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I guess they’re giving up on convincing people to download their launcher.
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You still have to use Battle.net, so that’s an absolute no-go from me.
Glad they’re giving folks options though.
You need a battlenet login, but not the launcher
Doesn’t the launcher also double as their anti cheat system? I thought the launcher also managed Warden
I don’t think so, but also I thought most of ow2 anticheat was serverside
Warden works on Battle.net the server not the launcher. Very few games have Warden.
Blizzard is trash and so is Steam
But steam is where I keep my trash. No need for a second pile
Why is steam trash?
The company that makes Doom lets you use steam and allows you to transfer your data.
Microsoft.
Lol the desperation of a flailing bad company. Sorry Blizzard, winter is over.
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 can nearly guarantee you that once you download it from Steam servers that it will require the Battle.net launcher.
I can see this isn’t your first rodeo!
They already said this won’t be the case
Mike Ybarra confirmed this is not the case. They will launch directly from Steam.
Is there a source? I want to believe this so much.
HOLY SHIT!
Thank you!
Since Diablo. Back when I played on dialup. I’m old.
This is battle.net 2.0. Most of Battle 1.0’s functionality had to either be ported or just isn’t there.
Battle.net 1.0 is so different that warcraft III vomited server instability when it moved to 2.0. They’re the same in name only.
And as others have pointed out, it will probably still require 2.0 in order to play the games, just that Steam’s launcher will point you to battle.net
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.
Played alot of OW but really not a fan of OW2 and how the whole game revolves around the battle pass.
Was nice to just play a game or two a night, get my free lootbox and slowly get skins
Now unless you dedicate a full time job amount of hours, you’ll be lucky to get 4 unlocks a seasons
Plus single tank is awful
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 🤣 🤣 🤣
You’ll have to hold out for OW Classic (that you’ll have to rebuy).
That one single downvote is because they know it’s true. 🤣
Gimme steam support for D4 so I can get full compatibility on my steamdeck
Pretty obviously trying to pull an “Apex Legends” to try and save the flailing Overwatch 2.
I still think they’re gonna just launch Blizzard.net anyways, similar to Ubisoft games and EA games. Let’s not get too ahead now.
Only OW2 for now, hopefully HS soon though.
Burned my Battle.Net account when they shat on Taiwan advocacy, not keen to return given all the bullshit that has continued popping up about their abusive workspace environment. Maybe they can go to GOG and shit on Devotion together?
Great news!
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.
If it’s anything like Path of Exile, around 60% of their playerbase uses Steam over their standalone launcher.
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.
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.
According to the steam page it says it only requires a battle.net account. Usually it says when another launcher is required.
Steam having a monopoly is not a good thing for anyone. Competition is good, even if the other launchers are a bit annoying.
Steam has competition by way of Epic, EA, Blizzard. Steam is just the far superior product and people don’t want to change
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.
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.
But most games aren’t DRM-free, so the launchers are necessary to verify your account and ownership of the game. Otherwise every store would be GOG, and most publishers won’t use it.
Launchers are a solution to DRM, not the solution. The way today’s modern market is, it’s understandable that some gamers have forgotten that there used to be games you bought directly from the publisher’s website. DRM was done by asking you to sign into your account before launching the game, a lot of games still make you do this today. There’s also the tried and true method of phoning home with a product key for DRM as well. There’s no shortage of ways to be independent, very few companies are interested in doing so because Steam is convenient.
Aside from the fact that logging into every game separately would be a nightmare, it would only work for online games and be a major hassle for developers because it means they also need to compensate for not having a launcher on things like automatic updates and deployments. It’s not really a solution either side would like.
I’m getting downvoted hard but people are forgetting that a game store not having a launcher is suicide. GOG tried that, started bleeding money, caved in and made their own launcher. Steam also has 20 years under their belt so saying worse launchers shouldn’t be allowed to exist would just kill competition entirely.
Steam already does that verification.
Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That’s a very dangerous monopoly.
There’s plenty of others. GoG and Humble come to mind as the major alternatives.
Yeah, and GoG is fantastic and I’m so glad it exists. We need more DRM-free storefronts without launchers for sure.
What are you even talking about? It’s an application that launches a game. It adds nothing of value to the process of opening the game. How is it less of a monopoly to use a launcher to launch a launcher to launch a game?
It’s not just a launcher, it’s a storefront. Uplay, EA-whatever, and Rockstar Launcher are all storefronts where you can buy the games those companies make.
The launcher itself is a UI which lets you “launch” the game. Steam for example, is a launcher and a storefront, as is Uplay.
Having all your games in a single launcher/storefront is bad, as it gives a single company entire control over your games, and monopoly pricing.
Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut, which is totally unnecessary, and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts. Because why pay a 30% tax just for selling your game, this ain’t the 1990s anymore with CD-ROM pressings.
Fuck Steam and it’s monopolistic, 30% rent seeking bollocks.
That’s an argument for Steam not being the only game store, it doesn’t make much sense after you already bought it from Steam and the game requires an alternate launcher to be installed.
But on that other matter, I think you have a point in theory, but EA, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard don’t seem to have any interest in providing a better service or unique benefits. Steam’s dominance is overly maligned when it’s the only one where the company actually earned its place, by providing a better service.
And even then Steam doesn’t even have as much of a monopoly over PC games as console manufacturers actually do over each of their platforms. But since it is by design that consoles only support the platform-maker approved games, it doesn’t even register in people’s minds as a monopoly. As if they were never supposed to control these devices they have bought.
GOG and Humble are really good stores though
Gog is reportedly failing and Humble’s success is because they’re selling Steam keys, so they still depend on them.
False. It’s a good thing for Gabe.
How is a shiti launcher a competition…
You want competition go to GoG or Epic… Or pirate
i love how polarizing the votes on this are, you aren’t wrong. gog is a huge competitor but they have their own launcher too which is annoying
Yeah, steam is good, but it can get bad if they sit around for too long and get fat. The threat of others is a good thing.
I just wish the competition gave any attention to Linux support. GOG Galaxy has been out idk how long, they sell Linux games, and still not even a launcher.
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”.
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.
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.
Yeah. While them having the most successful platform for distributing games can be troublesome in the monopoly sense, I’m still sunny to them just because of their support for the Linux community.
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.
