Bethesda.net Launcher Says Goodbye

[poochyena]

30 minutes ago, Derangel said:

It really wasn’t competition. No single-publisher launcher is ever going to be competition to Steam.

Its not? Try buying Rocket League on steam. go ahead.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

6 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Why is it so hard to get together and build a MoviesAnywhere-like platform for games? Use the freaking storefront you want, and move your games across them as you like. 

Because every publisher wants 100% of the revenue. This is primarily the reason why you can't fully play cross-platform games wherever you want because you need to repurchase all of the DLCs on each platform you wish to go to. Oh you played Destiny 2 on PS4, bought all of the expansions and want to migrate to PC? Guess you're repurchasing all of the expansions on Steam. Sony got their share from the sale of the DLCs when you were on PS4, now it's Valve's turn. There is no technical reason why it can't be done because seasonal passes do follow you wherever platform you decide to play on that session. The only caveat is season passes are purchased through the in-game cash shop so Bungie gets 100% of the revenue regardless of platform. 

 

So sadly this isn't going anywhere. And you can thank Epic Games once that expands to mobile gaming. The best thing I can think of that can come from Epic's debacle with Apple/ Google is if you were to transition from iOS to Android or vice versa, your games should go with you since it'll be tied down to the publishers own store rather than the Apple App Store/ Google Play Store. That being said... most notable mobile games are free to play anyway paid by micro-transactions so that whole plus is basically a non-factor. 

[Arika]

It only makes sense to have a game launcher if its a stand alone thing. I hate when i try to run a game through steam and then another launcher comes up. Ubisoft is the main offender for this.

[Biohazard777]

5 hours ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

EGS has a lot of great things, like my 50 game cataloug of games i never payed for

Amateur, I've got 190 games there!
Out of which I've actually installed and played a total of 5... 

 

4 hours ago, kaylexmorgana said:

Nothing makes me cringe more than hearing this line.

 

No one likes those shitty launchers yet they still exist. All ran by BILLION dollar companies... that means they can never go out of business no matter how many of you "vote with your wallet".

You do know Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media was acquired by Microsoft for 7.5B... and that this thread is about Bethesda launcher being shut down? 

Speaking of which, I'm surprised Microsoft Store & Xbox App isn't even an option.

[RejZoR]

Good. I never liked that trash. Steam is not perfect, but it works good and it works reliably. Plus it's super easy with maintenance. Reinstalling whole system partition clean just involves installing Steam client in same location I had it before on secondary partition and all games are instantly recognized and available. All others involve reinstalling of all games, especially Origin is total garbage in that regard. GOG has automatic import tool, but is a bit lengthy because it goes through all games and redownloads a lot of parts of those games, making the process a long process. Steam takes just 2 minutes to install the client and that's it. And whole process of buying and playing games has always been simple and friendly to the user and I never had problems with refunds. I don't do them regularly, but I had 2 or 3 and they were always done without any arguing or complications. Steam really entirely changed the gaming (and purchasing) for me as I haven't pirated a single game since. Back then I even had kind strangers from local forum who bought games for me on Steam because I didn't have a credit card yet and I was wiring them money directly via bank in return. Let that be a lesson for all the other greedy services that absolutely always disappoint or fail to deliver and then wonder why people resort to piracy. Steam wasn't one of those and still isn't.

[atxcyclist]

A few weeks ago I did a fresh W10 install and when I downloaded Fallout 76 a week ago (I know), I was surprised and pleased to not see the Bethesda launcher and all of my other titles in my Steam library.

[Video Beagle]

I just like installing a game, it having an icon, I click it and play, and then quit it..no launcehers or nothing

[RejZoR]

5 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

I just like installing a game, it having an icon, I click it and play, and then quit it..no launcehers or nothing

I do appreciate the addition of things like auto updating and game saves sync. It keeps games up to date without having to hunt correct patch installers and safeguards the safe files and makes playing of same game on different computers much more enjoyable. I remember playing Plants vs Zombies, the original 2D one on my main PC and on laptop. And I had synced progress between both. It was really fun way. Before this you had to manually copy save files and it was a nightmare to deal with.

[TetraSky]

Good. It never should've existed in the first place.

[Giganthrax]

Thank god.

 

Bethesda launcher is a useless travesty that uses up too many system resources for some reason while offering zero functionality. It's literally just a front-end window with some website links and game installation links. I'm pretty sure its whole purpose is to mine data from my computer or serve as an additional layer of DRM. I bought Doom Eternal on it because the key for it was 20e cheaper than the Steam version, and it's a mistake I regretted many times. 

 

Just about the only launcher that's worse than the Bethesda one is Rockstar launcher, as that garbage constantly forces me to do captchas whenever I make the mistake of trying to play one of their games. Even Microsoft launcher is better than those two, as it at least has some functionalities and doesn't constantly get in my way. 

 

BTW, the funniest thing here is that Bethesda isn't even giving players the option of transfering their games to the Microsoft launcher because they know absolutely nobody would do that.

[Doobeedoo]

I primarily used it for Quake Champions but they made that game available on Steam for some time now already and made it a bit easier to update.

While it sucks to have all the launchers, just for that one game on each, if it's free yeah whatever.

Who knows how it will go over time with others, I can only wish that there's a not necessarily a single store, but a single buy, where ever, and that you can play anywhere.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I just like installing a game, it having an icon, I click it and play, and then quit it..no launcehers or nothing

That's nice. 

 

You know why launchers exist right? So they can update and patch the game (when it's a multiplayer game.) If it's not a multiplayer game, it doesn't need a launcher, but also you might be harassed a lot to update it if it can still talk to the internet. This is because a game might exist on more than one OS, so it can't compile in os-specific things on platforms where that functionality is different or non-existent.

 

We see this problem almost exclusively with non-game software, because no equivalent to steam exists. There are applications, yes, in steam, but all Steam operates as in those cases is a distribution point. If you launch an application through Steam, unless it was designed like a game (eg running on Unity), Steam doesn't actually provide any functionality. You can run those applications without Steam at all.

 

Many applications on Windows will check for updates before even giving you control over the program, resulting situations where it won't run without an update, or it checks for an update and due to the site being congested, or you being on expensive slow internet plans, is unusable. 

 

Many pre-2008 games that were digital downloads, you are hard pressed to find them working today. This includes a lot of games from EA that used predecessors to the EA-Origin launcher. Mass Effect, The Sims, Spore, etc. Sucks to be you if you want any of the DLC or play them with a friend, because those services are dead.

 

[Derangel]

13 hours ago, poochyena said:

Its not? Try buying Rocket League on steam. go ahead.

If you bothered to reply to my entire statement you would see that I already addressed EGS. Also, EGS is not a single-publisher store and is irrelevant to the part you were quoting. Try again.

[poochyena]

31 minutes ago, Derangel said:

If you bothered to reply to my entire statement you would see that I already addressed EGS. Also, EGS is not a single-publisher store and is irrelevant to the part you were quoting. Try again.

steam is also not a single publisher store

[Derangel]

13 minutes ago, poochyena said:

steam is also not a single publisher store

Yes. That’s the fucking point. That is specifically why I said that the Bethesda launcher was not competition to Steam and that no single publisher store would be.

[poochyena]

12 minutes ago, Derangel said:

Yes. That’s the fucking point. That is specifically why I said that the Bethesda launcher was not competition to Steam and that no single publisher store would be.

The person I originally replied to included epic game store, so when you said "it" I thought you meant them too, and when you say "EGS is the closest we have" I thought that meant they aren't competition, but close to being so. I get more what you mean now. Though, I think you are underestimating EGS a little bit though, it has certainly caused a noticeable disruption considering how new they are to the scene.

[IPD]

Now if only we could get rid of the rest of the BS launchers.

 

Or for that matter, if we could rid of 80% of the BS streaming services.

[IPD]

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

That's nice. 

 

You know why launchers exist right? So they can update and patch the game (when it's a multiplayer game.) If it's not a multiplayer game, it doesn't need a launcher, but also you might be harassed a lot to update it if it can still talk to the internet. This is because a game might exist on more than one OS, so it can't compile in os-specific things on platforms where that functionality is different or non-existent.

 

We see this problem almost exclusively with non-game software, because no equivalent to steam exists. There are applications, yes, in steam, but all Steam operates as in those cases is a distribution point. If you launch an application through Steam, unless it was designed like a game (eg running on Unity), Steam doesn't actually provide any functionality. You can run those applications without Steam at all.

 

Many applications on Windows will check for updates before even giving you control over the program, resulting situations where it won't run without an update, or it checks for an update and due to the site being congested, or you being on expensive slow internet plans, is unusable. 

 

Many pre-2008 games that were digital downloads, you are hard pressed to find them working today. This includes a lot of games from EA that used predecessors to the EA-Origin launcher. Mass Effect, The Sims, Spore, etc. Sucks to be you if you want any of the DLC or play them with a friend, because those services are dead.

 

I have a launcher for Star Trek: Online.  I sure as shit don't need to use ARC to launch the damn thing--even though that's what PWE wants me to use.  I'm calling Shiens on the need to have a proprietary, publisher-specific launcher.  All that's needed is a game launcher specific for that game.  And all THAT needs is your login info.

 

I could easily play Starcraft 2 without Battle.net.  If I were allowed to.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, IPD said:

I have a launcher for Star Trek: Online.  I sure as shit don't need to use ARC to launch the damn thing--even though that's what PWE wants me to use.  I'm calling Shiens on the need to have a proprietary, publisher-specific launcher.  All that's needed is a game launcher specific for that game.  And all THAT needs is your login info.

 

I could easily play Starcraft 2 without Battle.net.  If I were allowed to.

MMO's launched through steam, pretty much always launch the game's patcher/launcher anyway. The only difference is that STEAM does the actual patching of the game, and the launcher just sees a "already updated" install.

 

Sure, they're not "needed", but they exist entirely as a consequence of how Asian MMORPG's were developed. Star Trek Online included.  The Laucnher does exactly three things, and you can verify this yourself with every game from 10+ year old games to new ones:

 

1. It contacts the developer to see if it needs new files

2. It patches the files that are different, and removes "user installed" mods and other garbage that will break the game

3. It generates a session cookie from your entering a username and password, which it then passes to the game binary.

 

You can do this with pretty much every MMO game. Run the launcher once, launch the game, then go into task manager or any other tool that will let you see the "command line". Copy that to notepad. Now exit the game, and then copy that command line again. This will typically work until the next time the game needs to be patched, and this is in fact how "mods" for these games persist for so long in the first place. The patcher is the only thing updating the files. The game does not. It can not. Because a PS4 version of the game and a PC version of the game has different access permissions, and will have files in different places.

 

[IPD]

And that's why I don't run steam to launch STO.