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So You Want to Compete with Steam

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Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#81

Post by kakarot »

j_s wrote: post #77
kakarot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free edition of Ninite only installs 32-bit applications, unfortunately.

Thanks for the heads-up, it's been quite a while since I've needed it. How has this limited your experience so far? I'm not really well-versed on even the expected impact this has on commonly used applications... is there any?

Well, no one wants a 32-bit web browser, and IrfanView 32-bit cannot handle large files well, I can't remember if the JRE has a 64-bit mode in the free edition but probably not.

In general you will also lose stability and/or performance with complex or intensive applications. For many suites like GIMP, Blender and LibreOffice this is a deal-breaker for me.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#82

Post by MachinShinn- »

krapp wrote: post #16

Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager[0]. It's almost kind of a shame that it's more or less entirely for games and game development software - something like it with sourceforge/github integration or an API for general purpose Windows installers would be nice. [0]notwithstanding whatever Windows 10 might have, because I still refuse to touch that, but it's probably…

I can't think of a single reason to stick with Win7 over Win10 in 2018. Please enlighten me.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#83

Post by andybak »

muzani wrote: post #64

Also a huge point to consider is that games also have to be as cheap as Steam. I used to buy pirated DVDs once upon a time because the real thing would cost about a month salary. Now Steam games in third world countries are so cheap I just buy a bunch I don't intend to play. Even the discount sites and Humble Bundle aren't able to match up against Steam in third world countries.

https://isthereanydeal.com/ regularly shows me titles on my wishlist that are cheaper on somewhere other than on Steam.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#84

Post by stock_toaster »

scott_karana wrote: post #48
barbs wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How likely do you think it would be for Valve to buy Discord?

Depends on how much funding Discord has already raised, I bet. Their VCs are generally going to want a massive exit, and I bet the valuations after previous raises are non-trivial. Guessing that Valve is adverse to acquisitions in general too, for their weird cultural reasons. EDIT: $725 million. Not cheap. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/discord/

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't bought them. Seems like it would fit well with their twitch property.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#86

Post by jhanschoo »

discoursism wrote: post #20

This article is full of good observations. A shorter way to say it is that the distance between Steam and "perfect" is not very large, and there isn't enough margin to be had to justify the cost of building something to close that gap. And that's assuming you can identify the features that would bring you to perfect from where Steam is. I cannot even imagine a game distribution product that would get me to switch fro…

The article takes pains to point out that itch.io pretty much has better tooling, but Steam has walled-garden effects that probably even "perfect" is not good enough.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#87

Post by spacehunt »

flukus wrote: post #80
kenhwang wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is set to update on WiFi only. And everyday, without fail, the moment I plug my phone into a power source in the evening (could even be to my computer for debugging), it'll start going through and applying all available updates. The performance impact is always noticeable during the duration of the updates. Other common case is when I pull into my driveway/office and happen to be charging my phone in the car and…

There's also that they treat all wifi as the same. I saw my data allowance for a 2 week cruise in a few weeks, it's 250MB total. I wonder how many people burn through that on updates alone. As annoying as windows can be about applying the updates, at least they let you set if a connection is metered or not so it won't download. If only steam and everything else didn't ignore the setting. > Ironically enough, Microsof…

> There's also that they treat all wifi as the same.

You can tell the system which Wifi networks are metered, at least since Lollipop if not earlier.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#88

Post by dageshi »

sergiotapia wrote: post #67

Steam has lost that "discovery" aspect to it. It's now mainly weaboo garbage, early access and PUBG clogging up the trending and leaderboards. I feel like I can no longer discover cool titles or great things people are buying on the site.

Yes, an entire industry of youtubers volunteered to take care of discovery and curation for games, valve saw that and decided to "just" be the video game version of Amazon and take care of sales and distribution.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#89

Post by jakobegger »

kenhwang wrote: post #74
on_and_off wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So weird you mention all this, in my experience Google Play does a good job with this. The only thing that really irks me is that if an app while you are using the phone, the foreground app should never get updated. Sure, download the delta patch but wait for me to have stopped using it in order to update (or if I am using the app for hours, pick an update message). To be fair nowadays this only happens when I manual…

Mine is set to update on WiFi only. And everyday, without fail, the moment I plug my phone into a power source in the evening (could even be to my computer for debugging), it'll start going through and applying all available updates. The performance impact is always noticeable during the duration of the updates. Other common case is when I pull into my driveway/office and happen to be charging my phone in the car and…

Regarding unsaved state when restarting, that sounds like an app problem. macOS has gotten extremely good at state restoration and has great APIs for that. Typically my computer screen looks exactly the same after a restart.

So if your app loses state because of an automatic restart, that is really a problem with the app. The developer should either make use of the state restoration APIs (preferred), or at least implement -applicationShouldTerminate: to prevent the reboot when there are unsaved changes.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#90

Post by phit_ »

stock_toaster wrote: post #84
scott_karana wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how much funding Discord has already raised, I bet. Their VCs are generally going to want a massive exit, and I bet the valuations after previous raises are non-trivial. Guessing that Valve is adverse to acquisitions in general too, for their weird cultural reasons. EDIT: $725 million. Not cheap. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/discord/

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't bought them. Seems like it would fit well with their twitch property.

They bought Curse instead. Using it's former Curse Voice client and turning it into a games store.
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