Why do people accept Steam but hate other gaming clients?

[IHaveHugeNick]

Temenos

I don't know, I generally remember which publisher makes each game so if I ever bother to buy AssCreed game again, I'm not gonna accidentally look for it on Origin. Steam is actually the hardest client to manage because library is bloated by 50 million indie trash from Humble Bundle that I never even bothered to launch.

 

[Temenos]

Temenos

I don't know, I generally remember which publisher makes reach game so if I ever bother to buy AssCreed game again, I'm not gonna accidentally look for it on Origin. Steam is actually the hardest client to manage because library is bloated by 50 million indie trash from Humble Bundle that I never even bothered to launch.

That's fair. I guess part of it will be for someone who's got say Doom 2016 on Steam and Doom Eternal on Bethesda's launcher, or maybe the first two Mass Effects on Steam and the third one on Origin, that sort of stuff.

I believe you can permanently delete games off of Steam now though, which is good once the allure of a massive library gives way to actually finding decent shit out of one's collection.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Honestly I enjoy Steam due to regional pricing and the fact that its "DRM" is very unobstrusive. So long you played a game online once should be enough to play it offline other time unless 3rd party client or DRM is attached to the game.

I dont think Steam is bloated in the sense that it has too many feature, regardless impact on performance. The only annoying thing is newly added live stream steam.tv.

On the other hand, Steam shop layout is actual garbage. With how many games are in steam now they need to add extensive filtering option.

 

[Mustawd]

I started assembling my own PCs in the early 2000s, at which time I was in the Air Force working as a B-52H ECM technician. Back then, there was no pcpartpicker.com, no logicalincrements.com, and no 1080p YouTube PC building tutorials.

Kek. B-52. While you were working a B-1 technician was fucking your mom and/or girlfriend.

 

[Belegarsson]

Nah. People just have ancient habits from Windows XP era, when you had to freak out about every tiny piece of software running in the tray or manually kill processes to get games to run. Heck, I still know folks who continue to religiously use those ridiculous registry optimizers even though they don't actually do anything useful. So they'd rather have everything in one client because muh memory usage.

The reality being that with SSDs, 16 gigs of ram and improved memory management of Windows 7 and above, almost all of the PC-optimization-broscience is hilariously pointless, but there you go.

I helped installing Adobe softwares for two colleagues this week. Both are only 25-ish years old and actually know one or two things about software stuffs, but I was actually baffled at the number of "optimization" bloatwares on their computer, which ended up slowing down the PCs so much even a i3 6100 (which is an incredibly good budget CPU) got crippled hard on full load for like 10 minutes after boot. When I asked, they simply said those softwares make the PC run faster when in reality their PC shouldn't have any problem to begin with unless they actively fuck with it -_-

 

[Thane Solus]

just about everything made after 2012-2014 is bloatware. antiviruses/firewalls (that mostly slow ur PC than protect you, #notall), OS (see win10), OS: apple ios and android and theirs app (champions of bloatware).

when i actually play on steam, most of the time i go offline mode, but they did improved their client performance a lot in the past years, not that i care that much about it.

 

[Atlantico]

What's the point of that question if you exclude shitty coded software?

Because all software can have bugs in it at any given time which hang, stall or crash the app in question or throws it in a stupid loop which sucks all resources. But that's not normal behavior.

Skype (which I'm running right now) uses 0% CPU, because it's running, but not doing anything. That's normal Skype behavior.

I was asking about an app which demonstrates this CPU resource sucking in *normal* behavior.

The reality being that with SSDs, 16 gigs of ram and improved memory management of Windows 7 and above, almost all of the PC-optimization-broscience is hilariously pointless, but there you go.

Precisesly.

 

[Jigawatt]

I was asking about an app which demonstrates this CPU resource sucking in *normal* behavior.

This is still fairly prevalent if you need every ounce of resources that your PC has, even a couple of % hogging becomes quite noticeable. An active case (albeit GPU hogging rather than CPU) on my computer this very moment: Firefox. I prefer it over any alternative due to UI/plugin/spyware reasons but god damn if it doesn't just assume that every available resource is fair game to consume.

I don't have a Titan Xp just so you can allocate 5GB of video memory to only about 20 tabs

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I was asking about an app which demonstrates this CPU resource sucking in *normal* behavior.

This is still fairly prevalent if you need every ounce of resources that your PC has, even a couple of % hogging becomes quite noticeable. An active case (albeit GPU hogging rather than CPU) on my computer this very moment: Firefox. I prefer it over any alternative due to UI/plugin/spyware reasons but god damn if it doesn't just assume that every available resource is fair game to consume.

I don't have a Titan Xp just so you can allocate 5GB of video memory to only about 20 tabs

disable hardware acceleration in options, you won't even notice a difference

 

[Temenos]

disable hardware acceleration in options, you won't even notice a difference

Bad idea, things get a lot more sluggish (plus CPU usage increases substantially) when hardware acceleration is disabled. Google Street View turns to shit. Even things like YouTube use noticeably more CPU when hardware acceleration is disabled. Offloading that crap onto the GPU is a better idea (so long as you aren't using a terrible onboard chipset).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

disable hardware acceleration in options, you won't even notice a difference

Bad idea, things get a lot more sluggish (plus CPU usage increases substantially) when hardware acceleration is disabled. Google Street View turns to shit. Even things like YouTube use noticeably more CPU when hardware acceleration is disabled. Offloading that crap onto the GPU is a better idea (so long as you aren't using a terrible onboard chipset).

you shouldn't see a difference in video decoding, hardware acceleration just enables GPU compositing. The setting that controls GPU-accelerated decoding is in about:config under 'media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled'

 

[Temenos]

disable hardware acceleration in options, you won't even notice a difference

Bad idea, things get a lot more sluggish (plus CPU usage increases substantially) when hardware acceleration is disabled. Google Street View turns to shit. Even things like YouTube use noticeably more CPU when hardware acceleration is disabled. Offloading that crap onto the GPU is a better idea (so long as you aren't using a terrible onboard chipset).

you shouldn't see a difference in video decoding, hardware acceleration just enables GPU compositing. The setting that controls GPU-accelerated decoding is in about:config under 'media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled'

OK, maybe things have changed since I last played around with the option. I generally just leave it on the default ticked "Use recommended performance settings" option and assume Firefox knows what's best.

 

[Atlantico]

I detest windows if only for the retard decision to name programs 'apps' like phone shit.

In the late 80s, the suffix .app was used on NeXT OS for programs, probably on UNIX before that as well - it's been used to describe *real* applications for more than 30 years. It's been used on MacOS since 2001. Programs and applications have always been the same thing. It's only tech-illiterate dads and millennials who have tried to make app=mobile shit.

Sadly, there's a lot of them. And to be honest, if the tables were turned, and everyone was using PC/Windows and iPhones didn't exists, they'd be talking about "hey bro, there's an EXE for that". Only meganerds like us would even know what a program is. You know it's true.

This is still fairly prevalent if you need every ounce of resources that your PC has, even a couple of % hogging becomes quite noticeable. An active case (albeit GPU hogging rather than CPU) on my computer this very moment: Firefox. I prefer it over any alternative due to UI/plugin/spyware reasons but god damn if it doesn't just assume that every available resource is fair game to consume.

I prefer Firefox too, for much the same reasons - my Firefox is using of active 32GBs of VRAM according to the Task Manager. Now, I don't have 32GBs of VRAM - so either the Task Manager isn't telling me how much VRAM is actually being used by Firefox, or it's downloading more VRAM from the Internet.

All this memory allocation doesn't seem to affect performance, so I don't know what to think of it. I'm no programmer.

 

[abija]

Just keep moving the mouse over this page with task manager open, check cpu usage in Firefox.

you shouldn't see a difference in video decoding, hardware acceleration just enables GPU compositing.

Compositing is not exactly a cheap operation.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'd have agreed that Steam was badly bloated around 2 years ago. Had endless problems with games randomly going non-responsive with Steam Overlay enabled, steam feezing up for minutes when I'm just trying to launch something, etc. But I haven't had problems in a while, and I AM using a PC that is almost a decade old in everything but its video card (stills runs new games on high/ultra settings though, go figure).

 

[Atlantico]

I'd have agreed that Steam was badly bloated around 2 years ago.

Well, even today it takes a stupid long time just to start the Steam client, and for a glorified launcher/downloader it requires an inexplicable amount of "updates". Possibly due to the bloated nature of the client.

Bloat on the Steam client is like the bloat on the Homer. Running slow isn't always the problem with bloat.

Spoiler

• The Homer has two bubble domes; one in the front, while the one in the back is for quarreling kids, and comes with optional restraints and muzzles.
• According to Homer, the engine sound causes people to think "the world's coming to an end."
• There are three horns, as Homer claims that "you can never find a horn when you're mad." The three horns play the song "La Cucaracha."
• The car also features gigantic cupholders, which actually became a feature on many cars in the 1990s onward.
• The car has various outdated features such as bubble domes, shag carpeting, and tailfins. It also has a metal bowler as a hood ornament.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'd have agreed that Steam was badly bloated around 2 years ago.

Well, even today it takes a stupid long time just to start the Steam client, and for a glorified launcher/downloader it requires an inexplicable amount of "updates". Possibly due to the bloated nature of the client.

Takes roughly 5 seconds to start for me.

 

[abija]

Most of which are spent for the login process.

 

[Atlantico]

Takes roughly 5 seconds to start for me.

Consistently 12 seconds for me - that's including the 2 seconds Steam takes to log me in.

I've never seen 5 seconds, on any machine. Lucky you, I guess.

(edit: you realize this is from a cold start, not from when you close the Steam window and the client just hides in the background?)

 

[Average Manatee]

12 seconds is stupid long?

 

[Atlantico]

12 seconds is stupid long?

Like everything, it depends.

For a game launcher/downloader, yes.

For a bloated complicated mess of a spaghetti code such as Microsoft Excel, not really.

iTunes and Netflix also deal with DRM, downloading and libraries - they launch in 2 second or less. They also don't update every other week like Steam does.

 

[abija]

Idk.... for someone nonchalantly talking about how computers can now handle all software easily your machine seems to run like shit.

 

[Atlantico]

Idk.... for someone nonchalantly talking about how computers can now handle all software easily your machine seems to run like shit.

IDK... for someone nonchalantly doing an remote performance analysis, but doesn't understand the difference between loading and executing a program, it seems like it's your head that's full of shit.

Could be that my PC loads programs like a Commodore 64, that's neither here nor there. It runs anything without issues or slowdowns, even Steam. Is this too complicated for you?

How come the Steamtards are not only so goddam butthurt, but also so dumb? Could there a be connection

 

[GrainWetski]

Show us on the doll where Gaben touched you.

 

[abija]

Could be that my PC loads programs like a Commodore 64, that's neither here nor there. It runs anything without issues or slowdowns, even Steam.

How exactly can you appreciate it runs things fine if you think 12s for excel to start is understandable?

Btw, since you seem to throw that word (bloated) around so much. What features exactly you think steam has and people aren't using.