Every game that requires a launcher should have a new “unreliable” badge. Here’s why:
First things first: let me be clear that the all the games I talk about here I bought on STEAM. Not on a separate launcher. I’m not using Heroic Launcher, I’m not using Lutris. These are games bought and installed on STEAM.
Earlier this year Jedi Fallen Order had a verified badge, so I bought it. It played alright, but online only. If I happened to be offline, which is a plausible scenario, since the deck is a portable device, the game wouldn’t pass the EA App boot screen. At the time, I’ve seen some people able to play it offline, and some not. It didn’t help my situation though.
A few days later EA updated their launcher and it straight up broke the game. The game just wouldn’t boot, it would just cycle the EA app install screen. Then the game got an unsupported badge.
Fast forward to today, I take a glance at my library and see that it has the “playable” badge.
The thing is, it’s not even worth it installing it again, because the EA App can just break without warning again. This game had 3 different badges in less than a year.
Another example: GTA 4. It installs the Rockstar Launcher. Once I was in the game, I could play the game offline. I just needed to click on “offline mode” on the Rockstar Launcher screen whenever I would boot the game offline. Neat.
Fast forward to 2 days ago, I’m offline, I launch GTA 4, and it says it needs to update the Rockstar Launcher to be able to boot the game. It’s like the launcher had a timer for the offline mode. I can’t just launch the game once, then have it there ready for whenever I wanna play it.
This kind of issue can happen to most EA games, most Rockstar Games, most Ubisoft games… either the game is “verified” or “playable”. Think about it: Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk require a launcher, and they can just stop working tomorrow. CDProjekt just needs to push an update for their launcher that for whatever reason breaks it on the deck. Both of them have “verified” badges.
These games are a non ignorable portion of the steam library. The “verified” and “playable” badges shouldn’t be hostages of the proven unreliability of third party launchers.
Whenever I think of taking my deck with me, I need to think of what I wanna play, and “ready” it by trying to launch the game, online or offline, before getting out.
If I don’t do that, there’s a good chance the situations above can repeat themselves on a plane, or on the long stretch without signal during my train commute. It’s not a smooth experience for a portable device. I only have 20 installed games and this is already an issue.
There’s a word for this kind of software: unreliable. If a game can go from “verified” to “unsupported” to “playable” whenever, those badges end up not meaning anything.
An “unreliable” badge on all games that require a launcher wouldn’t solve the issue, but would be a good warning to any customer that thinks that by purchasing a “verified” game, it’s guaranteed to work.
Now another issue, and this is about the Steam Deck community.
This post was heavily inspired by a fellow redditor that, after I pointed out the issue I had with GTA 4 on the deck, insisted to me that actually the game has zero issues and it just works. The actual comment was:
GTA4 on steam deck works perfectly with zero issue. Play the steam version. It’s 6 bucks right now but I got it for 3 bucks in a humble bundle.
PC gaming on deck isn’t inconvenient as long as you play the games that are on steam. So if you’re sticking with steam games, Steam Deck works as advertised, just like the Switch: install the game and play.
For more you’ll need to educate yourself more. You don‘t have to play shit looking ports on the Switch, that cost even 20 times more. There are hundreds of great tutorials of how to make everything work on the Deck, for games not “natively“ supported.
Or don’t and play the steam verified games. Just don’t lie around, because that’s not cool for people who actually want to play great looking games on the Deck, at a fraction of the price they are on the Switch.
So after being told to “educate” myself and being called a liar, here’s what I have to say to anyone in this community that agrees with the statement above:
The deck is a great device, but it’s still PC gaming, and PC gaming, half of the time, sure isn’t “install the game and play”. Half of the time you’ll need to tinker with something to make things work.
The deck is not a console, it’s not an iPhone… it’s a PC. And it’s not just a PC: it’s a portable linux PC, running mostly windows software through a translation layer. It’s a miracle that it works as well as it does. The deck is made for tinkerers, there’s a reason it’s as open as it is. There’s no shame on it.
Whenever you ignore all these issues and tell the world they don’t exist, it becomes toxic insecurity. Don’t go to r/Switch to say that the deck works just as seamless, because it’s just not true. Someone might believe you and end up disappointed, then get gaslighted on reddit by someone just like you.
I agree with your sentiment, but ultimately think Steam/Valve is not nimble enough for this. You are going to hear about Apex Legends breaking for Steam Deck on ProtonDB before Valve can even get their pants on. That is, if they even want to revoke the verified status which would they would be incentivized against. Of course, if there are reasonable arguments about time to fix a game vs time to update a status, but that just goes to my point that Steam is not as well equipped as we think or hope they are.
We have to recognize that Verified and Playable have no care about internet requirements (and by extension launchers) of a game. They have always been: does the game have controller support and can you read on the screen? Any association of the Verified Badge with working offline on first launch, is based on our own bias of what gaming handhelds are expected to do. It might be reasonable, but it is incorrect.
IMO community resources will be always be superior in getting details. Learned about cool Steam curators, from this comment. Add in ProtonDB and looking at the margins on Steam Store page. Unfortunately, I think research should just be an inherent part of buying a game.
On this subject, does anyone know if you get D4 on Steam does it require the launcher to pop up when you launch it from Steam?
On first launch, you have to connect Bnet to your Steam account. Ever after that, I have not seen hide nor hair of Bnet. It just launches straight into the game.
I have not, however, attempted to play offline if that is even possible with this game.
I wish all launchers would **** off and die, and that goes for on Windows in desktop.
Valve could do something with steam to encourage this. I mean they could outright dictate than all games on Steam must have the option of skipping launchers, using a standard API so there can be a tickbox for it in your game settings within Steam. If they don’t want to be that heavy handed they could allow games that don’t meet those criteria but deny them some services on Steam, like they’ll never come up in queues, they can’t participate in sales, etc.
Steam used to not allow third party launcher but they changed their mind when Steam started missing some pretty huge releases. I don’t like it as well but I’m not sure if Valve can do anything about it really.
They could change the Deck badge system to limit these games to playable at best maybe. But there’s no way they will stop putting them at queses and front pages or do anything of the sorts I think.
Also, Steam is a launcher as well.
Exactly - Steam is all the launcher I need.
I get why they wouldn’t outright ban launchers, but I don’t see EA or whoever pulling out of Steam just because their games don’t get extra promotion there.
Agreed. I avoid all launcher games because of the hassle. Still sucks I can’t get Gwent to work on it :/
The GTA IV situation is so dumb, an online DRM ruining the experience of people buying a 15 year-old game. People who somehow downloaded the PS3 version and emulated that might even get a better experience than the paid-user experience.
Works on my machine.
Witcher, cyberpunk, baldur’s gate and some does have launcher but it’s not required though, you can just add a parameter to skip them. But i do avoid EA, ubi and rockstar games like plague, always pirate their game because it’s more reliable that way.
I don’t need it, but games which need third party launcher should never get green badge. I am avoiding to play Rockstar games because I know that it always takes like 2 minutes before it actually loads through that stupid Rockstar launcher and I want to play now, not to wait for stupid 3rd party garbage to load and update itself with 1 GB of data.
This is more important to me than the new oled screen 😂
There are a few curators that list very information stuff. I will just list all of mine.
- Games That Hate You
- 3rd Party DRM Ark
- Games at risk of removal
- SteamDB
- Graphics Engine
- 4 Player Co-op Games
- Games for Lovers
Do you have links by any chance? Thank you
Just. Use. Windows. Problem solved.
Think about it: Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk require a launcher, and they can just stop working tomorrow.
Is this a fact? On their Steam page there’s no mention of a launcher, and games with a launcher usually have a warning.
Console gamers first pc is the steam deck and this is the result. I agree with all the points made, I’ve just already made peace with it all and began to learn more
I love the steam deck but it’s funny that you mentioned that’s “it’s still pc gaming and half of the time it’s not install and play”. That’s exactly why I despise linux on the deck. On my 6800u 99% of the games I own work without issues, no problems with any launchers or anything.
Jedi Fallen Order is actually 100% DRM free if you just launch from the game’s exe