What’s better is requiring games to not be tied to any launcher. There shouldn’t be a need for a game to be constantly connected to the internet and need a secondary app running in the background.

But with the way it is now, I loathe the other launchers besides Steam. Steam actually provides some value and not completely unnecessary bloatware. Steam has my friends on it and has meaningful ways for me to engage my friends inside and outside of games. Steam has dedicated forums and mod queues built right into it. Steam has a great refund policy, including games that go back on their unwritten and written promises months or years after release (think Helldivers 2).

Whereas the other launchers are just cheap knockoffs for the sole purpose of corporate branding and to escape the Valve tax (which I can understand is a bit much to charge 30% just to be on Steam) that don’t work nearly as well and haven’t for many years, with ugly redesigns being the biggest changes they’ve made since their original releases. It’s coincidental how EA and Ubisoft look exactly the same in their newest redesigns and theirs plus Epic’s all have that same annoying bug that doesn’t actually remember your username and password and will require you to verify even though you checked the box to remember this PC.

Either way, I wish I didn’t need any launcher, including Steam, to launch games I paid for. It’s comical I can have that experience by pirating the game and the company generates no money from me and I get exactly what I wanted.