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).
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
Pretty sure it either allows to login within game, or launches their own (micro?) launcher first, where you have to login with Blizzard account and then starts the game.
Pretty much all "steam games" that are primarily available elsewhere run this way using mini launchers...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
Ditto. I won't even give them usage stats on games I had previously purchased. Nothing to take to the board and say "we have returning users that we hope to convert into sales!"
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.”
Finally, so much people will join, that I'm sure someone will fix the Proton bug where the mouse pointer loses focus and you have to tab out and back in to regain focus after respawning. Hell, there are so many heroes that don't require precise aiming, that it would even make it a playable game on the Steam Deck.
Steam is the best platform by far, and the only one with Linux support. It's not Valve's fault if other publishers aren't even trying to make a good product.
It wouldnt be so notable if they just let me download the game by itself. If I have to download a fucking launcher every time then I want the games to be centralized atleast somewhat.
Seriously every fucking conpany a fucking launcher for a while there, even fucking bethesda had one.
I'm permanently annoyed with the launcher thing, too. I wish someone would come up with a software store app that 1) installed all the right crap so the game works right and 2) didn't require you to open the app to open the game. Steam, for example, lets you install the game with a start menu shortcut, but if you don't have Steam open, clicking on the start menu shortcut opens Steam first, then Steam launches the friggin' game. Then there is the Bethesda launcher. Then Blizzard's Battle.net launcher. There's an Xbox launcher. Yadda yadda. I don't know if their primary goal is monopoly as much as it is forcing you to open a program with a store in it so you see stuff to buy when you want to play a game. I think having a monopoly is secondary. Primary to them is forcing you to see that they have more shit for you to buy. I'm pretty sure Apple's iTunes is the one that started it all. Let's integrate shopping for music into the computer. Then, the phone. Now it's not just music. It's every friggin' thing. People with shopping addictions must have a hard time if they're also gamers or fans of other digital media.
I doubt anyone will complain if Blizzard's games are brought to other storefronts too.
I like Steam. Steam has the best features, best UI, good sales, and while they are not without faults (systems can stay unchanged for a long time!), they are run by a company that by and large respects its userbase.
I don't mind if games are brought to Steam and any or all other storefronts. Put it on GOG, Windows Store, EGS, Itch.io, battlenet, Origin, Uplay... You name it, I approve of it going there also. If those other storefronts want me to use them, they need to provide a comparable or superior experience. GOG comes the closest, but its inability to get games in a timely or predictable manner, if at all, is too much of an obstacle for me.
I feel like a game being made available on an additional platform is like the opposite of monopoly. If steam paid Blizzard for exclusive storefront rights and you could only get the games on PC from Steam id be inclined to agree.
Valve has like five games, and the hundreds of thousands of other games on Steam are from other companies, and they've had 3rd-party games since 2005.
Activision/Blizzard didn't put their games on Steam so they can push their own store, it was to not make payments to a third party, and have high visibility of their own products (e.g. advertise CoD to Diablo players and vice versa). Of course, they miss out on the visibility of being on the largest game marketplace.
Awww, they are such a good guys. They are doing this for us and they want to make sure they respect user's choice. Totally it's not the fact Overwatch2 is not earning anything and other games have been in decline since Activision merger.
With ActiBlizz it's all about money. Just look at D3 auction house. They purposely dropped wrong items to players in order to force them to use auction house. When it was found out they backtracked. But it's always been like that. Same with WoW and mounts. Etc. They keep milking everything.
I have never thought I'd see the day when I think MS is the good guy in a merger.
Yeah, but it's a bit easier to install the game directly from Steam instead of installing Bnet as a non Steam game and then downloading the game on Bnet.
Lol. I have hundreds of hours on OW (NOT OW2) and Diablo III (not IV), and i can safely say I forgo ever playing those 2 games again because of the toxic entity that is Acti-Blizz. Not that I have much choice considering OW cannot even be played as its own game now.
I left when I read that Blizzard staff got the axe while Kotick got himself a sweet sweet money enema of a bonus.
When Michael Chu left in 2020 i started playing more Monster Hunter and Genshin. When Jeff Kaplan left I finally uninstalled Battle.net.
Now unless you dedicate a full time job amount of hours, you’ll be lucky to get 4 unlocks a seasons
Thanks. At least I have some affirmation I made the right choice. At least I can be content I'm playing something worthwhile like Genshin. #damnedeitherway 🤣 🤣 🤣
Reading the comments I tend to think that people are so unfamiliar with competition that they fail to recognize it when seeing it at work: if you have competition, stuff fails and dies.
This idea that everything should survive and that I as the user should be the receptacle of thousands of shitty products preaching variety as an excuse for their existence is insane.
Launchers existed, could have used IP as an advantage to develop a valid product instead failed and therefore will disappear.
I still use GOG Galaxy no problem alongside Steam.
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'm not a hardcore gamer but I'm a fan of cloud gaming, first Google Stadia (rip) and later Gforce Now.
And Gforce Now supports Steam games so the more games available in the Steam-catalogue, the better.
Well, not all Steam games. Funny thing is, launcher isn't even totally the barrier to getting a game in GFN; UPlay and Epic have games available in GFN as well. Whenever I'm away from home and decide to use cloud, I mostly end up playing Ubisoft games through them.
On the plusside, it really seems like running Battle.net is not a requirement, and it just logs in the bnet account once ingame. Two thumbs up. More availability and people being able to use Steam as a somewhat sensible launcher instead of the frankly annoying Battle.net, even better.
On the downside, I guess this also confirms beyond the investors call that OW2 is bleeding players quickly - and for good reason, since they've shown they cannot handle the fundamental design changes from the switch to 5v5 at all.
Overwatch 2 failing is bad news? It's everything wrong with GAAS development. If it eats shit and dies, the industry can only take away good lessons from it.
I was burned on the notion that I could no longer play Overwatch 1. I have 2 copies, one PC and one PS5, that are just coasters now. Granted things are digital these days, but restoring OW1 would be a good first step.
I'm actually looking forward to checking it out on Steam, then I don't have to fiddle around anymore with Lutris on my Linux box and I can just use Proton normally within Steam itself.
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.
Bwahahaha. I was already back and forth with wow for the longest time after wotlk but you could see the direction change and I was a huge overwatch fan. It was my new TF2. But damn it was like coming out of childhood and realizing your favorite hero was not who you thought he was. I'm still holding out hope for valve. They aren't public (I don't think) and gabe has made some very good business decisions. Not to mention the steam deck has done more to take market away from the guilt windows has on gaming. This is a wild time to be alive.
Valve is just about the only company I somewhat trust. Pre-ordered the highest version of the steam deck, and the way they handled the entire development process solidified my faith in them
For real, they're like one of the only companies I know left that just do their thing and not step on anyone's toes. Also the sly push to Linux gaming from creating the steam deck and having people want to make it compatible. Most my machines are Linux now. I only have 1 gaming windows PC left. I wanna learn by immersion.
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.
We still can't get free expansions for WoW subscribers? I can't think of any other service where you have to buy the software and pay to use it. Either you buy it and own at least that version outright or you pay a recurring fee for access to the latest version.
This used to be pretty common. And to be fair, I prefer this model compared to excessive cash shops. (WoW also has one which I don't like, but at least there is no item shop. Though I'm sure they would if it not caused too much of a backlash)
Guild Wars 2 has no monthly fee and has a cash shop but the items are either QoL improvements or cosmetic. There's nothing there that gives the player an edge over non-paying players.
I really like the Guild Wars 2 model. The base game is free to play now too.
Please yes. Running Diablo in steam deck is annoying. Install lutris, run battle.net,then run Diablo, then login to battle.net, then login to Diablo, then pick your character to actually play the game. Please remove some steps
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.
Personally, I had never been into Warcraft or Starcraft. For me Diablo 3 is the peak, I like how well it is optimised for the consoles. It is my preference.
Considering how poorly their dev’s have been since Activision-Blizztard went woke (around when Vanguard came out) it’s no surprise they are trying to maximize their market. Back when WoW was the undisputed champion of all things MMO’s they never would have considered doing this.
Diablo 4 is garbage, they literally destroyed the concept of seasons that was what kept people playing Diablo 3 for so long.
I’m actually kind of surprised that they aren’t showing up on the Microshaft store first.