WoW way before the download or install is complete. Downside is that they have been really pushing for upsells in the recent years. All other launchers are garbage. Origin doesn’t even render text properly on my 4k screen, and pretty much all of them forgets my login each week.

It would be nice if it wasn't such a struggle on Linux. I remember getting their games to run with lutris and it worked fine but then one day their client updated and i never managed to log in again.

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

#349

Post by brodock »

sph wrote: post #191
spullara wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The App Store is not even close to the convenience and features of Steam. Awful search, awful review system, confusing interface and.. that's it? I don't see how the app store even compares.

Apple store is also annoyingly assuming you speak the language of the country where you live in. It doesn't allow you to choose "English" for example, if you are accessing it from Germany..

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

#350

Post by hanselot »

remexre wrote: post #276
ralusek wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody wants them to spend energy on the technical side, we want them to use an existing engine like Unreal.

The incredible moddability of their RPGs, at least, is in large part to the flexibility of their engine. How many other games have active modding communities 12 years after launch as large as New Vegas'?

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN