Author: Shmee

Did you know that for the last month you have been able to buy games on Twitch?  Well you can.  Do you know how?  Of course you don’t.  I said it was going to happen, and low it did.  The way it is supposed to work is that you go and watch a stream of a game, then if you like it , you buy it.  If you are the one doing the stream you get a 5% kickback.  Fun huh.  Well in practice it is not going so well.

On the main streaming page the link to buy the game doesn’t show up.  You have to go to game info.  If you just want to shop for games it takes several clicks to find what you are looking for.  There is no central store to see what games Twitch has for sale.  If you search for games on Amazon, Twitch’s parent company, you will only be able to buy Steam licenses.  Which makes no sense.

Speaking of making no sense, what are the capabilities of the Twitch Launcher?  Does it do cloud saves or friends lists, can you buy games from it?  The answer to all those questions is of course no.  It is just a crappy app that you have to have to download “some” of the games you purchased on Twitch.  If you buy an Ubisoft game, you get a key for UPlay.  So unless the game was on sale it probably makes more sense to just buy your Ubisoft games from the UPlay store and save yourself a bunch of time.

If I sound frustrated it is just because Steam needs some real competition, and I think Amazon/Twitch is just the company to do it, but not with the crappy system they have now.  At a minimum there has to be some way for me to know what games I can buy on Twitch, and if I am streaming, a visible way to buy the game.  The UPlay thing I kind of understand.  They will sell keys for all platforms to generate revenue, which is a way to differentiate from Steam, but it makes their sales platform look segmented and fractured.  I am sure all of this will get better, but I expect more and better from a company that makes its money selling stuff online and has thousands of developers at its fingertips.

Last night I needed to download the Bethesda Launcher to player “something” (sorry I can’t say what), and at the same time my EA Origin said it needed to update.  Then it got me wondering, “How many stupid ‘launchers’ do I have?”  Let’s list them shall we: Steam, GOG, The Windows Store, EA Origin, UPlay, Epic, Twitch, and now Bethesda.  Those are just the ones that I have, and I am sure more companies are coming up with their own.

Look Game Companies, I get it.  It makes sense.  You can make your own launcher and store and then skip the middlemen to sell directly to your customers.  More profit for you.  Plus you get to push the patches out directly without having to get approval from Microsoft, Valve or CD Projekt Red (am I the only one that thinks they need to drop the ‘CD’ off their name?), but man every time I need to play a game on one of those platforms it needs to patch before I patch the game.  It is supper annoying!  I just want to play the game!

Crap like this is why people love consoles.  Sure you have Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft acting like gatekeepers, and not all consoles get all games, but when you do get a game it just works!  Yes, you may need to make an account with those other companies to make some features of those games work, but for the most part that is optional unless it is an MMO.  I play video games to have fun, not to play patch-a-palooza, or which-launcher-has-that-game bingo.

If this is where the PC market is headed, we are in for a headache.  I understand why it is happening, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.  In my day we went to the store and bought games off of a shelf like man!.  Hold on.  I need to get a stick.  I think there are some kids on my lawn!  “Hey you!  Get your game launchers and your Free 2 Play FPSs out of here!!! … Unless they are really fun!”