this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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Without any flashy marketing campaigns or social media fanfare, Valve rolled out a routine Steam Client update containing a very simple line in the patch notes: “Improved Steam Client startup performance.”

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[–] Soapbox@lemmy.zip 63 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Tim Sweeny: "Is there anything we are better at than steam? Literally anything? I will take anything we can market, no matter how pathetic and desperate it seems."

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Going forward we optimize for "restore from system tray" time. That'll be a game changer.

[–] definitemaybe@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

I can't wait! I'm really going to notice a 0.1s faster restore time.

That's just a "uses more memory whilst minimised."

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Unreal is better than Source.

[–] Xechon@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

In terms of graphical features, sure, probably. In my (admittedly limited) experience Source games tend to have much better performance and modding, which I find much more important.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, while the graphics capabilities of Unreal are about a decade ahead with dynamic occlusion culling, hyperrealistic lighting, a very very large set of libraries of 4k and 8k textures, and volumetrics...

the downside is that Unreal Engine is difficult to optimize and harder to use with low level programming.

I expect things to get much worse as they continue to slop-ify. They already advertised an "AI-assisted" build when they published the comparison.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

IDK about anyone else, but I'm kind of over hyperrealism in games at this point. Facial animations are still uncanny after multiple decades of trying to figure it out, but less realistic styles have looked great that whole time. Hell, I've seen pixel graphics with more expressiveness and emotion than some Unreal engine games. Sure the lighting and set pieces are pretty, but stuff like that doesn't do it for me nearly as much as good animations, good gameplay, and good story.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

That's up to developers that use it. Though I haven't much experience with Valve's profiling tools it being closed source makes it harder for devs that want to rewrite any given feature

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah but the performance is mostly due to its age. It's much more limited in what you can do. BSPs are great for efficiency, but they're a huge pain to work with when creating a map. Unreal is leagues better to work with in just about every way.

[–] piccolo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The licensing for source is better than unreal. Its only stipend it has to be published on steam. (Which you're most likely to do anyway) while unreal requires 5% royalities over 1mil gross revenue (outside of epic store, which lets be real... wont account for much)

[–] goatbeard@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

FWIW Steam takes a 30% cut from sales

[–] Dettweiler42@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

And for that cut they provide hosting, cloud saves, promotion, distribution, community support, workshop availability, DLC handling, and a store page. The cut is also much less than what larger publishing companies charge for less service. Self publishing is very feasible on Steam.

[–] blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As does every store, digital and physical, except EGS and Microsoft. That's the standard retail cut.

[–] yuri@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago

every unreal game i’ve played since UE3 has run worse than it’s contemporaries :c

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Until Unreal is completely sloppified

[–] EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Then it'll live up to the name!

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

He was recently quoted in an article saying that in order to be successful, games need to launch on the Steam platform.