T w e n t y S i d e d
It’s Wednesday March 18, 2020. Doom Eternal comes out in two days. I’ve watched a couple of reviews like this one, which gives me confidence that this game isn’t going to be another Bethesda-style shitshow. I guess I’ll preorder it.
I see on the Steam page that this game requires a Bethesda account. Ugh. I really hate this. You buy a game through Steam, but then then when Steam launches the game, it actually just turns around and launches another launcher that requires a different login. Microsoft did this with their infamous malware Games for Windows LIVE. Rockstar did it with their stupid Social Club. Ubisoft did it with Uplay.
I’ll say this about the Epic Store: At least they had the decency to make their own platform rather than attaching their system to Steam like a parasite.
I hate double-logins. HATE. Now TWO companies are in a suicide pact with “my” software, each of them eroding my sense of ownership and creating completely needless layers of inconvenience and risk. Now if anything happens to either company, either platform, or either account, I lose access to my very expensive video game. Maybe one of them goes out of business. Maybe, like Microsoft, they fail so hard that they decide to abandon the platform and leave the attached games in limbo. Maybe some future conflict, misunderstanding, controversy, or data breach will end with my account deleted, suspended, or stolen. It’s not likely, but that’s no reason to make it more likely. If I told you your risk of dying of cancer X was only 1 in 100,000, that would sound pretty safe, right? Does that mean that doubling the risk is fine with you?
I realize most people trust Steam these days, but Valve software and Bethesda Softworks are very different companies and there’s no reason to expect that Bethesda is going to behave like Valve just because they’re trying to run a similar service. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Bethesda’s Launcher is Everything You Expect”
