Why do some games opt not to update using steam!

[Legeis]

Like this is a thing that really annoys me where games like War Thunder and Warframe and others choose to use their own launcher to download updates even when you get the game through steam. So instead of staying up to date by pushing updates through steam they wait for you to launch the game then are like hey you have half an hour of updates waiting even though you have steam auto updates turned on!

 

It's like they intentionally want to mess with you!

 

Is there an actual reason they do this or are they just being stubborn and annoying! 

[Shimejii]

Warframe has had its own launcher due to issues they had with steam. There are always reasons for the companies to do that

[PlayStation 2]

Having direct control of everything in terms of how a game is updated is very valuable for popular multiplayer titles. Hell, Valve did this themselves for Counter-Strike by migrating that from its original network system to Steam; Team Fortress 2, CS:GO and Dota 2 are all very notable for Valve testing various functionalities of Steam with them (TF2 was the first game to receive Steam Workshop support, for example).

[LogicalDrm]

Probably because Valve needs to verify everything put on Steam. That means two things. Slower updates and more less bugs. Pushing with own launcher they don't need to have Valve's approval. Same reason why most beta/test features aren't available with consoles on multiplatform games. Takes too much time to get them approved to gain anything from it.

 

DICE explained this issue back in the days with BFBC2 update cycles and getting them through consoles.

[Legeis]

I maintain that it's still annoying from the consumers point of view. You download a game, you turn on automatic updates, you have plenty of capacity, the game has plenty of time to download updates, then you launch the game and oh no you gotta wait to play because updates are needed. All because they decided to use their own launcher. 

 

even if the absolute newest patches needed to go through their launcher because they have to get approval from valve to push updates through steam, they could still push most of the updates through steam in the background and then download whatever is missing when you launch the game... then maybe it be like 0.5 GB when I launch instead of 10 GB

 

 

[PlayStation 2]

38 minutes ago, Legeis said:

I maintain that it's still annoying from the consumers point of view. You download a game, you turn on automatic updates, you have plenty of capacity, the game has plenty of time to download updates, then you launch the game and oh no you gotta wait to play because updates are needed. All because they decided to use their own launcher. 

 

even if the absolute newest patches needed to go through their launcher because they have to get approval from valve to push updates through steam, they could still push most of the updates through steam in the background and then download whatever is missing when you launch the game... then maybe it be like 0.5 GB when I launch instead of 10 GB

 

 

I don’t think you understand why developers would rather have their own game launchers over using a third party client. While Valve gives developers a decent amount of flexibility with Steam, for some developers, it really isn’t enough. 

 

Also, game patches and their size has far less to do with the client used than they have to do with how a developer handles game patches. Lots of games put things into dedicated archives, which can help in streamlining the download process but comes at the cost of efficiency of updating the game. That’s an issue that Grand Theft Auto V runs across, largely because it writes any update content to a specific update archive rather than trying to overwrite anything in the base archives. 

[LogicalDrm]

On 5/13/2020 at 5:32 PM, Legeis said:

I maintain that it's still annoying from the consumers point of view. You download a game, you turn on automatic updates, you have plenty of capacity, the game has plenty of time to download updates, then you launch the game and oh no you gotta wait to play because updates are needed. All because they decided to use their own launcher.

This depends much on game. Sure if the game receives multiple updates weekly, or have constantly bigger updates, or you don't play that often it, or otherwise don't follow whats going on with it. Back in the day when I was really into BF2, we used to know dates and size estimates of patches weeks ahead. And back then you would need to download patch from devs site or mirror and apply it yourself. Now with OW I know that there's one day weekly when game gets updated, and following even one content creator will give heads-up if the updfate is anything more than few hundred megs.