Meme transcription: A table comparing the steps to start a game ‘then’ vs. ‘now’.
Content of the “Then” column:
- Double-click GAME.exe
- Play game
Content of the “Now” column:
- Launch Steam
-
Steam updates
-
Steam opens
- Close Steam’s ad window
- Select Game
-
Game launcher starts
-
Game launcher launches Game launcher updater
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Ok
-
Would you like to sign up for our newsletter?
- No
-
Our EULAs have changed. Please review them before continuing
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Scroll
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes, sell my soul
- Start game
- Skip vendor intro
- Skip vendor intro #2
- Skip vendor intro #3
- Sit through nVidia The way it’s meant to be played
- Skip opening cutscene
-
Main menu opens
-
Would you like to connect your Steam account to account?
- No
- Press play.
- Play game.
Absolute bullshit, lol. Nowadays you can boot your PC, launch Steam and start into your game while 20+ years ago you were still looking for the damn CD.
And don’t get me started with game updates, you had to do them MANUALLY. Go to the developer website, look at a download page, then you get offered updates: 1.0.1a, 1.0.1b, 1.0.2, 1.0.2b, 1.0.3, 1.1.0, 1.2.0, 1.2.1abc, …
For smaller updates you had to install them in order, so you download 1.0.1a, install it, then download 1.0.1b, install it, then download… if you are lucky the bigger updates like 1.1.0 or 1.2.0 could be directly installed without any in-between steps.
Oh and installing games? World of Warcraft had 4 CDs and if you bought it with Burning Crusade you had to use 8 CDs in total for installation! And the install took ages too.
And during the installation you had to type in a cd key, which took longer than all your popups you’re describing together.
I’ve been mostly playing on PC for the last 27 years, what we have today, even if some stuff is annoying, is 100 times better than how it was back then.
I wish I still had options to install updates or not.
Cause sometimes I like to fuck around with silly bugs and exploits in your old solo games, or because some amazing mod only worked on X version and not Y version. which is not something you can do anymore because you are only allowed to have the most recent version or else.
FYI GOG lets you decide whether or not to update, and if you update and don’t like the update or it’s buggy you can roll it back. They don’t have as wide a selection as steam, but they have a lot, and they actually have a ton of old games too. I love it for games that I’ve modded and the mods get abandoned, I can play my modded version forever
Not to mention how annoying it was to even buy games - if a popular game was released you might have wait for the store to open to buy it before it went out of stock, and if it was more niche you might have to mail an order form in and wait for them to ship it to you.
The fact that the “then” is missing so much of the bullshit we dealt with back then shows whomever made this “meme” never gamed back then.
There’s also the issues with your disks getting corrupted, discs getting scratched, or losing them because they came with so goddamn many.