The key detail here is that they are not "doing nothing". They are doing a lot. It's just consumer faced and as a matter of fact. Mostly because they don't need to "pump their numbers up" for some investors or money suits.
Yeah, beyond the joke I actually agree with you. They're a company that just does a good business and lets the results speak for themselves. I think the only time I ever saw direct advertisement from Valve in any form was the orange box, and that was in like 2006.
It just so happens that they're a great example of the fact that you can in fact still be wildly successful by just making a good product and maintaining solid service. Which to a lot of people happens to look like "doing nothing" because nobody ever really reads the update logs.
When both launchers take like ten seconds to boot, it doesn't matter at all. If my life is so busy that I concern myself about a few seconds that get shaved off the loading time of an app, I have bigger problems to worry about
Epic would have known about upcoming performance improvements from the Steam Beta that was released a month ago. This was definitely driven by competition. But more so the other way around. Either way, it’s a positive.
Steam would also have known about the Epic launcher.
Epic has talked about this months ago at their developer events. They had the graphs and everything. Also, the launcher has already been available to selected users who signed up and signed an NDA. There's no way Valve didn't know about that.
But I still think the whole thing is just a coincidence.
It's Ubisoft and EA we have to look at lol, shit takes like 1-2 minutes each to fucking boot, just a few weeks ago I had to delete and reinstall like 8 Microsoft services just to get EA Play to fucking launch Dead Space 2, and even after all that it still took 1-2 minutes for it to boot up just the launcher, launching the game took like 3 or 4 minutes, this always happens regardless of a new OS install or not for me.
I don't need to look at those two because i refuse to give either of them any money. They're terrible companies and people should vote with their wallets against them.
Bought their games eons ago, after all that shit I downloaded them from somewhere else anyway cuz I can't with this shit in current year anymore lmfao, decided to give them one more try and I'm done with it lol.
If anything, it kind of works less as the neenaneena that is intended there and rather looks like "yes we agree that is a valid topic" coupled with "well if epic wasn't pushing us, we wouldn't have done it"
When it was actually a facetious argument, again based on drastically faulty comparisions (as was the 15% vs 30% cut, back when Epic confused "100% of all sales vs a fraction of serviced copies)
coupled with "well if epic wasn't pushing us, we wouldn't have done it"
The fact that the Steam update came out a day after Epic's makes me think it was already in the works, and that it's just a coincidence. Otherwise, that was an insanely quick change for Valve to have made.
Nah, bro, it was a quick fix, I just removed some of the sleep(100) commands I had left lying around waiting exactly for the day someone tried to claim they were faster.
Still have plenty to go if I need to optimize it further.
it's like someone said in another thread, just because you can open the trash can faster than the fridge doesn't mean you're gonna start eating out of the trash
Well that didn't take long. Who actually cares about this though? I start Steam after my computer boots and then it stays open until I reboot. Most people have it set to boot on startup I assume.
While I don't have every game, I can confirm it takes longer to launch with larger library (pro tip do not redeem steamdb free packages) and hardware affects load speed, ~16.2s on my laptop and ~12.8s on my PC.
I also want to understand. Do people not do that little routine, sitting at your desk, hitting the power button and getting everything ready while it boots? By the time I turn my computer on, and load up Steam, my headphones get put on, I take a sip of my drink, and I slip my glasses on. How little are people's attention spans that everything has to be so instant these days?
I care about software being fast and not using more resources than it needs. These are just game loaders that I click buy on and they keep my game up to date, they shouldn't need much.
It lets me spent time and memory on the games or other apps I actually want to use.
To be honest i wish every piece of software I use would do one of these speed improvement sprints.
ME! I posted yesterday in a post about epic, that it was the ONE and ONLY thing keeping me from using Epic launcher regularly, that 1 second launch time meant ALLLLLL the difference, so from my perspective is WHEW! I'm glad that I can now be back to using Steam!
One thing no gamer ever cared about was whether Steam launched faster than Epic. Getting Epic to launch faster must have been the idea of some wealthy investor who never played a single videogame in their life.
That Steam launches faster now is... I dunno. It happened I guess.
Slowish startup is a paper cut bug. Paper cut bugs are on their own irrelevant, but when they pile up they are a huge issue.
The best examples are Windows and Office. Hundreds of tiny annoyances that don't get fixed because badly bolting PowerAutomate and CoPilot is more important.
Don't say nobody. I don't leave these game launchers open so I've never been a big fan of how long it takes either of these to open. Haven't tried them recently so can't cast my vote but this is the only QoL improvement I've been hoping for from both.
They definitely used the shittiest hardware possible to benchmark Steam. I tested it as soon as Epic tweeted about their new launcher (so, before the supposed update that improves Steam) and it took my computer 7.74 seconds to do a "Cold Start to Store"
I'm running a 10 year old CPU on this build.
How did they get 10+ seconds? On a Core 2 Duo with a 5400 rpm hdd? And apparently they excluded the three lowest-end systems from the average time-to-open calculations, so there were even worse results lol.
We like to assign everything to Gabe and Timmy but realistically neither of them likely had anything to do with either of these. But it makes me happy that there's a petty steam engineer that just quickly whipped up a few optimizations and chipped it as a single changelog, no tweet about vibe coding.
It was part of one of their recent betas. It wasn’t something that they “pushed” spontaneously, but rather one of the small tweaks that they wanted to apply to Steam client.
They didn’t even try to fuck with Epic — they tested stuff, thought it was ready and published it
You might be surprised. It's been long shown that even small loading increases in websites boosts site interaction, like if your site takes half a second to load instead of a full second it makes a big difference. It's one of those things you'd think doesn't matter much, like if someone was already planning to go to Amazon then the speed of the page loading couldn't matter that much, but the data tells a different story.
For me I'm confused with this, I've always found steam to launch faster than the epic launcher on my pc
Steam would take like 10-15 seconds, epic would take about 20-30 seconds
Oh my god, yes, the password stuff. It's such a low barrier to entry, it's truly not a big deal in any circumstance and I know I sound like an incredibly spoiled child for even suggesting this, but there's something about Epic's frequent password prompts that actively dissuades me from using it, even for redeeming free stuff.
and then you have to do a captcha and that kinda defeat the login speed... and browsing games is slower, starting games is slower... epic is fucking shit.
Epic cut a bunch of functionality for the purpose of speeding up launch time and then bragged about being faster, now they are both less functional and slower again.
Look I get it. Epic bad. Valve good. I do not use Epics launcher and probably never will.
But I don't really care (within reason) how long an app takes to startup, especially in the under 30 seconds range.
It's stupid that Epic was like "look our beta that isn't out yet starts 5 seconds faster than our competition that is beating us in EVERY SINGLE OTHER METRIC."
This. Epic is trying to tear Steam down rather than be something better than steam. And Steam just dose not care and keeps rolling on. Epic just needs to put out patch notes and work on their launcher rather than being that one annoying kid trying to outdo the top student.
Right, I actually do care a bit about app performance, but the issue here really is about the terrible messaging. The fact that they were gloating about vibe coding, but also the only thing they have to boast is load time...
Performance is meaningless out of context. It's like saying my notepad clone boots faster than Microsoft office. The two aren't really comparable because Steam has so much more to offer, and that's exactly the reason why people prefer steam, not because of the performance.
To be fair, back when the EGS launched, I didn’t mind it as much as most PC users did… Until I realized it just ran so piss poor, memory leaks, and just being so horrid to navigate, I’ve never turned back.
For real they’ve been so quiet on their one sided feud with Steam for so long then…hey let’s start it back up out of nowhere with our foot in our mouths!
It's the weirdest marketing I've ever seen. Blatantly saying they vibe coded the app and advertising millisecond differences. This is the kind of shit The Onion would post
Epic's had years to try and close the gap on functionality with their launcher compared to Steam and all they could come up with for a flagship feature of their brand new launcher was "make it faster."
This also implies with all the criticisms of their launcher missing so much shit steam has…it was still slower. So even if they did make it faster they basically been bragging that their empty launcher is just now faster after so many years…I am genuinely confused at that stupidity. lol
Valve didn't make a big deal about it, the media did because it will generate clicks and engagement since Epic just shit the bed hard doubling down on a vibecoded client they say is great but runs like hot dogshit.
I like to think Gabe is sitting there like, “it launches quick enough.” Then sees epic tout there faster and Gabe’s like, “alright, ima be petty now..” lol
Honestly it's even funnier then that. The valve update was the day before Epic's announcement (and was in beta a month before that). So they won a race they didn't even know they were participating in.
I remmember back in the day, that developers at Valve can jump from project to project if they want to. So in my head I'm imagining some dev at Valve, reading those tweets from Epic and going: "Ait fuck it, I'mma spend my day fixing performance issues from the backlog."
There was a time when you had to wait for software to boot up on its when launched. Especially if it was on a floppy disk. And you had to swap them out.
But i hadn’t thought about it in years though. The transition happened unremarked it seems.
the last time i complained about Steam taking a long time to launch was when i had the EG launcher on my PC and after uninstalling it Steam launched faster. now Steam just starts with Windows and i stopped paying attention to the startup time
I just opened Steam and it took 4 seconds to load up. Not that it really matters, but its funny that the thing Epic was harping on so much doesn't even matter anymore.
They're comparing launch times from 2 different users on two completely different PCs. If that Twitter users also opened and timed the new Epic launcher then at least it would be a fair comparison.
But, like others said... no one cares if it's 4 or 5 seconds.
This whole thing is hilarious, I can't believe Epic even said it in the first place. Is there anyone out there who genuinely gives a fuck how fast their launcher takes to open?
I'm glad that I'll save a couple of seconds over the entire course of my life, but mostly that this makes Epic's rich asshole look like even more of an idiot.
I'm not trying to defend Epic or anything, but competition is always good for the consumer.
I'm very glad that Steam now launches even faster, but why it didn't do it before?, did they optimized now only because Epic was trying to compete? Why not before?
Wasn't exactly a knee-jerk reaction as the update that optimized & halve Steam's launch time was already on the beta branch for over a month prior to Sweeny's cylinder measuring contest post. At most it probably moved the release date of it onto the stable branch up by several days or so.
I mean...Imagine you're renovating an entire house, yard is a mess, grass isn't cut, siding needs to be painted, mailbox is broken, etc....
Your neighbor comes out one day and starts yelling about "I JUST FIXED MY MAILBOX, LOOK AT MY MAILBOX IT'S SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOUR MAILBOX!!!" and you're like....I've been working on other stuff.....
But your wife now gets mad at your neighbor so you go out and spend a few hours installing a better, newer, mailbox that's superior to your neighbor's mailbox.
Then u/Ultimatum227 comes along and says "why didn't you fix the mailbox before?"
But Epic is not showing any competition.
Who really cares how fast the launcher opens. Waiting 10 seconds longer is not going to be a dealbreaker for anyone.
The functionality and services that a company provide is what is more important. And with that Epic is still lacking so far behind, they are barely considered competition
Who gives a shit how fast it opens? I've never once said "man, steam takes so long to load!" It boots up when I start my pc along with everything else that boots up.
When it first came out, I thought it was the stupidest program ever. I had no idea why I was forced to install steam instead of just installing the game. Fast forward to now and I can't live without it.
I don't auto-start mine, but I also have never been bothered by the start-up time. Even on my older, slower, sluggish PC. If something was taking a long time to start, I would go make a sandwich or something.
Because frankly, I don't think it really needed to be faster? Not like it was slow in the first place? I've never found myself thinking "omg hurry up and open faster". I think it's just a flex on epic because they can
It was acceptable, not absurdly slow or unbearable but also not amazing. I know that's the basic mentality of software dev work but it was not amazing tbh.
This update has been in beta testing for weeks. Valve also have a pretty long history of massively overhauling the steam client for the sake of performance and optimization. The current UI is like their 4th or 5th major overhaul and each one has gotten progressively more feature rich and consumer-focused, while also being more optimized and responsive.
I've never once complained about Steam taking too long to load up. I can't speak for Epic now if this has all been rectified. But I have complained about their -lack of reviews -lack of achievements -lack of custom profile -exclusives -lack of strong refund policy -simply existing when I'd prefer to have less launchers -forceful integration with games I enjoy on Steam.
What I have used Epic for is downloading games given away for free. Either never using them or trying them, and buying them on Steam because that's the better feature rich platform and where I can get achievements.
I like to think one person working at steam saw the benchmark and said “aw hell nah I can do better than vibecoded slop” and optimized the app out of spite
Think this going to always be the penalty in using AI, Epic boasted Ai made it faster, any other competitor will also be able to use AI to catch up. AI can only show you where you have been, not where humans are going, which will always offer a competitive advantage
"Epic launches so fast you won't even notice" is really only a positive thing if they inevitably decide to cave and just side load off of steam like EA did. But that's just me.
Epic games I can't read user reviews and I don't trust the star system. Steam actually seems to make the gamers their primary customers not development studios
That guy was literally using Windows 7 in his test. Sorry to bash but how is this kind of test accurate? Regardless a faster and better launch is always welcome.
Steam always launched much much faster to me, maybe the launcher to the main menu on epic’s side is slightly faster, but game launching and Launching from 0 to game is much faster on steam for me
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u/eras 1d ago
Valve apparently made the release before Epic made their announcement. And it probably had been tested for some time before that.
So basically Valve won a race they didn't even know they were participating in. (Albeit not a very important race.. Except to Epic maybe.)