Mandate / very strongly suggest Login-with-Steam for games with mandatory third-party account.

[Yujah]

A frequent issue f.e. in the context of GTA4 is people having lost email and/or password for their Rockstar Games (Social Club) account which since the Rockstar Games Launcher was introduced means them having lost access to their Steam-bought Rockstar game.

Also e.g Ubisoft and EA have this issue with their launchers but when I checked I saw that EA in fact solves this: it provides for a Login-with-Steam to an EA account, so as long as the Steam-account with the EA game is itself still accessible so is said EA-account hence said Steam-bought EA game.

Ubisoft does not provide for this (it does provide for login with Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Twitch and Facebook) nor does Rockstar (Xbox Live and PlayStation Network) and I really feel they should be "heavily stimulated" to do so.

Specifically Rockstar support seems to more or less have the policy of making recovery as difficult as possible -- which may or may not have something to do with wanting locked-out customers to buy the game again directly on the Rockstar launcher. I currently have the policy of not buying any title using third-party accounts/launchers, but seeing EA's Login-with-Steam option I'm now in their case re-evaluating that; certainly takes away my most major objection.

As such this could be good not just for Steam (i.e., people not buying directly on the private launcher/store) but also the developer/publisher, i.e., other people not not buying their games, period. I'd quite support Steam putting its significant weight behind at least very, very strongly suggesting Login-with-Steam for mandatory logins of Steam-bought games.

"Just look at EA how to do it right". Who'd have expected it...

[Ben Lubar]

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/auth

They have a bunch of ways to do it already.

But third party companies want data.

[Yujah]

Going to add an objection myself; would immediately distribute Steam's account-compromise problem to those other accounts.

Undoubtedly there's heavy confirmation bias as to how big that problem is among people that read Steam discussion forums but I can sort of see why a publisher/developer would really not want to open itself up to Steam's crap with regards to that issue.

Something for someone with some actual available data to weigh...

[Tito Shivan]

Ben Lubar님이 먼저 게시:

But third party companies want data.

This. plain and simple. They also want their own walled garden.

[Yujah]

Login-with-Steam does not deny them said data in any way.

[Ben Lubar]

Yujah님이 먼저 게시:

Login-with-Steam does not deny them said data in any way. The walled garden is what is suggested to hack away at a bit.

Logging in with Steam just gives them an ID number. Signing up on their system gives them, at minimum, an email address. Sometimes they also ask for a physical address (although I haven't signed up for any big accounts in the past decade so I assume that went away with the push for more privacy stuff).

[Yujah]

Please. Login-with-Steam to an existing EA/Ubisoft/Rockstar account with said Steam-account connected. I.e., the very same as how this works already for all those other Login-withs. Nothing changes for the developer as to its opportunities to spy on you.

Not going to comment further. Hope someone who in fact matters feels it a worthwhile suggestion.

[Mad Scientist]

Yujah님이 먼저 게시:

Specifically Rockstar support seems to more or less have the policy of making recovery as difficult as possible -- which may or may not have something to do with wanting locked-out customers to buy the game again directly on the Rockstar launcher.

The last time a thread with an identical claim was made, a regular user went to recover their rockstar account and I believe got it within 10 minutes.

Recovery is typically easy when you're the one that made the account.

[nullable]

Yujah님이 먼저 게시:

A frequent issue f.e. in the context of GTA4 is people having lost email and/or password for their Rockstar Games (Social Club) account which since the Rockstar Games Launcher was introduced means them having lost access to their Steam-bought Rockstar game.

Nothing is stopping users from properly managing their accounts. Valve is not responsible for users who don't keep track of accounts, or lose account credentials on other platforms.

There is already a solution to this problem: Use a proper grown up password manager. You can keep track of accounts, recovery information, backup codes, whatever. You don't need to worry about your crappy memory failing you once again, you just need to commit to adding accounts to the password manager when you create them. Problem solved.

Being bad at accounts doesn't create a requirement for Rockstar, nor does it warrant some mandatory feature to force all 3rd party launchers to support login with Steam. Valve is never going to enforce that, they create a feature, and it's up to the product owner if they want to implement it or not. Valve has not been very much interested in using their platform to control other publishers. It's one of the reasons Steam has maintained it's success.

At any rate your issue is with Rockstar if you want them to implement specific Steam features. And Rockstar doesn't operate of Steam's suggestion forum. And Valve is not going to force Rockstar to support login with Steam because some users are bad at managing accounts.

[William Shakesman]

Steam as an SSO authentication mechanism to the third party launcher shouldn't step on any publishers toes except for the cost to add another authentication method. It wouldn't be unreasonable considering Epic makes costlier demands of implementing EOS for Steam Epic crossplay

[Yujah]

Thanks for the comment -- and I'd in fact already generally be good when Login-with-Steam was only a thing on an account website for the third-party account even if not on the launcher. Latter would be better but as long as there is some way to log in to the account the user would be able to update email / password and regain access.

Well, should, that is, and also without access to the old email address, but for specifically Rockstar that's in fact the case. Been in that context replying with advise to log in with XBL/PSN if those credentials were still known and if XBL/PSN was ever linked from the Rockstar account, but those two conditions together seem in fact relatively rare as well so effectiveness has lacked a bit. The Login-with-Steam thing has the advantage that one is in order to play the game going to need access to the Steam account anyway.