People praise Steam, but it's one of the most bloated, unnecessarily convoluted examples of feature creep on my machine, and it always wants to run in the background and check for updates. Even when I do remember to exit properly, it takes several seconds of thinking before it closes. I've resorted to using task manager instead.
Almost any launcher is less annoying to me than Steam, but then I've never been one to use or want the various social aspects. I wish there were a lite version for people who just want to use it to buy and play games.
It would! I've actually considered that, but honestly I just don't use Steam enough to justify it. I'd probably use it a lot more if it didn't feel like such a chore to run.
For me its like yeah steam has some annoyances, but overall it is pretty good and mostly works. Ubisoft and EA usually have more annoyances and/or straight up don't work.
EGS only takes a few seconds to launch, doesn't shove an annoying popup ad in my face every time I open it, and completely exits the application when I click X
I've actually bought the EGS version of several games just so I don't have to deal with Steam's bullshit
I've also got some indie games that don't use a launcher at all, and I use the Windows version of ESO so I don't need a separate launcher for that, which is my most-played game of all
Yeah maybe its just works well for me. I set steam to load the library instead of the store and I never get these popups. Also I never have to sign in again. But steam is always open, since I use my desktop nearly exclusively for gaming at this point.
I've come to accept that it's going to update every time I launch it, which makes it a pita since I work long shifts and have very little time to play games to begin with.