I wanted to thank you for the 400,000 views on [last week’s episode about the Steam Controller and SteamInput/GameInput](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1sxtyx5/pcmag_steam_controller_doesnt_support_game_pass/). Some big websites picked up that post and general awareness about GameInput is probably a little higher than before. Today we will talk about...

# Game launchers

It is no secret that currently nearly every app is slower than 10 years ago. This affect also game launchers. Developers moved from native apps to apps using web technologies and those apps use a lot of memory. For example Steam uses 25x more memory than it did in 2015 on Windows 7. The app starts slowly and uses 1.3 GB of memory because it is built on the Chromium web browser. A heavy app like that affect performance of games. This is especially problematic on memory-constrained devices like PC handhelds with 16 GB of total memory (10 GB system, 6 GB video).

**This problem is not limited to Steam. Epic and many other game launchers do exactly the same. Game launchers are huge resource-hungry apps**

When someone has 2-3 game launchers on auto-start the whole system is much slower than it should be. This is a huge performance problem. You basically have 2-3 web browsers in background. So why do users launch these apps? Because it is the only way to make sure that games are updated automatically. The current situation on PC is pretty bad for end users

# But it could be easily fixed

Imagine that instead of huge monolithic app we have 3 smaller apps. Each app designed exactly for one job. This is how it could look like:

* A small runtime service without a user interface that is responsible for launching and updating games. This service would be launched as a system service, so it would start with the system and always works in the background. Service like will be limited to 50 MB memory so games would be able to use many launchers like that without consuming too much memory even if they use multiple launchers. That 50 MB is more than enough for app without GUI.
* A standard store app which is used only when someone wants to buy something. An app like this can be large and use a lot of memory because it isn't running in the background of your games. So even if your app use 2-3 GB then this is not a problem.
* An overlay app that can be used at any time. This app is launched only when the user activates the overlay, for example, by pressing the Xbox button on a controller

Refactoring like that would be very easy. Valve already has it internally, because Steam has a runtime part in native C++, while the other part of the app is a standard web app running on Chromium. So those parts of the Steam app could be completely separated from each other without any trouble. All other game launchers like Epic, Ubisoft, EA and GOG use the same architecture. 

If we separate those parts, gamers would be able to launch Steam games without opening the full Steam app. A small runtime app would always be running in the background as system service. This would also be very helpful for Steam Controller users, because that runtime app could support Steam Input. 

# PC gaming will be much better

A change like this would make the PC a much better place for gaming. Even if someone used Steam, Epic and Ubisoft in the background, the system would use only about 50 MB of memory for each launcher instead of 1+ GB. This would be a huge performance improvement

The situation could be even better if Microsoft created a dedicated API for game launchers. So instead of using a generic Windows service, those runtime elements would register themselves as a “Game Launcher”. Then the system could work as a coordinator and pass information from one game launcher to another. For example, when someone starts a game from Steam, all other game launchers would get a hint that they need to pause ongoing game updates. All game updates could even be scheduled so they don’t interfere with each other or with system updates. 

# Why now?

I believe Project Helix is a perfect opportunity to fix the current situation with game launchers. Microsoft wants to allow all PC stores on their next console (PC). This gives them the opportunity to add some new rules and requirements. 

This would make the PC a much better place to play games and I hope you agree with me. Additionally, even small changes like this could start a much deeper integration between systems and game launchers in the future. In the end we will get a much faster and better‑coordinated PC platform. This would be WIN-WIN for everyone

  




How MS and Valve could make all games faster on Xbox Helix (Technology Discussion)