Why is a launcher even needed? Isn't it better to provide downloads and payments from their website rather than paying 25% of transactions to Valve?
But of course adding a non-Steam version of the game doesn't magically give you a Steam version of the game absent a key-based import (which Valve supports both technically and a matter of policy).
Audio works fine almost always [1]. Controls usually work ok (I use both an x360 controller and a steam controller) but sometime it requires a bit of connecting and disconnecting, but to be honest it is probably more of a proton issue than steam link.
Overall I'm quite happy, although it is not yet a seamless console-like experience.
[1] There was a brief period last year when steam would crash when running under PulseAudio, and switching to alsa would prevent audio to be streamed. The issue fixed itself, either because of a steam update or a system update.
There are 2 problems with this.
1. You can't downloaded patches of game updates (with good ux). You would need to downloaded the entire game for every update which is bad.
2. You can't install the game to the system without a program.
>and payments from their website
Steam can provide less friction to make a payment since someone likely already has payment information attached to their account. A 25% cut is worth it if they can make more than 25% revenue than they otherwise would have made.
There is also the marketing potential of being in the steam store. Gamers looking for a new game can see / find your game. You can see people on your friends list playing your game. You can see friends reviewing the game or getting achievements on your feed.
And with Steam(at this moment) there is no way to tell it to "please don't update this game and let me play this version". You can disable the automatic updates but you won't be able to run a game from the launcher if you are not uptodate because the Play button is changed to Update.
Lol no patch installers were a thing before Steam. And usually more efficient - for the longest time Steam would re-download any changed files.
That would essentially be a launcher. We are talking about a downloaded on a website. A website can't patch a file, not know what patches you need to get up to date.
Managing a hundred different games from a dozen different sources is a pain.
If we lived in some fantasy utopia with standardized identity authentication and easily-verifiable-cryptographically-secure-proof-of-purchase then maybe distributed content distribution could make sense.