Blizzard had plans to dump the launcher shortly after D3 2.0 dropped. Then they backpedaled and where like no wait launcher is great! 🤷♂️
“Players on Steam will still have to connect Overwatch 2 to a Battle.net account, but they’ll have access to all of Steam’s amenities like their friends list and achievements.”
Not gonna play them if they include their launcher after game is started from Steam lol.
EDIT: I am very happy to hear that everyone hates them. EA as well as Rockstar has shown that their launchers are shit. On Steam Deck EA games often fail to start at all due to EA launcher updates, and Rockstar launcher takes around 3-5 minutes to start a fucking game (which should start instantly).
In-app purchases, mtx, DLC, and premium currency are also subject to Valve tax for games that are on Steam. Free to play means “enough people pay $200+ that we can get away with not selling it for $50”, putting it on Steam still means Valve gets a piece of the pie.
Battle.net actually launched in 1996, though the client as it existed back then would hardly be recognizable as a launcher/storefront today. The modern client launched in 2009.
Battle.net is dead and gone. The launcher has nothing to do with battle.net and everything to do with attempting to harvest as much data as possible, bonus if you run it in the background without playing any of their games.
Battle.net launcher can literally be closed after the game is running. It even has a setting to automatically do so. Why would they pull this sort of bullshit, I have no idea
On Steam Deck EA games often fail to start at all due to EA launcher updates, and Rockstar launcher takes around 3-5 minutes to start a fucking game (which should start instantly).
I mean, this sounds suspiciously like something a company that makes the device that also owns and runs the biggest digital game store might do intentionally.
Except its not. Valve has gone out of their way to make sure other peoples’ games and launchers work, even if they’re not selling directly through Steam. Look at the Proton patch notes if you’re not just being a conspiratorial asshole and actually care about the facts.
ah, wasn’t aware of that one. I never was a fan of Blizzard, back when they were in their hayday, I was mostly a console kid. I didn’t really get into pc games until late into XP era, and even then our family didn’t have that much money, so I rarely got new games… And when I was able to upgrade to a win7 machine, several years into its existence, Blizzard already had a somewhat tarnished reputation and I wasn’t really interested in their games anyway…
Battle.net has been around since at least StarCraft 1. I’m glad Blizzard is showing signs of throwing in the towel when better storefronts/launchers are available
I wonder what the playercounts will look like? It’ll only capture people launching the game through Steam, of course, but I figure they’ll be decently high and score among the top concurrent players anyway.
Not to my understanding. I was able to get it working just fine once Proton had a patch for it. There are a few guides out on YouTube, it’s not a terribly difficult process! Go 4 it :)
I really wish Steam would put their foot down and stop these launchers. They are nothing but a nuisance and add no value for the customer.
EDIT: Just to be clear, when EA Play joined Gamepass there wasn't a separate launcher when you went to play an EA game on the Xbox. Steam could make this work with them and the other companies. They have enough pull to make this work - it would be greatly welcomed.
I just wish the competition gave any attention to Linux support. GOG Galaxy has been out idk how long, they sell Linux games, and still not even a launcher.
Yeah but like, launcher isn't a market. Game Store is the market they're in. I'll happily buy a game from a different store if thats the only place it's offered or even if it's just cheaper there. The annoyance is when they want to be Steam. I don't want to be forced to download another launcher to play a game. If you want what Steam has, create a launcher that offers better services than Steam.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Tell me a single benefit to me as the consumer of blizzard or any other company forcing me to install their launcher and run it everytime I open a game I bought through Steam.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Competition is good, even if the other launchers are a bit annoying.
What does "competition" between companies really mean? It means they are competing for customers. Annoying me with shitty launchers is the opposite of competing. Make things cheaper, offer better services and more features. This is competition. Steam (and GOG) is the only one actually "competing" here. And look what happened? Microsoft, Ubisoft, Blizzard... one by one they fall to Steam because they simply cannot comprehend this fact.
Having a monopoly is not good.. I just wish others wouldn't completely ignore Linux users.. Valve/Steam on the other hand is seriously pushing it forward which makes me very much biased toward them.
Yeah. While them having the most successful platform for distributing games can be troublesome in the monopoly sense, I’m still sunny to them just because of their support for the Linux community.
At least Valve isn’t a public company and beholden to shitty investor politics though, so I am more okay with Steam than… literally any other game launcher.
Plus they’re the only launcher that fully supports Linux, so until that changes I am rooting for Steam.
This isn’t a monopoly issue. Other launchers exist. Most of the games on Steam are available on these other launcher, yet people still prefer Steam.
I can only speak for myself, but I prefer Steam because it’s more customizable so I can set it to open to my library first instead of a rotating ad banner, the storefront ads are not intrusive and can be easily ignored, and steams remote play is something that no other launcher offers.
In fact, I am not sure what the other launchers offer that they excel at over Steam.
So let them distribute their launchers and storefronts, Valve couldn’t stop it. But it’s not monopolistic for Steam to say “if you want us to approve your product for our store, you can’t have the game launch into a pop-up for someone else’s store”.
Microsoft did go on the record saying that pulling Call of Duty from Steam was a mistake. Given that they also release their own exclusives on Steam, it's clear they understand that, even if Valve takes a 30% cut, not releasing on Steam is almost as bad as not releasing your game at all.
It's been [UMPTEEN YEARS] since I registered a Steam account, and when I registered my CD key for original Half-Life, I got the Blue Shift and Opposing Force for free. (As is the case with of most Steam library items, I've yet to complete them!) Now. Please let me transfer my shit from Battlenet to Steam. I can't wait to get my Starcraft installed! I could finally be a proper PC gamer! /very mild sarcasm
I really hope that when Microsoft buys Activision that they bring back Overwatch 1 and put it on Steam. I played OW1 pretty constantly for over 3 years and was having fun with it until the day they shut it down. I played OW2 for less than two weeks and haven’t touched it since release. I can respect that some people prefer OW2, but for me it’s not even close.
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