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Why Are Non-Steam Clients So Badly Optimised?
- Thread starter Deleted member 27751
- Start date
Most launchers have one purpose: the execs want to cut Steam royalties out of the process. Once that objective is satisfied, the suits could give two fucks about anything else. All those things cost money/manpower and bring in zero extra revenue for them. It just needs to launch from their perspective. And collect money at the storefront.
Counter question(s): Why is Steam so badly optimized? Why is Steam region locking content when even Nintendo stopped doing that bs? Why does Steam have forced updates? Why are there so many people warshipping these business tactics?
Bonus question: why can't I sell my Steam games when EU laws explicitly say I'm allowed to resell "digital only" software?
Am I supposed to go to court against Valve or something, how is this consumer friendly?
And to answer the question of the topic : I don't know, only other launcher I ever used was DMM and that was less buggy and less obnoxious than Steam for sure, but has less features too.
Steam does some things right, like controller support, but they change around too much, don't seem to care all that much about user feedback and they definitely need to hire a graphic designer that knows what he's doing for once.
PS: And fix the damn chat...
PSS: I think I agree with the OP, but the title is implying Steam is "optimized" and that isn't the case in my experience at all, every update breaks something, "big picture mode" never worked for me without issues and is outright broken since months, also as mentioned there are legal aspects which are far from optimized.
Partly I blame lawmakers too who don't seem to get "the digital world" at all, but Valve aka Steam is to blame partly as well.
Bonus question: why can't I sell my Steam games when EU laws explicitly say I'm allowed to resell "digital only" software?
Am I supposed to go to court against Valve or something, how is this consumer friendly?
And to answer the question of the topic : I don't know, only other launcher I ever used was DMM and that was less buggy and less obnoxious than Steam for sure, but has less features too.
Steam does some things right, like controller support, but they change around too much, don't seem to care all that much about user feedback and they definitely need to hire a graphic designer that knows what he's doing for once.
PS: And fix the damn chat...
PSS: I think I agree with the OP, but the title is implying Steam is "optimized" and that isn't the case in my experience at all, every update breaks something, "big picture mode" never worked for me without issues and is outright broken since months, also as mentioned there are legal aspects which are far from optimized.
Partly I blame lawmakers too who don't seem to get "the digital world" at all, but Valve aka Steam is to blame partly as well.
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John Carmack's opinion on competing services from the leaked oculus emails in the upcoming book:
replace netflix with steam.
replace netflix with steam.
Steam is definitely not well optimized, but it is still significantly better than the next best software.
The only client that ever came close to touching steam was pre UI update Origin.
Before that update Origin was snappy, intuitive, clean and an over all very good program to use...when it worked lol.
The only client that ever came close to touching steam was pre UI update Origin.
Before that update Origin was snappy, intuitive, clean and an over all very good program to use...when it worked lol.
Startup is the only issue. And it's possible Valve just lets all their computers sleep and doesn't realize how ridiculously slow the cold boot time on Steam is.
Everything else is super zippy. And, hey, it's easy to have responsive clients when there's nothing in them. It's the ultimate optimization.
OP
OP
I do agree that Steam itself isn't a saint at optimisation and has been a headache for many years now, but my title was on the basis of reason that while Steam does have issues it is the "monopoly competition" as seen by the other launchers. In that line of thinking, why are the competitors so badly optimised? Wouldn't you want good optimisation so that your user base can consistently use and build their library into your ecosystem?
Also I do agree that the main culprits are Origin, Bethesda and Epic. Uplay is pretty good of late, as is GoG thanks to its slim design.
Battle.net is a lot worse than people give it credit for too. It doesn't even have an overlay, a way to track play time, or a game agnostic way to group up with friends. I don't think it even has a built in store, last time I bought something it just opened their website on my browser. Then there's stuff like region locked friends list, it not having any substantial updates since 2009 or so, etc. Users had to drag Blizzard kicking and screaming to get them to add a "Hide online status" feature, like five years after it was a standard feature in every other client.
People seem to excuse it because they love Blizzard, but it's quite bad even compared to the second rate launchers.
Because they don't have Steams DRM
time and development, having to have a business outside of it, etc
Couldn't disagree more. Steam is slow and horrible to use.
I haven't tried Epic but Origin and Ubi are both fine.
I haven't tried Epic but Origin and Ubi are both fine.
DRM shouldn't exist. It just gives video games expiration dates (espcially if the system malfunctions or no longer is supported).
I feel as if Steam doesn't run that great on my PC either and I generally shut it off when I'm not gaming.
Steam is my main platform but actually using it, I don't feel like it's all that optimized. It doesn't keep you logged in on the store/community, always forcing a reload, sometimes you can get the client to hang entirely and it won't function until you restart. The servers used to always be down during sales. They should revamp preloading. They don't have a system where you can download as you play. Functionally it's pretty great for the most part, but aesthetically and in terms of polish, I don't feel it's at the best it could be.
I don't feel like this is the case. Looking at my task manager, Epic Launcher, Steam and Origin are all taking up a similar amount of memory and anecdotally speaking just clicking around I don't notice one client being clearly better than the other. I'm sure there are differences when you look into it but has there been an actual measured comparison?
Well Steam is going to help make it last. It prompted up DRM til Ubisoft and Origin stores took some weight off it.
Steam is like 33% DRM
50% stranglehold on Indies with customers waiting on deep sales and never playing the game
30% fees
90% tricking people into thinking Steam is PC and not PC has Steam
No kidding here. Steam is a buggy piece of crap software, basically running as a web browser behind the scenes. Hell, put any amount of network load on the Valve Servers and you will find that you are lucky to even make it to your Steam Library.
Hell, some of the bugs in Steam are just absurd. Like why the fuck does it ask me to reconfirm my email address every time I open up the client. I already confirmed the damn thing, I already have Steam Guard and a Mobile Number setup with it. Just leave me alone. Why do you need to prompt me to update literally every single time I open it up, just give an option to do it behind the scenes automatically. Why does it take forever to load up on startup? It's absolutely terrible.
The only difference is that Steam is feature complete and as a result, bloated and marginally better than everything else. Which isn't an accomplishment because it really only says just how absolutely shit the entire digital games industry is at making actual good software clients for their store/libraries.
epic shit client runs decent but thats cause its barebones as fuck, uplay is decent..origin is complete and utter trash in terms of performance, dont know why ppl are syaing its faster than steam when its not. takes forever to click on a game and for it to load up in that crappy ass game details page. the whole client is just terrible if you ask me. .bethesda...please, and gog runs like shit too on a barebones client.
This is the first I've heard Steam Clients being bad.
Do you keep your PC clean
Added to the exception in your Anti Virus
deleted the stream folder except for "Common" and reinstall steam?
Do you keep your PC clean
Added to the exception in your Anti Virus
deleted the stream folder except for "Common" and reinstall steam?
I never used the Bethesda launcher, so I am unaware in regard for that case. But I haven't ran into any issues with the others you have mentioned (besides Uplay being unresponsive at times).
I would cut Epic and Bethesda some slack given their clients are younger, and to some extent GoG being no-drm with the launcher there for convenience of organizing your titles.
That said, why Origin, uPlay and Battle.net aren't better than they are is odd to me. They've had plenty of years at this point to mimic the feature-set of Steam, much less offer more unique features and services to draw people in. EA's Origin Access is a step in the right direction, but their launcher doesn't even scale well to 4k screens. uPlay has their point system to unlock things, but otherwise nothing about their platform is better than Steam.
What's weirder to me have been those acting like Steam has stagnated, when they keep adding new features at a regular pace, no other client matches that pace still, and Steam is still the only client you can entirely navigate with a gamepad.
That said, why Origin, uPlay and Battle.net aren't better than they are is odd to me. They've had plenty of years at this point to mimic the feature-set of Steam, much less offer more unique features and services to draw people in. EA's Origin Access is a step in the right direction, but their launcher doesn't even scale well to 4k screens. uPlay has their point system to unlock things, but otherwise nothing about their platform is better than Steam.
What's weirder to me have been those acting like Steam has stagnated, when they keep adding new features at a regular pace, no other client matches that pace still, and Steam is still the only client you can entirely navigate with a gamepad.
As someone who architects large scale enterprise server/storage solutions for G500 customers, Valve does not let their "computers" sleep. Valve's back end will be running on a multitude of servers, geo-located and always on, packed to the brim hardware wise. Their issue is software, but most likely the database behind the software and how the Steam back end services communicate to the database. This is probably a combination of actual hardware performance (mainly disk I/O) but most likely network throughput and latency.
Physics basically
It could be a result of a growing and aged architecture, and yes the competition has less data to manage. But data and software doesn't really work like this. Origin for example runs great because it isnt handicapped by being developed in 2004 and have roots that sprawl. As someone who's been a "pc gamer" and building "gaming PC's" since the mid 1980s.. and someone who gamed on PC throughout the 90s and into the aughts.. I was there when Steam launched.
It was hot garbage, nobody in their right mind would argue against that. Steam back then was a store only to sell Half-Life and Half-Life 2 basically. Form, functionality.. pretty much everything about Steam back then was so terrible it actually pissed off the gaming community and Valve was demonized for gating their software behind a shitty DRM store. It took Valve probably 2 years to fix glaring issues and just get basic functionality to work. From there they started to slowly, slowly sell 3rd party software, then more then more. All the while, literally zero competition.
Right place, right time. This is largely why they exploded, not because their client was great software. Imagine Windows XP still running in 2019 and what that would feel like. Thats Steam, lol.
Even today in 2019, Steam doesn't have "real" competition. Origin, GOG, UPlay sure, but even more now with the Epic launcher, Battle.net Launcher and more. But yet, Valve really hasn't been pressured to overhaul much of anything of Steam. They haven't "needed" to yet, which is the only reason. But the net result of that is Steam in 2019 is looks and feels like Steam in 2006, its just dark grey instead of olive drab green. Clearly there have been thousands of updates introducing features and bug fixes but all of this is tossed atop a pile of aging, old technology.
To put it blunt, shopping and using Steam in 2019 is like walking into a Wal-Mart when you can pay a little more to shop at Target across the street and avoid all the mess. Just because Wal-Mart has lower prices and everything in 1 location doesn't make it better.
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It's actually Steam that sucks. However, it's much simpler to optimize a platform with a relatively small library.
Origin used to be the snappiest because of how barebones it was, but that hasn't been the case for several months.
Tbh Steam is right in the middle in terms of speed, but that's understandable considering all the thing it offers.
Tbh Steam is right in the middle in terms of speed, but that's understandable considering all the thing it offers.
Uplay is amazing though. Never had an optimization-related problem with it. Epic Launcher has been good too. Steam is okay. Origin sucks.
I actually have more problems with Steam. Refusing to start even after closing it in task manager is the worst issue. It's the only Client that I constantly have to close via the task manager and start it again few times before it actually starts.
I also dislike the browser based store but that's another topic.
I actually have more problems with Steam. Refusing to start even after closing it in task manager is the worst issue. It's the only Client that I constantly have to close via the task manager and start it again few times before it actually starts.
I also dislike the browser based store but that's another topic.
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Currently, there's not a single client I appreciate using. That's why I can appreciate having native Windows 10 apps; no clients, no logins, it just boots the second you launch it.
You still have to use the Windows Store to download of course, but it has been serviceable thus far.
You still have to use the Windows Store to download of course, but it has been serviceable thus far.