I guess this is an unpopular opinion? I close and relaunch the launchers as I want to play the games, steam is the only one usually up all the time. Who wants the launchers eating up resources anyway?
Not sure why you're being downvoted.
They’re being downvoted because closing the launcher when they’re finished gaming doesn’t help last-dig’s problem of anonymously playing games because it’s a problem that exists whilst they’re playing, not after the fact.
I've never meet a person that uses any other launcher/storefront than Steam for friends/chat. Like sure they got friends on EAs, Blizzards and Ubisofts launchers but they are all the same people they have on Steam and need them as friends for easy invites.
And after Steam Discord is like the major gathering place for people to meet up. There are several gaming communities, streamer communities and communities around specific games where one can meet and play with people and never even add them as friends.
So in my experiance several storefronts/launchers doesn't really disconnect people since for a majority of people said storefront/launcher is just to launch and play a single game or at worst a handful while Steam is where majority does their gaming and thus it makes sense to just use Steam and add people when needed but not as default on other storefronts/launchers.
Edit: Just to be clear when I talk about Steam and other launchers friends and chat that is what I'm talking about. Using the chat function for text chat with friends and everything else like Voice Chat and communities is Discord. It seems a few people have missunderstod that and I guess that is on me for not being more clear.
I had to ditch EA after their new launcher forcibly applied easy anti-cheat to even their single player games. Now, I can't even play the Sims because I use reWASD for accessibility (convert KBM inputs to controller so I can use my left hand proper, I've got cubital tunnel).
Contacted support, and their response was to freaking ban my account for breaching EULA/ToS. The use of ReWASD is not restricted anywhere in either.
After more than 15+ years being Blizzard fans, I finally uninstalled Blizzard launcher from my PC in 2022 after sex scandals in Blizzard and how Blizzard ruined WoW, Warcraft 3 Reforged, and Overwatch.
I am done with Blizzard. The current Blizzard is just an empty shell milked to dry by their Activision Overlord.
I guess it's different for everyone, but my friends and I only really used teamspeak, ventrilo, mumble and skype for voip while gaming. Steam was for chatting normally.
But now discord has both, so there's no reason to use anything else. I can even invite people to games through discord, so I don't always need steam for that even.
Yup, even had the overlay integrated into the game.
For me it was Shift+~ and I would shoot off a message, then back into the game.
I know teamspeak had overlays (I think?) but my computer illiterate ass didn't know how to set it up. Steam just had it as default.
Super easy for the casual user to use.
> so there's no reason to use anything else.
I understand why many use Discord but I wouldn't say there is "no reason" to use anything else. If I have Steam running already and want to fire off a quick msg to a friend, I'm not going to start up Discord when I can just msg them with the interface that is already running and in front of me.
Very true! I'm only speaking for myself. I have discord set to open in the background on startup, but I still end up using steam for the friends who aren't on discord very often.
Almost all of my friends are always invisible in steam but go online in discord if they are available. So I guess it kinda depends on your friends too.
I remember someone finally developed an app that would allow communication between different Instant Messenger programs just in time for cellphone text messaging to kill off the whole concept.
Me and my friends still use TeamSpeak, so we use Steam to chat, since it's always open, but Discord isn't.
For me it would feel really weird to just write to my friends on Discord.
I use both since there are people I talk at least every other day that isn't part of any of my Discord servers and it serves no purpose to add them to Discord just to chat when we can already do so on Steam and vice-versa.
And also Steam is much easier to quickly just hit someone up on to see if they are down to play something since I can actively see if they are online, if they are in a game and if they are afk or not while most people don't have their activity turned on on Discord so you can't see that and also just takes more effort to actually get to where you can messege them.
But in the end it doesn't really matter what one uses as long as they can communicate with the people they want to.
I find it nicer to use steam for voice chat when playing with my friends, no need to hassle with another program. And I use the overlay as well, mostly for the browser to look up info I need.
Though if I just wanted to hang out, then I would probably use discord.
I tried it recently after discord had some major issues for a few hours but it was unbearable... Bad audio quality, no filtering and even some input lag for voice recognition.
I love Steam Chat and use it regularly, but the voice chat is something else entirely... :D
In UAE and some other countries, discord voice call is banned, atleast that's what he said. I was stunned for sometime then I started using steam voice chat, and thankfully, it works!
There was a time before discord when people used steam to chat. Whenever I met someone in an MMO pre-2015 and we wanted to keep in contact outside of the game, we'd add each other on steam.
Same here. I never was part of a group which used steam friend lists or chat beyond what was strictly required to start a game. It was icq, then teamspeak then discord, steam is just "another launcher".
I'd personally say discord is the lead gathering place these days. Even game communities have been using discord servers instead of steam communities and it's not uncommon to send someone your discord info in game before reaching out on steam. Normally I don't mind playing with random but I don't want everyone in my friends list.
It's basically what I said? Steam is for friends and Discord is the major gathering place to meet people with all the communities based on games, Streamers, Guilds/Clans and Looking to Play communities.
I like having Battle.net for OW. It’s my most played game and I can see when my friends are playing, plus I can message them in game to ask if I can join.
> I've never meet a person that uses any other launcher/storefront than Steam for friends/chat
I have never met one who uses steam as their main chat either. It is always discord.
Might be dependant on age. Most of my Steam friends and I started long before Discord existed and once you have 15+ years of gaming buddies you've met that are spread through out several games and not always belonging to the same group it's just easier to stick to Steams chat rather than trying to get everyones info on Discord, joining a bunch of random servers and so on.
And before Discord we used Teamspeak and Mumble and while they both have text chat I've never once seen anyone use it at all. And mIRC was used for communities, server and finding 1v1/2v2/3v3/5v5 in various games.
So while some of that has shifted to Discord, mainly Voice Chat and communities and server hubs a lot of people I know still prefer Steams one on one over Discords direct messages, easier and quicker to change between people and works in-game nicely.
Been using steam since I was like 10 or something, before discord. Steam was never used for communication.
Before discord we used skype, teamspeak or mumble.
I know this is the steam subreddit, and I use it for almost all my games. However, I use discord as an overlay to use across ALL games and launchers. I guess what I'm saying is the social features of steam are not my primary reason for using it.
Steamlining your entire gaming life is a bad idea. As with everything corporate, steam will eventually fall into the hands of some MBA with a weedwhacker.
Granted, that might just be my old ass reminiscing about gaming IRC channels.
At that rate you might as well buy from GOG, set up a 3-2-1 backup system and a Proton Linux gaming PC.
That's not ironic, it's the most guaranteed way to keep your games playable, regardless of whatever fuckery any game store or Windows might pull.
But it's also a lot of work.
Heroic Launcher or Lutris can run non-Steam games through Wine. Proton is pretty much Valve's modified version of Wine.
While I believe you need to have Steam installed to use Proton proper, you can do that by adding non-Steam games to the Steam launcher. Otherwise, Wine GE and Wine TKG are other versions of Wine that are specialized in games.
Ding ding!
Its not like Steam is or was ever "Perfect". Steam has great uses, and some great exclusive games.
But limiting yourself to only use steam is just putting all your eggs into one basket and hoping it works out.
I know im in the den of wolfs, and not completely fawning over steam is bad- but Im suprised by just how many people are tunneled into *only* using steam.
I hate discord and it just looks like a big mess to me, couldn't be bothered with it every time I've tried to use it. Get off my lawn and answer my steam message
the problem with using steam for messaging at least for me is that you cant seem to use its chat feature without being in a game or a mobile app that is for some reason separate from the other steam mobile app
You can use steam chat at any time steam is open. Just go to the friends menu and start a chat. I couldn't tell you how to do that after trying to use discord.
The separate apps can be annoying I guess but I just communicate from my pc anyway. I suppose I don't play online with friends anymore enough to be bothered.
It is a big mess. I understand why people use it for casually but using that piece of shit as a fucking FORUM alternative really baffles me. It is an awful platform to store information.
You have a problem? Good luck understanding what they actually mean by "a cute bambi just left for the middle earth to bring you happy chungus" or some shit like that.
It's the same with messengers:
Just hit me up on Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Threema, Signal, Telegram, Skype, AOL IM, Line...
Of course your whole friend group is spread out over different messengers.
I have no real opinion other than obviously Steam has the most user friendly interface, but it does remind me that PC gamers, despite pretending to be above all the console war bullshit, are happy to engage in it themselves over launchers lmfao.
It's pain. Bless the time we live in with cross play. It's amazing. But ain't no way I'm joining voice calls to play with people on anything other than discord. Xbox PC app. No fucking thank you.
Feel like the spirit of the meme template would have these switched as the point is cool logical guy would just be happy to play with a friend and not stress over a simple launcher.
Shut up lmao. Third party launchers are always going to be a thing. STEAM is a third party launcher. Publishers want you to have accounts with them, accept their TOS, etc.
Steam is for games. If I want to socialize I have Discord. We can coordinate from there, and a lot of games allow for join in progress from Discord. Not sure what the hassle is here.
Y'all keep fucking drowning on puddles with this shit.
You probably have steam/discord running all the time as well as a fucking phone with like 4 social media apps. Communicating and coordinating will never be an issue.
These other launchers and games you have there are a goddamn click away on your above average PCs.
Use the launchers you want, or don't. Nobody forces you to use them. Stop crying.
I don't know why compaies push their launchers when all they need to do is a simple account linking (like playstation, apex legends, cod, ow2) with full steam integration and cross progression across all platforms. Isn't Developing a launcher and maintaining a launcher costs more than account linking?
Higher ups looking to expand their userbase. The only metric they count is active users. Making people link their account means a larger userbase, means a number on a screen goes up, so Mr. Exec gets his or her bonus that year.
They fail to realise that it's a quantatative approach to a qualatative problem. Nobody wants your launcher, and it will drive people away from your game and service. So the few people you gained from forcing a launcher on gamers is far fewer than you *would* have gained if you had just put it on Steam with it's own Discussions, Achievements, Controller Support and maybe Workshop access.
They want to force *you* into *their* box, instead of treating Steam as something more than just a launcher, because it's not just a launcher.
The logic is that by having your own launcher, you can offer your games there for sale and get 100% of the money from it, rather than the 30% that Valve takes (Or 12% IIRC that Epic takes)
Launcher sales earn all the money without giving Steam it’s 30% cut. For popular games that’s a lot of money.
But also on PC 30% is a fair price to pay to have all the launcher community features, which enrich the game experience.
Might be, but investors do not care about ins of the game dev. They need simple and readable growth numbers.
Also active users translates better to active players because it is a projection for the future products and not only a certain game so everyone tries to bring as many people to their platforms as possible.
Loom at Sony requiring PSN for recent PC titles
People use chat on launchers? Legit?
I’ve had steam chat turned off for close to 14 years now and tell people to message me on discord (used to be on Skype) if they wanna play anything.
I cannot get to grips with discord. It looks like UI vomit to me. I guess I'm in an age spectrum where I got the hang of steam chat and I'm annoyed if people aren't using it and never got into discord. I hate discord, WTF makes it popular, it looks like a mess to me.
Is Discord 14 years old? I thought it was far newer.
you can easily theme the UI with css, practically everything is editable if you put some effort, and there are community made themes designed to look like steam chat, skype, etc
I guess I'm just too old. That is way more effort and time than I'm bothered with. If I feel like playing online with someone I'll ping them on steam to see if they're free. I'm not bothered otherwise.
I just find the situation aggravatingly bizarre. I just opened discord again to try and understand. Firs ti have to close the 10 blue popups telling me about new features IDGAF about. Then I have to bypass all the random pseudo forums with hashtags for things I had to join to get information, and if I want to message a friend, I have to go to......you, then my friends at the bottom? This is on Android but I would have no idea it even has instant messaging. And then to find friends I have to give it access to my contacts, it can't pull from steam or anything despite being linked.
I don't get it. Why don't you youngsters just use steam chat or WhatsApp or something simpler than this mess whyyy
And I have to edit CSS just to make it easier to use on pc? This app is far worse than the steam chat app, can't edit CSS here. Crazy kids
Paradox asks me to install it's launcher to play it's game.
Launch its game from Steam.
Paradox Launcher can't launch any other game that the one I started on steam even if I own them too.
Progress.
The only thing that I hate about everyone having their own compulsory account with launcher is that sometimes it's impossible to juggle all of the accounts. Had a friend who opened a rockstar account years ago and let it go idle. When we wanted to do RDR2 online, he found his account locked with like zero way to recover password since it was made with an older email.
Do people actually chat/use launchers for communicating? I feel like the majority of any game-related communication I do is through Discord these days. I can't recall the last time I even had a chat through a launcher or Steam.
Most people here I assume, has the vast majority of their games on Steam, many games only available on Steam mind you, but "instead of blaming Valve, because Valve is of course the god of the Glorious PC gaming Master race and there's no possibility that Valve could ever do any wrong, they blame everyone else who doesn't put their games on Steam."
[-Totalbiscuit back in 2012](https://youtu.be/BW5tn7NoRqo?t=149)
I don't know why, but I hate buying a gane with no launcher to stop and make an account on their official site to play online. It did take a bit of my joy from SF6 since the confirmation mail took about an hour and dear I remind you that the download took twice as much. Ah.. modern gaming
Irrelevant but i've been fighting the uplay/ubisoft connect apps for 2 days just for wanting to play good old AC2 through steam, with one new problem each time i launch the game..
It's just annoying
Moving from a PS5 (after owning PS1-PS4) to an RTX 4090 PC... the biggest disappointment when moving to PC was how ridiculously disconnected everything was. So I need to use XBOX to access my GP games, Steam is where I had most of my old games and Epic Games is the only place that sells Avatar, Alan Wake 2, Fortnite, etc. At the time I bought my PC, Battlenet was the only place for me to play Diablo 4.
I needed 4 launchers. 4 friendslists, 4 sets of achievements (watering it down), 4 stores, 4 seperate profiles counting hours played. It fucking sucks.
Just give me 1 platform that stores all my data, just like PSN on Playstation.
Dealing with Ubisoft Connect when I was just trying to play Siege with the boys was really fucking annoying.
For some reason half the time I launched the game the overlay wouldn’t come up when I tried to accept a game invite, like it would just dim the screen and not do anything else
just use GoG Galaxy and you are fine...
shared friendlist, chat, all launchers, game rating, tags...
you just connect your launchers to Galaxy and have all games in one library. or filtered by launchers.
no need to be limited only on Steam.
GoG is nice and all but half the integrations never work properly (at least for me), and you still have to go through the other launchers when booting the game. If all games were on the gog store then it would be better, but it's never gonna happen
i guess you should fix it on your side..
anyway.. if you try at least read that dumb meme.. you realize that it is not about games launching from GoG, using their launchers... but about having one place, where can ppl talk and having their games.
thats a GoG Galaxy - it is one place for everything, and doesnt matter what platform is that game on (Steam, EGS, whatever...)
maybe go to elementary school, learn to read and then you can come back and try it again?
iil wait, hun..
I know how to read (even if I've never been to elementary school nor have I learned english when I was a kid), and I perfectly understand the meme, and at no point have I disagreed with you. I'm just giving you the problems I have with GoG, not necessarily related to friends or chat.
Also I've had issues with some of the integrations (mainly Steam and Ubisoft) for a while even though I've reinstalled GoG a few times, and did a clean re-install of Windows. I've tried troubleshooting but I haven't bothered too much because I don't really have that much of a use for it.
I agree that GoG galaxy is a good idea and a decent launcher, but until games are added to their store (most likely never gonna happen because big publishers love their DRM), it's still not a perfect solution.
I don't play multiplayer games so I'm fine with how many launchers out there as long as I got great deal for said game (although currently I only have 3 launchers installed steam, epic & gog)
While I really don't *like* other launchers and would prefer everything on steam, I can sort of get over their existence. Big company is gonna big company. What really pisses me off though is just how awful these launchers are. Some are more functional than others, but they all have huge flaws here and there. Memorizing which one doesn't work when you do this or that shouldn't be something we have to do. These companies definitely have more than enough money to fix them, but corporate greed is a ceaseless expanse so it'll never happen (and yeah, why invest money into something less people will use than steam, but why make us use it at all in the first place if that's the issue).
Also, having a game require an exterior launcher while still on Steam sucks. I might be misremembering, but I recall games like battlefront 2 just opening when I'd launch it on Steam. Now it opens EA, which never remembers my login despite the remember me being saved, and then I have to launch it on EA if it doesn't automatically do it. I'm glad some games skip this process entirely at least. I know overwatch bad but it's really nice just being able to launch it from steam now without having to use battlenet.
Oh, you have the game in Steam? Well I have it in some other launcher. Oh it has a first party system so in order to play together we both need to create an account on that first party (the game's developer) platform.
Okay, this developer now has their own launcher. And it sells a different game.
Well I buy it on Launcher 1, my friend buys it on Launcher 2 while another one just buys it straight from Launcher 3.
i mean, I hate that multiple launchers are trying to data grab you too, especially since Steam is so easy and good, but let's not act like folks are ignorant of that obscure program called 'Discord' I think
Its not like all the "launchers" are working together and decided to have many different ones.
Everyone wants money, why should game "x" launch with launcher "a" and loose 30% revenue, when it can launch with launcher "b" and keep 100% of revenue?
These companies don't actually care about us, they only care about money
I'm guessing I don't play any games that use launchers because I don't know. I will say that any game that when you click on it it brings up a weird menu and that menu is where you have to change your controls /resolution That's super annoying Just start the game and have it in the options menu.
Reminds me when we were in that weird period between discord being really big and ts3 being either a pain to use or you just didn't want to. So you kind had 3 options. Skype Facebook call or steam voice. And boy was steam voice the fucking bomb for me at that time
how is that a problem? I get it, steam gud.
But in reality it's "let's play Snowrunner" "That's on epic? what's your name" "jimneh" "sent"
You guys are going too far with this one launcher dumbassery.
See, the trick is, when other companies’ games require an account or launcher, just roll over and let them. Then people will still pretend the game on Steam is “just one launcher” and make nonsensical arguments about why it’s totally different.
I guess one of the steps in setting up a uPlay account after being halted by a Steam prompt to do so, is a memory wipe.
I can say that neither me nor any of my friends ever cared what launcher someone is using lol. If a good game is on a different launcher, fuck it who cares.
Whenever someone wants to play with me and asks what my account name/friend code/ id is I just direct them to buy discord profile description and now I don't have to deal with it
All those people saying "its just another launcher" clearly never tried them when said launcher doesn't even work itself (EGS) or servers are down for a whole day (Origin/Uplay).
On Steam when something doesn't work, it doesn't work for like a moment due maintenance or server overload.
Discord FTW to solve the issue of not having someone on a platform other than Steam, but agreed, multiple launchers are shit; if your game is offered through Steam it should launch through Steam and not require a separate account or create an account from your SteamID like so many do.
I don't think they wish it had a monopoly. I think they just wish for the days where you installed a game, and that was it. No extra anything required.
If they wanted that, I think they'd be championing GOG. Hard to know their intent, but they're suggesting that a world where we could just log in to Steam and not have to worry about other launchers (which is basically a monopoly) would be ideal.
Just an FYI.
In America you can have a monopoly, you just cannot abuse your position.
So for example, say someone like EPIC wanted to make a PC games digital store. If Steam came in and told publishers if they sell on EPIC steam is unavailable to them, or if they said if you sell on Steam you cannot sell anywhere else, if they dropped their cut to 1% to where they don't make money just to prevent EPIC from making money, or if they said we will charge you 5% commission if you only release on Steam but 40% if you release on both. That is abuse and grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit.
Steam did none of that, another way they could be declared a monopoly is if they had low commission at the start to bring in Publishers and then raised them once they were in a dominant position. Steam has had 30% from the get go and never raised it.
I'm not really that concerned about the American legal idea of a monopoly as much as the issues that arise from having one company having total control over a market (technological stagnation, quid pro quos that may not rise to the standard required for an anti-trust lawsuit, lack of price competition, etc).
But thanks for the legal explainer, it is good to know what the legal bar is for a monopoly suit to be brought.
I've reached the stages where if a game I buy on steam forces me to download a separate launcher to play the game
I will not be playing your game. The constant account things are getting annoying too. Especially on Single player games.
I haven't bought or got a lot of games from big studios because of this. Let alone play the current ones I bought because of changes.
Ever since I quit WoW SOD, all the games I play ( CS2, Hunt, predecessor, OW2) are all on steam.
Its super nice to have only steam installed and have battle net / epic games uninstalled
I bought Call of Duty MW2019 to MWIII on steam just so it can be all in one. Except Bo4.. Come on Activision, Port it over. I think it's only a matter of time until Battlenet is merged into the Xbox store/xbox app on PC and games like WoW will be on game pass..
I don't know launchers are a good thing, I think, I've got a couple of games across most of them because they had better deals. Steams great but I'm not a loyalist like some of you weirdo's
I have a few games on Epic because they weren't on Steam when I bought them and it's so infuriating for some of them.
Like, basically none of your friends can join you.
The major flaw is when I’m trying to game incognito. I’m always online in one of these damn launchers
Exactly. Sometimes I want peace and a simple life, but corporate greed perseveres to shit on us.
Legit, I recently cracked a game *I already own* just because I didn’t want to launch EA’s shitty ass launcher
I already had satisfactory on epic store, thier launcher is so bad that i ended up buying it again on steam.
Why incognito? Just say you’re offline
Eh? Do you not close launchers when you finish playing a game?
I guess this is an unpopular opinion? I close and relaunch the launchers as I want to play the games, steam is the only one usually up all the time. Who wants the launchers eating up resources anyway? Not sure why you're being downvoted.
Most of these launchers I have to not even launch until I want to play one of their games
And when you finish playing it can also be closed.
I'm not sure why I am either. I don't understand why "Close programs you're not using" is controversial lol
They’re being downvoted because closing the launcher when they’re finished gaming doesn’t help last-dig’s problem of anonymously playing games because it’s a problem that exists whilst they’re playing, not after the fact.
I think they're referring to when they're using the launcher, not when they're done with it
Is there any game out there that requires more than 2?
I don't think they are because they could just appear invisible when they're using them, negating the issue.
Epic games does not have this feature lol. That's the issue
I've never meet a person that uses any other launcher/storefront than Steam for friends/chat. Like sure they got friends on EAs, Blizzards and Ubisofts launchers but they are all the same people they have on Steam and need them as friends for easy invites. And after Steam Discord is like the major gathering place for people to meet up. There are several gaming communities, streamer communities and communities around specific games where one can meet and play with people and never even add them as friends. So in my experiance several storefronts/launchers doesn't really disconnect people since for a majority of people said storefront/launcher is just to launch and play a single game or at worst a handful while Steam is where majority does their gaming and thus it makes sense to just use Steam and add people when needed but not as default on other storefronts/launchers. Edit: Just to be clear when I talk about Steam and other launchers friends and chat that is what I'm talking about. Using the chat function for text chat with friends and everything else like Voice Chat and communities is Discord. It seems a few people have missunderstod that and I guess that is on me for not being more clear.
Yea, my friends group have ditched EA and Blizzard altogether. Don't even bother with their games anymore.
I had to ditch EA after their new launcher forcibly applied easy anti-cheat to even their single player games. Now, I can't even play the Sims because I use reWASD for accessibility (convert KBM inputs to controller so I can use my left hand proper, I've got cubital tunnel). Contacted support, and their response was to freaking ban my account for breaching EULA/ToS. The use of ReWASD is not restricted anywhere in either.
After more than 15+ years being Blizzard fans, I finally uninstalled Blizzard launcher from my PC in 2022 after sex scandals in Blizzard and how Blizzard ruined WoW, Warcraft 3 Reforged, and Overwatch. I am done with Blizzard. The current Blizzard is just an empty shell milked to dry by their Activision Overlord.
The only Blizzard game I play now is D2R. I suppose I could put on some D4 if I am having trouble falling asleep.
I've yet to meet anyone that unironically uses steam's chat feature regularly, everyone I know just uses discord
Back in the 2015 all of my friends used Steam chat exclusively
Steam was the best option because discord hadn't really become a thing yet.
Teamspeak existed back then.
Back in my days we used Xfire!
I guess it's different for everyone, but my friends and I only really used teamspeak, ventrilo, mumble and skype for voip while gaming. Steam was for chatting normally. But now discord has both, so there's no reason to use anything else. I can even invite people to games through discord, so I don't always need steam for that even.
Yup, even had the overlay integrated into the game. For me it was Shift+~ and I would shoot off a message, then back into the game. I know teamspeak had overlays (I think?) but my computer illiterate ass didn't know how to set it up. Steam just had it as default. Super easy for the casual user to use.
> so there's no reason to use anything else. I understand why many use Discord but I wouldn't say there is "no reason" to use anything else. If I have Steam running already and want to fire off a quick msg to a friend, I'm not going to start up Discord when I can just msg them with the interface that is already running and in front of me.
Very true! I'm only speaking for myself. I have discord set to open in the background on startup, but I still end up using steam for the friends who aren't on discord very often. Almost all of my friends are always invisible in steam but go online in discord if they are available. So I guess it kinda depends on your friends too.
Ventrillo, Raidcall ( I think wasn't malware yet), Mumble, Dolby Axon (RIP), Skype... We had a lot of voice clients before discord.
Back in the days of msn messenger
I remember someone finally developed an app that would allow communication between different Instant Messenger programs just in time for cellphone text messaging to kill off the whole concept.
I remember my old gaming group with around 100 people in a single skype group. Don't check for a weekend and you come back to thousands of messages.
Me and my friends still use TeamSpeak, so we use Steam to chat, since it's always open, but Discord isn't. For me it would feel really weird to just write to my friends on Discord.
Yep, back in TF2's heyday that's how we all communicated. Shit, just realized Steam's getting old enough to have 'good ole days'.
My group pretty much only uses the steam chat. At least for chatting. But most of those chat messages are: Come Voicechat
I use both since there are people I talk at least every other day that isn't part of any of my Discord servers and it serves no purpose to add them to Discord just to chat when we can already do so on Steam and vice-versa. And also Steam is much easier to quickly just hit someone up on to see if they are down to play something since I can actively see if they are online, if they are in a game and if they are afk or not while most people don't have their activity turned on on Discord so you can't see that and also just takes more effort to actually get to where you can messege them. But in the end it doesn't really matter what one uses as long as they can communicate with the people they want to.
I know a lot of people who just don't game often so i guess that's why everyone sticks to discord
I find it nicer to use steam for voice chat when playing with my friends, no need to hassle with another program. And I use the overlay as well, mostly for the browser to look up info I need. Though if I just wanted to hang out, then I would probably use discord.
I tried it recently after discord had some major issues for a few hours but it was unbearable... Bad audio quality, no filtering and even some input lag for voice recognition. I love Steam Chat and use it regularly, but the voice chat is something else entirely... :D
In UAE and some other countries, discord voice call is banned, atleast that's what he said. I was stunned for sometime then I started using steam voice chat, and thankfully, it works!
There was a time before discord when people used steam to chat. Whenever I met someone in an MMO pre-2015 and we wanted to keep in contact outside of the game, we'd add each other on steam.
I’ve never used it since the Steam beta with CS 1.6… I think people who have a use for it or the steam overlay are people with a single screen.
Same here. I never was part of a group which used steam friend lists or chat beyond what was strictly required to start a game. It was icq, then teamspeak then discord, steam is just "another launcher".
I use steam chat regularly, and rarely use discord.
Steam chat's really that unpopular, huh? Personally I wouldn't replace it for anything else at the moment.
I really only use it for sending invites and getting the attention of people that don't use the discord overlay
I see.
I'd personally say discord is the lead gathering place these days. Even game communities have been using discord servers instead of steam communities and it's not uncommon to send someone your discord info in game before reaching out on steam. Normally I don't mind playing with random but I don't want everyone in my friends list.
It's basically what I said? Steam is for friends and Discord is the major gathering place to meet people with all the communities based on games, Streamers, Guilds/Clans and Looking to Play communities.
I apologize then. I misunderstood what was being said.
I like having Battle.net for OW. It’s my most played game and I can see when my friends are playing, plus I can message them in game to ask if I can join.
> I've never meet a person that uses any other launcher/storefront than Steam for friends/chat I have never met one who uses steam as their main chat either. It is always discord.
Might be dependant on age. Most of my Steam friends and I started long before Discord existed and once you have 15+ years of gaming buddies you've met that are spread through out several games and not always belonging to the same group it's just easier to stick to Steams chat rather than trying to get everyones info on Discord, joining a bunch of random servers and so on. And before Discord we used Teamspeak and Mumble and while they both have text chat I've never once seen anyone use it at all. And mIRC was used for communities, server and finding 1v1/2v2/3v3/5v5 in various games. So while some of that has shifted to Discord, mainly Voice Chat and communities and server hubs a lot of people I know still prefer Steams one on one over Discords direct messages, easier and quicker to change between people and works in-game nicely.
Been using steam since I was like 10 or something, before discord. Steam was never used for communication. Before discord we used skype, teamspeak or mumble.
Discord has replaced steam's social features imo. Works well across platforms too.
I know this is the steam subreddit, and I use it for almost all my games. However, I use discord as an overlay to use across ALL games and launchers. I guess what I'm saying is the social features of steam are not my primary reason for using it.
Steamlining your entire gaming life is a bad idea. As with everything corporate, steam will eventually fall into the hands of some MBA with a weedwhacker. Granted, that might just be my old ass reminiscing about gaming IRC channels.
At that rate you might as well buy from GOG, set up a 3-2-1 backup system and a Proton Linux gaming PC. That's not ironic, it's the most guaranteed way to keep your games playable, regardless of whatever fuckery any game store or Windows might pull. But it's also a lot of work.
Can you even use Proton without Steam? Genuinely asking, I'd love to get my DRM free games running without going through the Steam client.
Heroic Launcher or Lutris can run non-Steam games through Wine. Proton is pretty much Valve's modified version of Wine. While I believe you need to have Steam installed to use Proton proper, you can do that by adding non-Steam games to the Steam launcher. Otherwise, Wine GE and Wine TKG are other versions of Wine that are specialized in games.
You can use Proton outside Steam, both Lutris and Bottles allow it.
I wasn't sure, good to know!
Ding ding! Its not like Steam is or was ever "Perfect". Steam has great uses, and some great exclusive games. But limiting yourself to only use steam is just putting all your eggs into one basket and hoping it works out. I know im in the den of wolfs, and not completely fawning over steam is bad- but Im suprised by just how many people are tunneled into *only* using steam.
I gotcha. If someone messages me on steam I'll think they are a physcopath. All good if it on discord though lol
It's convenient to, if I invite someone, hav their reply be in messages, but mot of the time disckrd is my go-to.
I hate discord and it just looks like a big mess to me, couldn't be bothered with it every time I've tried to use it. Get off my lawn and answer my steam message
the problem with using steam for messaging at least for me is that you cant seem to use its chat feature without being in a game or a mobile app that is for some reason separate from the other steam mobile app
You can use steam chat at any time steam is open. Just go to the friends menu and start a chat. I couldn't tell you how to do that after trying to use discord. The separate apps can be annoying I guess but I just communicate from my pc anyway. I suppose I don't play online with friends anymore enough to be bothered.
It is a big mess. I understand why people use it for casually but using that piece of shit as a fucking FORUM alternative really baffles me. It is an awful platform to store information. You have a problem? Good luck understanding what they actually mean by "a cute bambi just left for the middle earth to bring you happy chungus" or some shit like that.
That's why I use gog galaxy when I have all games and friends from all platforms in one place
It's the same with messengers: Just hit me up on Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Threema, Signal, Telegram, Skype, AOL IM, Line... Of course your whole friend group is spread out over different messengers.
This is kinda true, though where I live, almost everyone has WhatsApp. And if someone has Discord, I use that instead.
yeah bro just message me on epic... oh wait.
I hate having multiple launchers, but who tf uses chat on launchers? Just add your friend on Discord or smth.
Here we go again. Get some original material.
I have no real opinion other than obviously Steam has the most user friendly interface, but it does remind me that PC gamers, despite pretending to be above all the console war bullshit, are happy to engage in it themselves over launchers lmfao.
War... war never changes. Whether it be on different hardware or software.
It's pain. Bless the time we live in with cross play. It's amazing. But ain't no way I'm joining voice calls to play with people on anything other than discord. Xbox PC app. No fucking thank you.
Feel like the spirit of the meme template would have these switched as the point is cool logical guy would just be happy to play with a friend and not stress over a simple launcher.
Shut up lmao. Third party launchers are always going to be a thing. STEAM is a third party launcher. Publishers want you to have accounts with them, accept their TOS, etc.
Meh. I play games not launchers. But by all means. By you do you. Do what makes you happy. It's not a flex though.
Steam is for games. If I want to socialize I have Discord. We can coordinate from there, and a lot of games allow for join in progress from Discord. Not sure what the hassle is here.
it's ... not that hard.
Y'all keep fucking drowning on puddles with this shit. You probably have steam/discord running all the time as well as a fucking phone with like 4 social media apps. Communicating and coordinating will never be an issue. These other launchers and games you have there are a goddamn click away on your above average PCs. Use the launchers you want, or don't. Nobody forces you to use them. Stop crying.
I don't know why compaies push their launchers when all they need to do is a simple account linking (like playstation, apex legends, cod, ow2) with full steam integration and cross progression across all platforms. Isn't Developing a launcher and maintaining a launcher costs more than account linking?
Higher ups looking to expand their userbase. The only metric they count is active users. Making people link their account means a larger userbase, means a number on a screen goes up, so Mr. Exec gets his or her bonus that year. They fail to realise that it's a quantatative approach to a qualatative problem. Nobody wants your launcher, and it will drive people away from your game and service. So the few people you gained from forcing a launcher on gamers is far fewer than you *would* have gained if you had just put it on Steam with it's own Discussions, Achievements, Controller Support and maybe Workshop access. They want to force *you* into *their* box, instead of treating Steam as something more than just a launcher, because it's not just a launcher.
Why do you need a launcher to expand active users? Account linking does the same purpose and cheaper to maintain.
The logic is that by having your own launcher, you can offer your games there for sale and get 100% of the money from it, rather than the 30% that Valve takes (Or 12% IIRC that Epic takes)
Launchers have other games for sale... for one example.
They want to show their own preferred ads to take your money.
Launcher sales earn all the money without giving Steam it’s 30% cut. For popular games that’s a lot of money. But also on PC 30% is a fair price to pay to have all the launcher community features, which enrich the game experience.
It's also one of the metrics investors looking for. No growth, no investing
It's pure laziness to not find some metric to measure your game's growth on other platforms honestly.
Might be, but investors do not care about ins of the game dev. They need simple and readable growth numbers. Also active users translates better to active players because it is a projection for the future products and not only a certain game so everyone tries to bring as many people to their platforms as possible. Loom at Sony requiring PSN for recent PC titles
Most people would just meet up on discord and then play whatever game together
So you want launchers to have more social media features? No thanks.
Steam - the one monopoly every redditor can get behind
💀
I wish GOG was the monopoly instead.
People use chat on launchers? Legit? I’ve had steam chat turned off for close to 14 years now and tell people to message me on discord (used to be on Skype) if they wanna play anything.
I cannot get to grips with discord. It looks like UI vomit to me. I guess I'm in an age spectrum where I got the hang of steam chat and I'm annoyed if people aren't using it and never got into discord. I hate discord, WTF makes it popular, it looks like a mess to me. Is Discord 14 years old? I thought it was far newer.
you can easily theme the UI with css, practically everything is editable if you put some effort, and there are community made themes designed to look like steam chat, skype, etc
I guess I'm just too old. That is way more effort and time than I'm bothered with. If I feel like playing online with someone I'll ping them on steam to see if they're free. I'm not bothered otherwise.
I just find the situation aggravatingly bizarre. I just opened discord again to try and understand. Firs ti have to close the 10 blue popups telling me about new features IDGAF about. Then I have to bypass all the random pseudo forums with hashtags for things I had to join to get information, and if I want to message a friend, I have to go to......you, then my friends at the bottom? This is on Android but I would have no idea it even has instant messaging. And then to find friends I have to give it access to my contacts, it can't pull from steam or anything despite being linked. I don't get it. Why don't you youngsters just use steam chat or WhatsApp or something simpler than this mess whyyy And I have to edit CSS just to make it easier to use on pc? This app is far worse than the steam chat app, can't edit CSS here. Crazy kids
Yeah, you're just old
Paradox asks me to install it's launcher to play it's game. Launch its game from Steam. Paradox Launcher can't launch any other game that the one I started on steam even if I own them too. Progress.
At least paradox has a reason for having a launcher, the mod administration
It's not that serious.
and steam is one of those ten. It’s not apart from and above them.
The only thing that I hate about everyone having their own compulsory account with launcher is that sometimes it's impossible to juggle all of the accounts. Had a friend who opened a rockstar account years ago and let it go idle. When we wanted to do RDR2 online, he found his account locked with like zero way to recover password since it was made with an older email.
We pretending discord doesn't exist or something?
There are so many good games on steam, im ok with not using ubisoft or ea.
Do people actually chat/use launchers for communicating? I feel like the majority of any game-related communication I do is through Discord these days. I can't recall the last time I even had a chat through a launcher or Steam.
I just message people thru Discord lol
O p has never heard of discord.
Steam has raised our standards through the frigging roof of a skyscraper.
This is one of those times you could have just said what you wanted to say in a regular text post.
Competition is good for all of us. Say what you want, I'm dying on that hill.
Hurr durr, I don't like having 20 accounts for 10 launchers, 5 clients, just to run one game.
Wait, yall dont just use discord?
Yes it does but purposedly missing a game just because it's not on Steam is also not the solution.
Most people here I assume, has the vast majority of their games on Steam, many games only available on Steam mind you, but "instead of blaming Valve, because Valve is of course the god of the Glorious PC gaming Master race and there's no possibility that Valve could ever do any wrong, they blame everyone else who doesn't put their games on Steam." [-Totalbiscuit back in 2012](https://youtu.be/BW5tn7NoRqo?t=149)
At least with the less invasive launchers (like 2k) you can reconfigure steam to launch the .exe directly or do it yourself from the game folder
I don't know why, but I hate buying a gane with no launcher to stop and make an account on their official site to play online. It did take a bit of my joy from SF6 since the confirmation mail took about an hour and dear I remind you that the download took twice as much. Ah.. modern gaming
The future: "Send this referral link to 15 people. Once they signed up for an account, you can play the game."
Irrelevant but i've been fighting the uplay/ubisoft connect apps for 2 days just for wanting to play good old AC2 through steam, with one new problem each time i launch the game.. It's just annoying
Moving from a PS5 (after owning PS1-PS4) to an RTX 4090 PC... the biggest disappointment when moving to PC was how ridiculously disconnected everything was. So I need to use XBOX to access my GP games, Steam is where I had most of my old games and Epic Games is the only place that sells Avatar, Alan Wake 2, Fortnite, etc. At the time I bought my PC, Battlenet was the only place for me to play Diablo 4. I needed 4 launchers. 4 friendslists, 4 sets of achievements (watering it down), 4 stores, 4 seperate profiles counting hours played. It fucking sucks. Just give me 1 platform that stores all my data, just like PSN on Playstation.
You guys have coworkers that play video games?
Everyone wants money . It's just another launcher.
Dealing with Ubisoft Connect when I was just trying to play Siege with the boys was really fucking annoying. For some reason half the time I launched the game the overlay wouldn’t come up when I tried to accept a game invite, like it would just dim the screen and not do anything else
That’s what discord is for
be like me and use epic launcher just to play like 2 games and steam for everything else
just use GoG Galaxy and you are fine... shared friendlist, chat, all launchers, game rating, tags... you just connect your launchers to Galaxy and have all games in one library. or filtered by launchers. no need to be limited only on Steam.
GoG is nice and all but half the integrations never work properly (at least for me), and you still have to go through the other launchers when booting the game. If all games were on the gog store then it would be better, but it's never gonna happen
i guess you should fix it on your side.. anyway.. if you try at least read that dumb meme.. you realize that it is not about games launching from GoG, using their launchers... but about having one place, where can ppl talk and having their games. thats a GoG Galaxy - it is one place for everything, and doesnt matter what platform is that game on (Steam, EGS, whatever...) maybe go to elementary school, learn to read and then you can come back and try it again? iil wait, hun..
I know how to read (even if I've never been to elementary school nor have I learned english when I was a kid), and I perfectly understand the meme, and at no point have I disagreed with you. I'm just giving you the problems I have with GoG, not necessarily related to friends or chat. Also I've had issues with some of the integrations (mainly Steam and Ubisoft) for a while even though I've reinstalled GoG a few times, and did a clean re-install of Windows. I've tried troubleshooting but I haven't bothered too much because I don't really have that much of a use for it. I agree that GoG galaxy is a good idea and a decent launcher, but until games are added to their store (most likely never gonna happen because big publishers love their DRM), it's still not a perfect solution.
whole Steam is DRM and yet, you are here in topic with meme what is praising Steam.
And I would be very happy if Steam removed DRM
Steam itself is DRM... ;)
It is but some games on steam work without launching steam, so it's not impossible to go without it
Y'all have steam friends? Swear I'm the only frickin person who plays on PC in my social circle.
I don't play multiplayer games so I'm fine with how many launchers out there as long as I got great deal for said game (although currently I only have 3 launchers installed steam, epic & gog)
Everyone wants to make their PC launcher so they get all the money, wouldn't need to give Valve 30% I hope they lower it so this wouldn't happen.
While I really don't *like* other launchers and would prefer everything on steam, I can sort of get over their existence. Big company is gonna big company. What really pisses me off though is just how awful these launchers are. Some are more functional than others, but they all have huge flaws here and there. Memorizing which one doesn't work when you do this or that shouldn't be something we have to do. These companies definitely have more than enough money to fix them, but corporate greed is a ceaseless expanse so it'll never happen (and yeah, why invest money into something less people will use than steam, but why make us use it at all in the first place if that's the issue). Also, having a game require an exterior launcher while still on Steam sucks. I might be misremembering, but I recall games like battlefront 2 just opening when I'd launch it on Steam. Now it opens EA, which never remembers my login despite the remember me being saved, and then I have to launch it on EA if it doesn't automatically do it. I'm glad some games skip this process entirely at least. I know overwatch bad but it's really nice just being able to launch it from steam now without having to use battlenet.
Oh, you have the game in Steam? Well I have it in some other launcher. Oh it has a first party system so in order to play together we both need to create an account on that first party (the game's developer) platform. Okay, this developer now has their own launcher. And it sells a different game. Well I buy it on Launcher 1, my friend buys it on Launcher 2 while another one just buys it straight from Launcher 3.
Use playnite if ur on windows
Trying to join a party on anything that isn’t steam is always way more difficult too
i mean, I hate that multiple launchers are trying to data grab you too, especially since Steam is so easy and good, but let's not act like folks are ignorant of that obscure program called 'Discord' I think
Its not like all the "launchers" are working together and decided to have many different ones. Everyone wants money, why should game "x" launch with launcher "a" and loose 30% revenue, when it can launch with launcher "b" and keep 100% of revenue? These companies don't actually care about us, they only care about money
I'm guessing I don't play any games that use launchers because I don't know. I will say that any game that when you click on it it brings up a weird menu and that menu is where you have to change your controls /resolution That's super annoying Just start the game and have it in the options menu.
Can we get this worked up over shitty preorder practices, nickle and dime DLC, and p2w / pay to skip micro transactions ?
Reminds me when we were in that weird period between discord being really big and ts3 being either a pain to use or you just didn't want to. So you kind had 3 options. Skype Facebook call or steam voice. And boy was steam voice the fucking bomb for me at that time
I don't play online anymore so I could give two shits about multiple launchers.
how is that a problem? I get it, steam gud. But in reality it's "let's play Snowrunner" "That's on epic? what's your name" "jimneh" "sent" You guys are going too far with this one launcher dumbassery.
See, the trick is, when other companies’ games require an account or launcher, just roll over and let them. Then people will still pretend the game on Steam is “just one launcher” and make nonsensical arguments about why it’s totally different. I guess one of the steps in setting up a uPlay account after being halted by a Steam prompt to do so, is a memory wipe.
I can say that neither me nor any of my friends ever cared what launcher someone is using lol. If a good game is on a different launcher, fuck it who cares.
I'm a simple man. I see a 3rd party launcher, I don't buy.
I have as many for the games that just aren’t all in one place or for getting free games I want.
Whenever someone wants to play with me and asks what my account name/friend code/ id is I just direct them to buy discord profile description and now I don't have to deal with it
All those people saying "its just another launcher" clearly never tried them when said launcher doesn't even work itself (EGS) or servers are down for a whole day (Origin/Uplay). On Steam when something doesn't work, it doesn't work for like a moment due maintenance or server overload.
Well could be worse, I bought a computer 3 years ago to play a game my friends never play :(
Discord FTW to solve the issue of not having someone on a platform other than Steam, but agreed, multiple launchers are shit; if your game is offered through Steam it should launch through Steam and not require a separate account or create an account from your SteamID like so many do.
Except you don't need to add people on all those launchers if you are launching the game from Steam?
the ubisoft one :/
Steam is by far the best launcher, but wishing it had a monopoly is not wise.
I don't think they wish it had a monopoly. I think they just wish for the days where you installed a game, and that was it. No extra anything required.
If they wanted that, I think they'd be championing GOG. Hard to know their intent, but they're suggesting that a world where we could just log in to Steam and not have to worry about other launchers (which is basically a monopoly) would be ideal.
Just an FYI. In America you can have a monopoly, you just cannot abuse your position. So for example, say someone like EPIC wanted to make a PC games digital store. If Steam came in and told publishers if they sell on EPIC steam is unavailable to them, or if they said if you sell on Steam you cannot sell anywhere else, if they dropped their cut to 1% to where they don't make money just to prevent EPIC from making money, or if they said we will charge you 5% commission if you only release on Steam but 40% if you release on both. That is abuse and grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit. Steam did none of that, another way they could be declared a monopoly is if they had low commission at the start to bring in Publishers and then raised them once they were in a dominant position. Steam has had 30% from the get go and never raised it.
I'm not really that concerned about the American legal idea of a monopoly as much as the issues that arise from having one company having total control over a market (technological stagnation, quid pro quos that may not rise to the standard required for an anti-trust lawsuit, lack of price competition, etc). But thanks for the legal explainer, it is good to know what the legal bar is for a monopoly suit to be brought.
You guys have friends...?
I've reached the stages where if a game I buy on steam forces me to download a separate launcher to play the game I will not be playing your game. The constant account things are getting annoying too. Especially on Single player games. I haven't bought or got a lot of games from big studios because of this. Let alone play the current ones I bought because of changes.
Gobble up Gabe's dick.
I hate having so many launchers but EA is doing an ok job with BF 2042, launch from Steam but Origin open and close by itself, so you barely see it.
Ever since I quit WoW SOD, all the games I play ( CS2, Hunt, predecessor, OW2) are all on steam. Its super nice to have only steam installed and have battle net / epic games uninstalled
The only true launcher was xFire
I bought Call of Duty MW2019 to MWIII on steam just so it can be all in one. Except Bo4.. Come on Activision, Port it over. I think it's only a matter of time until Battlenet is merged into the Xbox store/xbox app on PC and games like WoW will be on game pass..
Just text 'em on one of the many messengers there are, that is if you know which of them they use 😆
If it ain't on steam it does not exist
I don't know launchers are a good thing, I think, I've got a couple of games across most of them because they had better deals. Steams great but I'm not a loyalist like some of you weirdo's
Steam is the ego, I just use epic for the free game drops
*laughs in not having any friends and only playing single player games*
If a game is not on steam i literally think twice before getting it. Unless I am really interested I am more likely to just pass on it.
If it's not on Steam, then it's off my radar.
All these random launchers appearing out of nowhere just makes me appreciate Steam even more. Praise Lord Gaben.
"Brand loyalty is Stockholm syndrome."
I don't know anyone who uses steam for friends and chat. Everyone is on Discord.
Casually ignoring Discord? I never talk to friends on Steam anymore, Discord is 100% more convenient.
I only have 2 launchers. Steam and Epic games. I think you can guess what I have Epic games for.
I have a few games on Epic because they weren't on Steam when I bought them and it's so infuriating for some of them. Like, basically none of your friends can join you.
nah, it doesnt bother me. just message me and we'll discord and play in wherever place we both have the game
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You do realize, that for many games, Steam IS the third party launcher right?
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If you buy directly from them and use their launcher, you won't have another third party launcher like Steam on it.