Steam or direct from Frontier? - the demise of an Xbox player

CMDR Theolan

CMDR Theolan
Ok. So I’ve taken delivery of a new gaming PC that exceeds the recommended spec for Odyssey, so hopefully no problems there.
Someone posted on another thread that “when they say PC they mean Frontier and not Steam”.
So if I buy Odyssey through Steam, at some point in the future do I run the risk of being ditched in the same way I was as an Xbox player?
Do I purchase and install through Steam or go direct to Frontier?
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
The main advantage* for the customer is that Steam often has sale prices whereas the frontierstore has not had a sale event for years. (Some people said Odyssey was discounted in frontierstore the other week but if it was it must have been an error as it wasn't available within hours of the posts.)

I prefer to buy from frontierstore as 1) all revenue goes to FD, there is no "cut" paid to valve and 2) you don't need to have Steam running to play Elite (I have several commanders, I would need to log in and out of different Steam accounts to chose which commander I wanted to play, without steam I just use renamed copies of the EDLaunch.exe file).


* EDIT - Some people say that updates load far quicker via Steam - I don't personally know if that is true.
 
Last edited:

rOmiLaYu

rOmiLaYu
As someone who did roughly the same thing, OP, my recommendation is to ignore Steam and go through Frontier Store.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
Para Handy said:
The main advantage* for the customer is that Steam often has sale prices whereas the frontierstore has not had a sale event for years.
Click to expand...
Another advantage is that one less company will have your credit card information, and considering how many times companies I do business with (Sony, T-Mobile, etc) have been hacked, I go out of my way to limit who has my personal data.

The major disadvantage is that if the Steam network goes down (very rare, but it happens), then you can't play your games. It's too bad that the Frontier launcher no longer works independent from Steam like it used to.
 

rOmiLaYu

rOmiLaYu
Old Duck said:
It doesn't for new purchases, like the OP would be making, nor the one I made a couple years ago. Count yourself lucky, you were grandfathered into that feature now gone.
Click to expand...
You mean that you can longer purchase the game through the Frontier Store and use their standalone launcher?
 

CMDR Theolan

CMDR Theolan
Para Handy said:
The main advantage* for the customer is that Steam often has sale prices whereas the frontierstore has not had a sale event for years. (Some people said Odyssey was discounted in frontierstore the other week but if it was it must have been an error as it wasn't available within hours of the posts.)

I prefer to buy from frontierstore as 1) all revenue goes to FD, there is no "cut" paid to valve and 2) you don't need to have Steam running to play Elite (I have several commanders, I would need to log in and out of different Steam accounts to chose which commander I wanted to play, without steam I just use renamed copies of the EDLaunch.exe file).


* EDIT - Some people say that updates load far quicker via Steam - I don't personally know if that is true.
Click to expand...
Thank you
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
If you already use steam its no problem adding it to it. If you dont use steam for anything somehow there is no advantage in buying via them. In any case there is 0% chance you will be 'left behind' by FD if you use steam at some point.
 

CMDR Theolan

CMDR Theolan
Old Duck said:
Another advantage is that one less company will have your credit card information, and considering how many times companies I do business with (Sony, T-Mobile, etc) have been hacked, I go out of my way to limit who has my personal data.

The major disadvantage is that if the Steam network goes down (very rare, but it happens), then you can't play your games. It's too bad that the Frontier launcher no longer works independent from Steam like it used to.
Click to expand...
Thank you
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
rOmiLaYu said:
Oh, I see now. You're saying that if you bought it through Steam, you used to be able to run the launcher independently and now you can't. Gotcha.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Which I wish was still the case, because while Steam uses very little resources, not running it at all would use even less :D

I suspect Steam is to blame for this change rather than Frontier.
 

rOmiLaYu

rOmiLaYu
CMDR Theolan said:
Thank you. Can I ask why? Have you experienced benefits or difficulties from one over the other ?
Click to expand...
For me it's really about just making things more intuitive. If I run the game through steam I have to open steam to open the launcher to play the game. If I use the standalone launcher I just have to open the launcher and run the game. It uses less resources. And by the way, as a console gamer, I was totally unprepared for the idea of what a launcher even was. I have to open a program to run a program? It still seems a little silly.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
rOmiLaYu said:
For me it's really about just making things more intuitive. If I run the game through steam I have to open steam to open the launcher to play the game. If I use the standalone launcher I just have to open the launcher and run the game. It uses less resources. And by the way, as a console gamer, I was totally unprepared for the idea of what a launcher even was. I have to open a program to run a program? It still seems a little silly.
Click to expand...
At least Elite supports downloads from directly Steam, which is really fast. Microsoft Flight Simulator makes you install a small launcher, which in turn itself installs the game from the Microsoft store at a much slower rate and maxed out GPU for some stupid reason. Then the installer crashes at 80% after taking two days to get there, and you have to start all over again. At least that was my experience. I finally gave up and uninstalled it :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom