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Trussed Maiden
Super-Earth
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2020
- Location
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So this is a funny question for me. I've always actually been poor at adopting platforms like Steam, definitely Epic, even GoG. I'm a pretty oldschool PC gamer; the fanciest 'hub' launchers from my prime day were maybe game demo discs? Otherwise pretty much everything came as its own release, and I'd arrange shortcuts into a little 'launcher' folder of my own. It was kinda fun.
Then over time games have gone off to hubs. Exclusively one or the other from various companies like Blizzard and EA, Steam becoming a big one, extras over time. Sure, there's a case for cloud backups, instant updates, better linked communities (eh, maybe not Epic...) and putting games wherever you want (since CDs aren't exactly much better, being that they degrade/get lost/get broken over time and you have to do some tricks to actually keep them forever). But I don't know, I look at the various clients now and I wonder if a sort of charm has been lost. Certainly I expect people would bring up the service vs owning a copy trend, the fact you have to give several companies login information to have a wider range of games, the problems when the given service goes down, and how you have to go to various places and have them organized any which way (weirdly, this is the only one that regularly digs at me). People who only have a few games on Steam or don't bounce between publishers a lot wouldn't have that problem. And slightly aside, but relevant in my mind, how everything is so linked to an online connection - namely, when singleplayer games require going online to do anything, generally through these clients or their own wannabe hubs.
I don't know, I can still make the old shortcut trick work with caveats, but it kinda feels like a larger pain in the ass than it has to be. Unfortunately, my interests are everywhere and the brunt of the whole multi-client issue takes a new level when I'm mixing 90s titles with new releases. There's good new stuff out there, but also charm that's been lost with time, so it feels right to give various generations a chance.
I get that everyone wants to bundle their own brand into stuff (like total war having all its games on its own launcher, because that's the series, or Blizzard linking up their games). Frankly, I don't really want them, but they've often become mandatory anyways. Frankly, they're just not that good, and the features sprinkled in really don't compete. I prefer to centralize or split, with little in between. Either a universal, 'neutral' standard (if Steam is an evil, let it simplify things and be the evil with more flexibility) or just a choice between bloated launcher or 'run this thing' shortcut without extra input or loading up a client screen first.
Any thoughts? Maybe this would have been better in the Academy.
Then over time games have gone off to hubs. Exclusively one or the other from various companies like Blizzard and EA, Steam becoming a big one, extras over time. Sure, there's a case for cloud backups, instant updates, better linked communities (eh, maybe not Epic...) and putting games wherever you want (since CDs aren't exactly much better, being that they degrade/get lost/get broken over time and you have to do some tricks to actually keep them forever). But I don't know, I look at the various clients now and I wonder if a sort of charm has been lost. Certainly I expect people would bring up the service vs owning a copy trend, the fact you have to give several companies login information to have a wider range of games, the problems when the given service goes down, and how you have to go to various places and have them organized any which way (weirdly, this is the only one that regularly digs at me). People who only have a few games on Steam or don't bounce between publishers a lot wouldn't have that problem. And slightly aside, but relevant in my mind, how everything is so linked to an online connection - namely, when singleplayer games require going online to do anything, generally through these clients or their own wannabe hubs.
I don't know, I can still make the old shortcut trick work with caveats, but it kinda feels like a larger pain in the ass than it has to be. Unfortunately, my interests are everywhere and the brunt of the whole multi-client issue takes a new level when I'm mixing 90s titles with new releases. There's good new stuff out there, but also charm that's been lost with time, so it feels right to give various generations a chance.
I get that everyone wants to bundle their own brand into stuff (like total war having all its games on its own launcher, because that's the series, or Blizzard linking up their games). Frankly, I don't really want them, but they've often become mandatory anyways. Frankly, they're just not that good, and the features sprinkled in really don't compete. I prefer to centralize or split, with little in between. Either a universal, 'neutral' standard (if Steam is an evil, let it simplify things and be the evil with more flexibility) or just a choice between bloated launcher or 'run this thing' shortcut without extra input or loading up a client screen first.
Any thoughts? Maybe this would have been better in the Academy.
