Meme transcription: A table comparing the steps to start a game ‘then’ vs. ‘now’.
Content of the “Then” column:
- Double-click GAME.exe
- Play game
Content of the “Now” column:
- Launch Steam
-
Steam updates
-
Steam opens
- Close Steam’s ad window
- Select Game
-
Game launcher starts
-
Game launcher launches Game launcher updater
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Ok
-
Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?
- No
-
Our EULAs have changed. Please review them before continuing
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes, sell my soul
- Start game
- Skip vendor intro
- Skip vendor intro #2
- Skip vendor intro #3
- Sit through nVidia The way it’s meant to be played
- Skip opening cutscene
-
Main menu opens
-
Would you like to connect your Steam account to account?
- No
- Press play.
- Play game.
People praise Steam, but it's one of the most bloated, unnecessarily convoluted examples of feature creep on my machine, and it always wants to run in the background and check for updates. Even when I do remember to exit properly, it takes several seconds of thinking before it closes. I've resorted to using task manager instead.
Almost any launcher is less annoying to me than Steam, but then I've never been one to use or want the various social aspects. I wish there were a lite version for people who just want to use it to buy and play games.
What other launchers do you use?
For me its like yeah steam has some annoyances, but overall it is pretty good and mostly works. Ubisoft and EA usually have more annoyances and/or straight up don't work.
EGS only takes a few seconds to launch, doesn't shove an annoying popup ad in my face every time I open it, and completely exits the application when I click X
I've actually bought the EGS version of several games just so I don't have to deal with Steam's bullshit
I've also got some indie games that don't use a launcher at all, and I use the Windows version of ESO so I don't need a separate launcher for that, which is my most-played game of all
Interesting, for me it is EGS that has all the bs haha
Its slow, ads all over, store is horrible
At least it's just a few ads for games, and my recently played games are right there at the left, ready to be launched.
Steam is virtually unusable upon opening, looks like visiting a virus-ridden site without an adblocker, and it made me sign in again even though I've just used it recently. The only way to prevent having to sign in frequently is to leave it running in the background at all times, and that's not going to happen.
Yeah maybe its just works well for me. I set steam to load the library instead of the store and I never get these popups. Also I never have to sign in again. But steam is always open, since I use my desktop nearly exclusively for gaming at this point.
I wonder if a batch program wouldn't help you to bypass task manager too, mmmh
It would! I've actually considered that, but honestly I just don't use Steam enough to justify it. I'd probably use it a lot more if it didn't feel like such a chore to run.
Yeah, steam is way too bloated for me. Usually it makes it impossible to do stuff at startup since the new UI version uses more resources
I've come to accept that it's going to update every time I launch it, which makes it a pita since I work long shifts and have very little time to play games to begin with.