I guess they’re giving up on convincing people to download their launcher.

  • simpleOP
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    1 year ago

    But most games aren’t DRM-free, so the launchers are necessary to verify your account and ownership of the game. Otherwise every store would be GOG, and most publishers won’t use it.

      • trias10@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That’s a very dangerous monopoly.

        • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          What are you even talking about? It’s an application that launches a game. It adds nothing of value to the process of opening the game. How is it less of a monopoly to use a launcher to launch a launcher to launch a game?

          • trias10@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s not just a launcher, it’s a storefront. Uplay, EA-whatever, and Rockstar Launcher are all storefronts where you can buy the games those companies make.

            The launcher itself is a UI which lets you “launch” the game. Steam for example, is a launcher and a storefront, as is Uplay.

            Having all your games in a single launcher/storefront is bad, as it gives a single company entire control over your games, and monopoly pricing.

            Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut, which is totally unnecessary, and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts. Because why pay a 30% tax just for selling your game, this ain’t the 1990s anymore with CD-ROM pressings.

            Fuck Steam and it’s monopolistic, 30% rent seeking bollocks.

              • trias10@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                There is no benefit, I never claimed the launcher within a launcher was a benefit.

                The problem is the cancer that is Steam itself. We need more competing storefronts which don’t require the Steam launcher, and even better if there’s no launcher of any kind at all, just a binary to run to play the game.

                • pory@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Gog? Itch? Plenty of developers choose to sell their games in DRM-free formats. Plenty of games don’t even cost money.

                  • trias10@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Exactly, and I have written about how much I love GOG and Itch and why I hope they take more market share away from Steam.

            • BarbecueCowboy@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Just a note, as a storefront, there are plenty of competing options that work with Steam. Think Humble Store and other resellers, Steam doesn’t take any cut from those sales and while they do enforce some standards (Things like staying close to price parity with Steam on alternate storefronts) and can refuse to give out keys, the market there is definitely very healthy.

            • Nefyedardu@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut

              20-30% cut, which is in-line with most digital storefronts.

              which is totally unnecessary

              Companies exist to make money. Making money will never be “unnecessary” for a company. And hosting secure data centers around the world delivering 15 Tbps a day is not exactly cheap.

              and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts.

              Also remember that Ubisoft and Rockstar (and Microsoft and Blizzard) came crawling back to Steam all the same, meaning they thought they would make more money even with the 20-30% tax. So a 20-30% tax must seem pretty fair to these companies for what they are getting.

          • trias10@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, and GoG is fantastic and I’m so glad it exists. We need more DRM-free storefronts without launchers for sure.

        • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          That’s an argument for Steam not being the only game store, it doesn’t make much sense after you already bought it from Steam and the game requires an alternate launcher to be installed.

          But on that other matter, I think you have a point in theory, but EA, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard don’t seem to have any interest in providing a better service or unique benefits. Steam’s dominance is overly maligned when it’s the only one where the company actually earned its place, by providing a better service.

          And even then Steam doesn’t even have as much of a monopoly over PC games as console manufacturers actually do over each of their platforms. But since it is by design that consoles only support the platform-maker approved games, it doesn’t even register in people’s minds as a monopoly. As if they were never supposed to control these devices they have bought.

    • Shiroa@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Launchers are a solution to DRM, not the solution. The way today’s modern market is, it’s understandable that some gamers have forgotten that there used to be games you bought directly from the publisher’s website. DRM was done by asking you to sign into your account before launching the game, a lot of games still make you do this today. There’s also the tried and true method of phoning home with a product key for DRM as well. There’s no shortage of ways to be independent, very few companies are interested in doing so because Steam is convenient.

      • simpleOP
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        1 year ago

        Aside from the fact that logging into every game separately would be a nightmare, it would only work for online games and be a major hassle for developers because it means they also need to compensate for not having a launcher on things like automatic updates and deployments. It’s not really a solution either side would like.

        I’m getting downvoted hard but people are forgetting that a game store not having a launcher is suicide. GOG tried that, started bleeding money, caved in and made their own launcher. Steam also has 20 years under their belt so saying worse launchers shouldn’t be allowed to exist would just kill competition entirely.

      • simpleOP
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        1 year ago

        Gog is reportedly failing and Humble’s success is because they’re selling Steam keys, so they still depend on them.