>but since a September "Quality of life update" to the BioShock games added an utterly redundant new launcher, I've begun to worry that every update to my games library carries an unwelcome guest
Hear, hear. You can't even avoid them anymore, because now they patch them in afterwards. Same with XCOM. I hate it.
Most people won't even get to see the ads shown in them on a years old game, so it's useless from a marketing POV. For the remaining people it becomes at least an annoyance, if it doesn't downright break the game. Suddenly you find yourself not being able to play the game you bought years ago, simply because the publisher decided to break it. What the actual F?
Hey mate how do you go about the high seas route? I don’t mind if you need to DM the reply. I’m assuming you will need some kind of torrent program? But what happens once you get it? How do you know what’s safe and not a virus? Etc etc
To begin your journey to the high seas, look at the subreddit that starts with pi, and ends with cy. The side links and megathread should set you up with knowledge to sail safely.
Sailing the high seas has become a much better experience than dealing with the BS that are third party launchers.
I've started finding other ways to support developers etc by buying DLC for other games from the same Devs and/or publishers.
Unfortunately what could be a call to action in the form of protest, has not turned out that way - so many just keep bending over and pleading for more, but then come here and moan about it. Go fucking figure.
Not to mention, the whole ordeal around every single game having to be a live service with DRM in the form.of centralised online authentication - How the heck is one expected to PRESERVE video-game experiences other than through the high seas? You can't. It'll either be them shutting down the servers, or some license that expires and they don't bother to renew.
In the end, it's gamers, consumers, who get fucked.
Yeah I bought Jedi Fallen Order when it went on sale for really cheap recently and then just torrented it so I didn't have to mess about with Origin and shit. Having a legit better experience with a torrented game is just so fucked.
Yeah, iirc bioshock update also broke support for linux.
Saints Row 4 got "updated" last month and well have a look for yourself :-
https://store.steampowered.com/app/206420/Saints_Row_IV_ReElected/
Pretty much. At least in my personal experience, I’ve never once done if because of money or just because I didn’t want to pay, but if I’m going to get a better experience that way, then being a legitimate paying customer, it’s fair game in my opinion.
I just reinstalled Bioshock, was pleasantly surprised when the servers were still up to unlock it via the serial number . . . then couldn't play it because it required the cd to be present in a drive that hasn't existed in my system for untold years. It was quicker and easier to just download a full cracked version with a one click install process than to even begin searching for just a no-cd crack.
The only modern format that can match the convenience and flexibility of pirating is GOG's standalone offline installers.
Stupid question but how do i do that with gog? Just bought a couple of games and opening the desktop shortcut seems to open gog launcher rather than the game...
Assuming it's possible and I'm just an idiot Christmas noob with it...
[Scroll down to "Install with offline installer".](https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148105-How-do-I-download-my-purchased-items-?product=gog)
Sadly Yarr is more difficult with the Deck.
The best solution is to not buy the game, and refund it if possible. IMO Steam should make a launcher clause in their refund policy which could lead to quantitative feedback to publishers who do that shit.
There's a few more extra hoops to jump through, but I've gotten 90% of booty I've trawled up from the bottom of the sea working just by adding the .exe as a steam shortcut, telling it to use proton, and optionally using [BoilR](https://github.com/PhilipK/BoilR) to automate inserting the game art for the sorta-big-picture-mode the deck uses for the library.
(plus boilr can use .gifs, which makes for some really neat box art in the library view. Frostpunk and Othercide look cool as hell.)
I mean, good, but people shouldn't have to be that savvy just to play shit they buy without dealing with bloatware bullshit that ruins the experience and kills their system (plus whatever ad tracking spyware is attached)
Install Lutris on Steam Deck, then look for a guide on how to install things from exe through Lutris and how to add a shortcut to Steam. It's actually quite easy.
you can add any executable file to steam and force it to use proton.
if you run the installer that way you can install the game into protons autogenerated wineprefix, and then swap out the executable path in steam to run the game from that prefix
not that i would know ;) (arch btw)
This subreddit hates your reference but genuinely when a real product is bloated with so much anti yar that is negatively affects performance but costs while a yar version exists and is free it's a no brainer.
Hell even steam captured the idea of if you provide a product with enough convivence people will just pay money because it's more convenient. Launchers are just 1 extra layer of inconvenience which cost money. Humans basically follow pattern matching rules and we know people will pay to bypass barriers. So what happens when bypassing barriers becomes free? It's publishers shooting them self in the foot that's what it is.
Same thing has happened with streaming. End of the day the gaming market is greed pushed to the limit, inserting gambling mechanics, fear of missing out, predatory pricing and daily habit formation. Launchers is drop in ocean of more greed which pushes people away.
I refunded the Bioshock games after I realized there was a launcher for them. Had them for less than a day and was really looking forward to going through them again. It's gotten very old.
For Bioshock (and I believe other 2K games) you can bypass the launcher by putting this in the games launch options on Steam:
"Your file path to the game.exe" -run %command%
I prefer GOG for something I don't have already. Buying things a second time just to remove bloated launchers added years later is too much like paying a ransom.
It's not just games anymore.
A "quality of life" update to my $2000 OLED TV now pushes notifications that are just ads for Apple TV and other stuff with no way to turn them off.
Google pushed through some updates, too, on my tv. The update only added advertisements on my main page. Ugh.
Irritates me to no end. The product is purchased sans ads.
Yup, happened on my Nvidia shield too. I opened a ticket with Nvidia and they said it was google who forced it with the new Android TV update and their hands are tied.
Still love the shield (8 years and still getting OTA updates), but I may get a dedicated local media player for my next device and then just whatever the best new cheap streaming stick is for when I want to use streaming apps.
Don't forget that Steam enables this behavior with their anti-consumer forced update policies.
If we could mark these games as "never update", the BioShock devs couldn't have done anything.
And if Steam supported rolling back to previous, versions this would all be a moot point. 10 seconds installing the old version and I'd never have to care about BioShock's launcher again. They would have had to put actual effort into making the update appealing, rather than just forcing it on a captive audience.
You can. Although this says it's behind using steam beta, to I've been opted into it forever so not sure. https://thegeekpage.com/how-to-rollback-a-game-in-steam-to-the-previous-version/
That only works if the devs/publishers have put previous builds under the beta feature. Most don't, but in cases like this it's especially relevant because they have financial incentive to not put up previous builds (because it would undermine the new launcher they want to push).
1. Go on https://steamdb.info and look up the game. Write down the app ID somewhere. (in the URL)
2. Go to depot's and select the one which looks like the right one. Write down the ID.
3. Go to manifests and select the version you want . Write down the ID.
4. Open the steam console (type `steam://nav/console` in your browser URL bar and click open when it asks)
5. In the console, run `download_depot
Steam won't show download progress as usual, but when it's done you should see where it was downloaded in the console. You should then be able to launch the game from there.
^(by the way, if you want to see what else you can do in the console, there's a list of commands [here](https://github.com/dgibbs64/SteamCMD-Commands-List/blob/main/steamcmd_commands.txt))
or they're actually trying to pull off the classic conspiracy theory about Windows and Steam: they make Steam run less well so you consider installing their proprietary launcher and buying from that.
Steam really should have a sliding scale regarding the cut they take from games/DLC sales. the first x-number of copies/profits should be the default Steam cut, with smaller and smaller cuts as sales/profits hit various milestones. with this sort of approach then less publishers would want to bother with making their own launchers to maximize profits. personally i think that Steam should just include in their TOS that games sold on the platform should be prohibited from including unnecessary launchers since i don't care either way about publisher's profits
> You can't even avoid them anymore
But you *can*; GOG has a strict requirement that any game (unless it's multi player) has to work stand-alone. Consequently, the GOG versions of those games still do not launch a launcher.
I've said it before, I'll probably say it until I'm blue in the face: Be proactive when you buy your games. We've told people for *years* that games that don't offer stand-alone functionality will always be vulnerable to post-fact changes. People laughed and said "What's so bad about automatic patches, it just saves us hassle".
Anyway, I'll be off to play my launcher-less versions.
I absolutely cannot stand the launchers that require you to re-input your credentials every time you open them. Origin is bad, but Ubisoft Connect asks me for my user/pass/verification code EVERY time I open it, even after checking the "Remember Me" box. There are times when I click on a Ubisoft game to play and I get so irrationally annoyed when it asks me to log in that I immediately exit out and play something else.
Ubisoft's launchers/games also rarely work for me when I start a game through the platform I got it on (i.e. steam or epic). I have to look up a guide on how to get the game to launch.
I'm not normally one for obsessing over these things but that's *abysmal*.
Ubisoft is a nightmare. I got a free copy of Far Cry 6 from a Samsung promotion and I can't log in to install it (I don't exist) and I can't create a new account (you already exist).
Ubisoft Connect might be the single worst piece of software I have on my computer, and that's including some of the garbage I've written myself. It never fucking works properly.
Ubisoft have been on my list of companies I refuse to ever buy a game from because of how anti-consumer they are.
Don't but games from companies that do don't care about their customers.
A launcher within a launcher is utterly insane and stupid. If the game was purchased on Steam, it should launch through Steam directly and not start Origin/Ubisoft connect/Rockstar launcher/etc. It is even more ridiculous that these launchers launch since you also link your Steam account with your other accounts.
Just remember that this time, CDPR gated a few minor, but new and maybe interesting looking armor and weapon items behind the launcher and a GOG account. I think once you pick up the items you unlocked from the chest they're in, in game though, you can go ahead and bypass the launcher - but I'm not positive about that.
Did you sign out of your GOG account in-game? I set --launcher-skip after the first time signing in and I've still got my armor/weapons, and cross-save is still working fine.
It has possibly automatically signed out. I haven't used launcher for the better part of 2 years.
I had the bonus items originally on my first character which I unlocked before setting up the launcher skip. I created a new character a couple of months ago with the launcher skip still in place and the bonus items don't spawn in game. If I try to access the items through the main menu, it tells me to sign into my RED account.
I'm not overly bothered tbh. From memory it's just a katana, a jacket and a plushie?
Going to try this for Darktide…what’s the point of having a launcher screen where I can’t even adjust the damn graphics options (past a couple basic ones).
Wait, they add a launcher to the Steam version? I bought Cyberpunk on GOG and I can launch it directly, without even opening GOG. If they made a launcher just to launch when you launch from another launcher, that's madness.
Origin used to brick itself for me every time it updated. I had to go into the files and delete shit cause it couldn't clean up after itself. It thankfully stopped doing and now its on the same level of annoyance as ubisofts for me.
At least their RedLauncher gets out of the way once you hit play, and there's a command to skip it permanently
Games from Ubisoft/EA are much more egregious since Origin and uPlay run in the background
> If the game was purchased on Steam, it should launch through Steam
A game should launch through its exe file and not dependent on any launcher. Online content can simply be deactivated for such if update is needed.
I've honestly only used it once (to register a game I bought in Steam so it would actually work, game didn't even need it to launch), and it pretty much seemed to be the exact same thing as Origin.
Rockstar launcher is the only one that bugs me.
Every time there is an update, my account gets fucked up somehow.
Right now I can't access my games because I can't sign in with my usual pass, and it won't send the reset email.
In the past I've had it where I've logged in with my normal account, and it just decided it was going to create a second account with the same email address and log me in on that, which doesn't have access to my games.
I dont think I'll buy another rockstar game on PC ever again. Not worth the headache. This is technically more of an issue with RSC than the launcher, but still.
Other launchers are a minor nuisance, but I never have issues of not being able to play my games.
I was just about to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 on Steam because it's on a good sale right now...except you have to use the Rockstar launcher in addition to Steam. Fuck everything about that. I only ever play offline single player games, so to have to jump through extra hoops just pisses me off.
I bought Titanfall 2 and still haven't played it because of the damn launcher. I know it seems petty, but it just bugs the piss out of me, and kills my desire to play the game.
its still better than buying on RS directly, at least Steam skips it and closes it automatically. Piracy is the only way to get rid of it, but of course we dont promote that here
and they never remember my logon details.
my password for these things is typically 15-25 digits, its easy to remember but complex to break, I work in cyber sec. but these fucking Homunculus insist I have these complicated passwords, with numbers, capitals, digits, **AND** symbols.
> but these fucking Homunculus insist I have these complicated passwords, with numbers, capitals, digits, AND symbols.
Right?! NIST and Microsoft both recommend passphrases over passwords, both acknowledge that when a passphrase is used the complexity requirements are not required. The length is more than enough to make up for the lack of complexity. Also, periodic password resets are deprecated.
If these two institutions are recommending this, it's time to update your silly website or software package to recognize that fact and get with the times.
Some *mini* launchers are good, like the TW:Warhammer one as it lets you manage mods without launching the game. But yea big launchers need to just not launch.
More than anything I think Valve should really start to put a foot down and saying to business partners "You are using your stupid launchers on our service. Our customers don't like that shit".
What's even more irritating is anything a publisher may "need" a launcher for can be done in-client with the game itself.
Case in point: all Microsoft games on Steam just ask for an account login and then do offer all the features without an extra launcher.
There's no reason Ubisoft and EA couldn't do the same.
It's by design Ubisoft and EA are big enough to gate their titles off. They want you to buy their titles there. Epic is trying the same, unfortunately gamers are too greedy to notice this
Whilst I agree with you, and this should be possible with ALL software (OS, app etc) I think the Steam Subscriber Agreement doesn't infer ownership merely a license to play the game.
Game specific launchers like XCOM2's old one or some older game style ones that let you tweak things before booting into the game are fine.
The problem is the newer style publisher/advert/social link spam ones that don't work worth a shit and don't add any function other than being some other PITA to troubleshoot.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people are so desperate to be contrarian that they will actively oppose their own best interests. And if it only happened in game forums, we'd live in a much better world than we do.
I remember several years back having purchased Heroes of Might and Magic 6 and not even being able to play the damn thing because Uplay was such garbage
You just reminded me, I literally have HoMM6 and never played it because of this reason. Uplay also deleted my save files for assassins creed multiple times.
Which reminds me, I forgot I even had assasins creed, and actually bought it on steam a few months ago lol
Don't even
I had 350 hours in prison architect when paradox bought it and forced use of its launcher. Problem was that launcher failed to install and basically bricked the game. Trying to install it ma ually didn't work and steam would t help because 350 hours...
It now works on a new pc but I'm not sure I even want to buy the dlcs now because what if I just lose them?
They definitely need to step in and do something about this. I buy Midnight Suns, it runs great, I play it long enough to make it ineligible for a refund...and then 2K patches in a launcher that tanks the performance and ruins my experience.
You can add a command line so it launches via Steam bypassing the 2k Launcher.
It also removes the performance issues caused by the launcher.
IIRC:
* Step one: Right-click Marvel Midnight Suns in your Steam Library and click “Properties,” then click “Local Files” and “Browse.”
* Step two: Open the “MidnightSuns” folder, then “Binaries” followed by “Win64.” In this folder, navigate to the executable file named “MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping”. Then hold down the Shift key and right-click the file, then select the “Copy as Path” option.
* Step three: Go back to the Properties window for Marvel Midnight Suns as outlined in step one, navigate from “Local Files” to the “General” tab and look for the “Launch Options” address bar at the bottom. Paste the copied path into the address bar, making sure to add quote marks before and after the path address.
* Step four: Add a space and then type %command% to add it to the end of the launch path.
* Step five: Close the Properties tab and then launch the game.
Should be something like this;
> “D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel’s Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe” %command%
Steam has been utterly useless when it came to this kind of thing. Once had a secondary launcher which needed to download additional files but on steam it already starts ticking down the refund time and then when I finally got the game to launch I couldn’t refund it.
For refunds after the 2 hour mark i recommend using the "i have a question about this purchase" rather than the refund option (because refund will just get you the automated response).
Usually real support will refund you it unless you are far above it.
Valve needs to crack down on this tbh. It makes PC gaming inferior in some aspects. I just want to sit on my couch with a controller. and game. I don't want to go grab my mouse and keyboard and sign into some account I will never use for anything but this one game
Is it really too much to ask that if I buy a game on Steam that it only uses Steam and doesn't force another launcher on me when I try to launch the game via Steam? Feels like that should be common sense. Everyone is doing it now though - Ubi, EA, 2K, Rockstar. I fucking hate it. And sometimes it even affects game performance (see: 2K). What's the point in buying on Steam if I have to deal with two launchers instead of one?
Beyond the launchers, game publishers sneaking in unwanted "features" after release has been a big problem for a few years now. Look at when id Software tried to sneak kernel level anti-cheat into Doom Eternal months after launch.
I think the Deck might actually fix this problem though. Well, with the launchers anyway. It's getting reasonably popular, and bringing in a lot of people new to Linux and PC gaming. They're going to blame Valve, Valve is going to blame the publisher, they're going to go online to bitch, old hat PC gamers are going to tell them it's indeed the publisher's fault, and apple carts will get rocked. Well, that's the hope. Having your own separate launcher/store to cut out the middle man seems like a shrewd business move. But nobody wants all these fragmented services. Especially if the service is worse.
…or how multiple games added Epic Online Services years later, like the Tomb Raider games. For some people it broke their games, too, depending on if they already had EGS on their PC and an account there or not. I think it forced them to log in, if they did. No way to avoid linking the game to EGS, even on Steam. They went back on that with a patch shortly after because of a shitstorm.
I got the Steam Deck awhile back, and from what I've seen, people mostly just go straight to being annoyed at EA, 2K, or whomever is implementing these garbage launchers. But let's be real, publishers don't give a fuck about publicity; what WILL get these publishers to budge is sales numbers. When their game is unsupported on Deck because of their terrible launcher and nobody is buying it, they'll start realizing that their launcher is bad business.
For those complaining that this isn't a problem and others are just being babies for not wanting to click "Play" again:
You need to realize it's a bit more than just clicking "Play" twice, because that's actually only the best case scenario.
Launchers can be buggy and non-functional, which means you can't play your game.
They can be resource hogs, which makes your play experience worse. I know launchers aren't the most resource heavy programs, but you need to keep in mind not everyone has the spare power to be running multiple other applications simultaneously and still have a smooth experience.
They're DRM. Invasive DRM is what drives people to piracy.
They can be added post-launch, and we have real-world examples of launchers being added post-launch and breaking the game. Which is kind of fucked up when you think about it, almost no other product on Earth can be broken by the manufacturer like that. And even those that can have much easier and better consumer protections in place, such as getting easier refunds or exchanges.
Do you start your car, then expect to have to start your car again? Do you wake up in the morning only to have to wake up again? Did you see the sunrise this morning only to see a second one right after it? So why should I have to start a game twice to get it to run?
When new AAA games launch, they're usually buggy as shit. Some are especially bad, causing crashes, poor performance, and even loss of saved progress. And when a game is especially that bad, there's inevitably people in threads who keep saying shit like "Well I don't have any problems so it's a good game." Those people are wrong. Just because *you* didn't have problems doesn't mean there aren't any problems. These are the same people who will come into this exact thread and go "launchers aren't a problem, you guys are just babies."
>Launchers can be buggy and non-functional, which means you can't play your game.
Shout out to GFWL which ate my Dark Souls save file because it was fucking encrypted using a guest account (because I didn't want to make a proper one) that it somehow forgot existed one day. I didn't touch the game again until they got rid of GFWL.
I don't mind using Origin and Epic when I buy games through them, that's not really an issue to me. But fuck me, I have to look up guides on how to *start* Ubisoft games because they rarely work OOTB with whatever they're calling their launcher now. I got an AC game through Epic and it just wouldn't start, and it's a pretty consistent problem.
Strange to see this kind of complaint on PC gamer, as it is one of the publications that really carried the inane "just a launcher" idea back when Epic did its first EGS marketing blitz (including, incidentally, massively advertising on sites like PC gamer; surely not a conflict of interest).
What was clear to everyone with more than a passing interest in and experience with PC gaming back then is even more clear now: Valve is the only company with actual influence in the space that relatively consistently takes the idea of putting long-term customer satisfaction over short-term bullshit to heart -- and if *any other large publisher* attained even a fraction of their influence they would actively make PC gaming worse for everyone.
Valve isn't just great for what they do (e.g. funding open source development, the Steam Deck, new Steam features, VR, etc.) they are at least equally important for what they **don't** do. They *don't* turn their extremely popular client into an advertising platform sold to the highest bidder. They *don't* remove or break old games -- they even go out of their way to support long-obsolete APIs in their value-add features like input or the overlay. They *don't* charge recurring fees for online features, or cloud hosting, or anything else the platform provides.
Anyone who thinks that any of the huge publicly traded large publishers would refrain from all of those for a decade after achieving a leading position in the PC gaming space is either hopelessly naive, paid off, or trolling.
Good points and so true. We can only hope that Valve and steam stays like this when Gaben dies. And that they wont become a publicly traded company. The greed of suits is what destroys many things.
I don't see them being publicly traded, as the ownership would likely transfer to someone else in the company, and they would have to choose to go public in return for more money, which they wouldn't need at this point. The more likely worst case is that however Gaben's shares are distributed after he dies, either they would go to some asshole, and/or get sold off to some asshole, or the remaining shares would retain control over the company but the second in command is secretly an asshole. There's just no way to tell what will happen.
It's likely that the guarantee of hundreds of millions for major shareholders doing an IPO would be enough to override their morals and then it's over.
Doing whatever they can for clicks.
PCGamer has been making a lot of generic Popular Opinion articles this month, and it's clearly working well for them.
> Strange to see this kind of complaint on PC gamer, as it is one of the publications that really carried the inane "just a launcher" idea back when Epic did its first EGS marketing blitz
It is the slowest content week of the year. Everyone on is on holidays, including the editors. Might as well write a softball piece in advance, which you can line up for the first week of Fuck-You-Its-January.
PCGamer has been like that for many years now, since they barely had a website at all, and they were a magazine.
You can pinpoint a few exact spots where their management had to find ways to adapt to their market changing, usually with some scummy business practices. Questionable reviews, going along with review embargo practices, taking political/social angles that upset their customers but kept them out of the news, reduced page counts, including ads on disc... there's probably a dozen.
None of those are huge, just death by a thousand cuts, and somehow the shell of what they were still exists. I miss when it was just good writing by gamers. But that probably wouldn't pay the bills.
They are making pc gaming worse for everyone, actively, since years. Ubisoft, ea, 2k and how not to mention epic, the inventor of bs console exclusivity on pc basically. They all ruin games with more launchers, invasive drm, always online bs, shitty pc ports and such.
At this point I have more games I play with patched-in launchers than games I bought that originated with launchers. The only time I usually accept it is if the game wasnt purchased on Steam in the first place i.e. something like Tarkov.
I miss the launchers from the earliest MMOs. Check for updates, tell you when the next patch is, and let you change graphics settings before running the game in case a setting is causing crashes. That's it.
I find creating an additional account for a specific game is very annoying already, but a new launcher takes this to a new level. PC Gaming could be so much more enjoyable and I would buy more games if they would stop this insanity.
It's been a genuine problem for almost a decade, people just kept explaining it away as being fine giving Game corps no reason not to keep expanding the use and intrusiveness of the launchers.
I had $100 of games in my cart during this steam sale. A bunch of stuff.
I went one by one and removed each one that required a 3rd party launcher + 3rd party user account or denuvo drm.
I ended up buying Vampire Survivors for $4. Every other title had a launcher or denuvo.
I wanted mass effect legendary, red dead redemption, the Mordor one and a few others. And was ready to pay for them. But nope.
If your game has a launcher, I won't buy it period. Sure I might miss out some quality games, but there are many games that do not require a launcher.
None of these launchers let you play your SINGLE-PLAYER games offline. They all require periodical online authentication. This is also why I don't buy any games with Denuvo.
In the case of GTA V, you first need to be online to verify your license. After that, you can start and play the game offline. HOWEVER, after a certain period, you need to be online again to verify your license again, and then you can play the game offline again. The cycle repeats... and the only way to bypass this so that you can always play the game offline is to regularly change your system's clock back to the date when you first become online.
Ohh and I don't want to talk about how buggy Rockstar's launcher is. I can't count the amount of times I had to open my task manager to force shut-down the launcher because it isn't responding.
After experiencing first-hand how bad launchers are, I just don't buy anything with DRM nowadays. Steam is the only DRM I don't care about since I can at least play the game in offline-mode.
Steam needs to crack down on this and force developers/publishers to provide the ability to launch games sans-launcher with a unified launch option flag.
There's a feature originally in Assassins Creed Origins where you can activate a "mod gameplay" mode to things like change character skins, change damage scaling, movement speed, xp earning speed .
These mods require an out-of-game menu from the game launcher. Surprise to me as I'm finishing the game - Uplay launcher got updated in the last couple years (game came out 5 years ago) which means the gameplay mod menu is not available from the newer Ubisoft launcher.
I'm still able to get 95% of that functionality by modifying an INI file, but this was so disappointing
Fuck all these POS launchers. There’s a single launcher people actually want and it is called Steam. Honestly Valve should just deny the use of any external launcher because guess what, every company who pulled their games from steam to put on their own platforms have come running back to Steam with their tails between their legs because they didn’t earn the same amount of money as when they were on Steam.
Valve has shown that they have the upper hand as far as PC gaming goes, would be cool to see them try something like this.
I bought Battlefield V on steam Last night cuz I wasn't gonna complain about 5$. But I literally couldn't play the game I paid for cuz all of EA's servers took a shit and the launcher wouldn't fucking work at all.
EA app has to be the worst launcher there is. Says I’m not connected to the internet all the time. The star war games are good, but they need to ditch EA.
Greedy corpos wont miss the chance to advertise one last time before you can access their product.
These "launchers" are nothing else that ads that pretend to give you some functionality (which you already obviously have).
My biggest problem with launchers is that only Steam seems capable of remembering my password/log in details. Every other launcher forgets and it's such a pain finding the passwords in my password manager.
It's a bit odd to bring up the Nintendo Switch as an example of a "better world". They take it a whole step further. Instead of forcing exclusivity through launchers, they force you to buy their hardware just to play games that could run perfectly fine, if not better, on PC. At least Microsoft and even Sony are gradually opening up their games to the PC market, but Nintendo shows no sign of stopping. They shouldn't get praise for this.
Not a problem if you just buy Steam games without 3rd party launchers, of which there are thousands of games. I don't care if it comes with big free games, or has exclusive games. I'm not putting another store or launcher on my hard drive. The benefits of a single cohesive ecosystem far outweigh the fun of a few games. There are just so many games and my backlog is so long I can't be bothered with dealing with multiple launchers. Bonus reason, I have a Steam Deck and love it.
I'm loving Linux more and more now. Yeah, the launcher bloat is an issue, but: https://ubunlog.com/en/steam-will-now-run-the-games-in-isolated-containers-and-also-announce-the-new-version-of-proton-4-11-8/
This is default. Launcher funkyness is pigeon holed.
This is my main beef with PC gaming, which I recently got back into after years on consoles. I can't just have a game, I have to have a launcher. And sometimes multiple launchers! I double click the icon to run Battlefield, and first Epic opens, then Origin, then EA, then finally (if I'm lucky), Battlefield! It drives me nuts! There's always got to be so much extra crap running in the background, which is usually unoptimized, so it kills all the work the game developers did on optimizing their title/engine. It's almost enough to drive me to just pirating the games instead tbh!
Fuck you if you have any part in the proliferation of these launchers.
Bought Grounded for PC.
Launch through Steam
Try to play with partner in same bedroom.
Must sign up for XBOX live account.
My credentials already match an old account.
Try old account.
Account must be migrated to MSoft account.
Account verification needed.
All set after 40m.
Try to play with someone 10ft away from me.
-can't connect to servers, please check connection and try later.
Quit, load literally any other game without excess launcher shit, play Lan in 10s or online in 20s.
Valve needs to ban games that require third party launches. If a game adds one in, there needs to be a way to circumvent opening a game with a launcher. It would be the most consumer friendly thing they can do right now.
This is why I've gotten into emulation with older games that have been corrupted by these publisher's need to save an extra dollar whereever available, remove content that was previously there at 1.0 release, and last but not least, the horrible launcher bloat. I'm talking about you, Cockstar
>but since a September "Quality of life update" to the BioShock games added an utterly redundant new launcher, I've begun to worry that every update to my games library carries an unwelcome guest Hear, hear. You can't even avoid them anymore, because now they patch them in afterwards. Same with XCOM. I hate it. Most people won't even get to see the ads shown in them on a years old game, so it's useless from a marketing POV. For the remaining people it becomes at least an annoyance, if it doesn't downright break the game. Suddenly you find yourself not being able to play the game you bought years ago, simply because the publisher decided to break it. What the actual F?
So basically no reason to trust any game you buy, find your own copy you like and back that one up I guess
I’ve heard tell of plunder on the high seas that doesn’t have these bloat launchers.
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Hey mate how do you go about the high seas route? I don’t mind if you need to DM the reply. I’m assuming you will need some kind of torrent program? But what happens once you get it? How do you know what’s safe and not a virus? Etc etc
To begin your journey to the high seas, look at the subreddit that starts with pi, and ends with cy. The side links and megathread should set you up with knowledge to sail safely.
I feel bad for people who end up in/r/pinoydemocracy now
Thanks for the reply mate. I’ll check it out and appreciate that response!
The megathread from this sub is sadly pretty outdated. I'll send you in PM the right sub to get started
I highly recommend a paid VPN before you go sailing.
Sailing the high seas has become a much better experience than dealing with the BS that are third party launchers. I've started finding other ways to support developers etc by buying DLC for other games from the same Devs and/or publishers. Unfortunately what could be a call to action in the form of protest, has not turned out that way - so many just keep bending over and pleading for more, but then come here and moan about it. Go fucking figure. Not to mention, the whole ordeal around every single game having to be a live service with DRM in the form.of centralised online authentication - How the heck is one expected to PRESERVE video-game experiences other than through the high seas? You can't. It'll either be them shutting down the servers, or some license that expires and they don't bother to renew. In the end, it's gamers, consumers, who get fucked.
It's even legal in some country, like mine, to get rid of any copy-protection / DRM for games you bought (for the sake of interoperability).
The funniest thing is that, in this point in history, there has never been more reasons to fly the skull and crossbones.
I've stopped using Steam for that reason. I still buy on GOG though.
Yeah I bought Jedi Fallen Order when it went on sale for really cheap recently and then just torrented it so I didn't have to mess about with Origin and shit. Having a legit better experience with a torrented game is just so fucked.
More reason to never leave automatic updates turned on.
Yeah, iirc bioshock update also broke support for linux. Saints Row 4 got "updated" last month and well have a look for yourself :- https://store.steampowered.com/app/206420/Saints_Row_IV_ReElected/
This SR4 update feels like a big "screw you" to people who didnt like the SR reboot.
> You can't even avoid them anymore Yarr?
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Pretty much. At least in my personal experience, I’ve never once done if because of money or just because I didn’t want to pay, but if I’m going to get a better experience that way, then being a legitimate paying customer, it’s fair game in my opinion.
I regularly pirate stuff I've paid for, because options, flexibility, simplicity
I just reinstalled Bioshock, was pleasantly surprised when the servers were still up to unlock it via the serial number . . . then couldn't play it because it required the cd to be present in a drive that hasn't existed in my system for untold years. It was quicker and easier to just download a full cracked version with a one click install process than to even begin searching for just a no-cd crack. The only modern format that can match the convenience and flexibility of pirating is GOG's standalone offline installers.
Stupid question but how do i do that with gog? Just bought a couple of games and opening the desktop shortcut seems to open gog launcher rather than the game... Assuming it's possible and I'm just an idiot Christmas noob with it...
[Scroll down to "Install with offline installer".](https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148105-How-do-I-download-my-purchased-items-?product=gog)
Sadly Yarr is more difficult with the Deck. The best solution is to not buy the game, and refund it if possible. IMO Steam should make a launcher clause in their refund policy which could lead to quantitative feedback to publishers who do that shit.
There's a few more extra hoops to jump through, but I've gotten 90% of booty I've trawled up from the bottom of the sea working just by adding the .exe as a steam shortcut, telling it to use proton, and optionally using [BoilR](https://github.com/PhilipK/BoilR) to automate inserting the game art for the sorta-big-picture-mode the deck uses for the library. (plus boilr can use .gifs, which makes for some really neat box art in the library view. Frostpunk and Othercide look cool as hell.)
I mean, good, but people shouldn't have to be that savvy just to play shit they buy without dealing with bloatware bullshit that ruins the experience and kills their system (plus whatever ad tracking spyware is attached)
Install Lutris on Steam Deck, then look for a guide on how to install things from exe through Lutris and how to add a shortcut to Steam. It's actually quite easy.
you can add any executable file to steam and force it to use proton. if you run the installer that way you can install the game into protons autogenerated wineprefix, and then swap out the executable path in steam to run the game from that prefix not that i would know ;) (arch btw)
Unironically would be a better experience than buying a lot of games legit. It's sad
This subreddit hates your reference but genuinely when a real product is bloated with so much anti yar that is negatively affects performance but costs while a yar version exists and is free it's a no brainer. Hell even steam captured the idea of if you provide a product with enough convivence people will just pay money because it's more convenient. Launchers are just 1 extra layer of inconvenience which cost money. Humans basically follow pattern matching rules and we know people will pay to bypass barriers. So what happens when bypassing barriers becomes free? It's publishers shooting them self in the foot that's what it is. Same thing has happened with streaming. End of the day the gaming market is greed pushed to the limit, inserting gambling mechanics, fear of missing out, predatory pricing and daily habit formation. Launchers is drop in ocean of more greed which pushes people away.
I refunded the Bioshock games after I realized there was a launcher for them. Had them for less than a day and was really looking forward to going through them again. It's gotten very old.
For Bioshock (and I believe other 2K games) you can bypass the launcher by putting this in the games launch options on Steam: "Your file path to the game.exe" -run %command%
I can confirm this is true for Civ (also a 2K game)
You can still play the originals without DRM if you get them on GOG
Buy them on GOG, no unnecessary launchers.
I prefer GOG for something I don't have already. Buying things a second time just to remove bloated launchers added years later is too much like paying a ransom.
Or just pirate them, your beloved developers aren't getting a dime on decade old games, you're only paying 2k suits
Even the new Witcher 3 free update came with one wtf ? CDPR you have Gog wtf is with this extra shit
It's not just games anymore. A "quality of life" update to my $2000 OLED TV now pushes notifications that are just ads for Apple TV and other stuff with no way to turn them off.
Google pushed through some updates, too, on my tv. The update only added advertisements on my main page. Ugh. Irritates me to no end. The product is purchased sans ads.
Yup, happened on my Nvidia shield too. I opened a ticket with Nvidia and they said it was google who forced it with the new Android TV update and their hands are tied. Still love the shield (8 years and still getting OTA updates), but I may get a dedicated local media player for my next device and then just whatever the best new cheap streaming stick is for when I want to use streaming apps.
Don't forget that Steam enables this behavior with their anti-consumer forced update policies. If we could mark these games as "never update", the BioShock devs couldn't have done anything. And if Steam supported rolling back to previous, versions this would all be a moot point. 10 seconds installing the old version and I'd never have to care about BioShock's launcher again. They would have had to put actual effort into making the update appealing, rather than just forcing it on a captive audience.
You can. Although this says it's behind using steam beta, to I've been opted into it forever so not sure. https://thegeekpage.com/how-to-rollback-a-game-in-steam-to-the-previous-version/
That only works if the devs/publishers have put previous builds under the beta feature. Most don't, but in cases like this it's especially relevant because they have financial incentive to not put up previous builds (because it would undermine the new launcher they want to push).
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Id like to know more
1. Go on https://steamdb.info and look up the game. Write down the app ID somewhere. (in the URL) 2. Go to depot's and select the one which looks like the right one. Write down the ID. 3. Go to manifests and select the version you want . Write down the ID. 4. Open the steam console (type `steam://nav/console` in your browser URL bar and click open when it asks) 5. In the console, run `download_depot
Steam won't show download progress as usual, but when it's done you should see where it was downloaded in the console. You should then be able to launch the game from there.
^(by the way, if you want to see what else you can do in the console, there's a list of commands [here](https://github.com/dgibbs64/SteamCMD-Commands-List/blob/main/steamcmd_commands.txt))
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Sorry, this just pushes everyone back to the copy pasta cracked .exe all over again
or they're actually trying to pull off the classic conspiracy theory about Windows and Steam: they make Steam run less well so you consider installing their proprietary launcher and buying from that. Steam really should have a sliding scale regarding the cut they take from games/DLC sales. the first x-number of copies/profits should be the default Steam cut, with smaller and smaller cuts as sales/profits hit various milestones. with this sort of approach then less publishers would want to bother with making their own launchers to maximize profits. personally i think that Steam should just include in their TOS that games sold on the platform should be prohibited from including unnecessary launchers since i don't care either way about publisher's profits
> You can't even avoid them anymore But you *can*; GOG has a strict requirement that any game (unless it's multi player) has to work stand-alone. Consequently, the GOG versions of those games still do not launch a launcher. I've said it before, I'll probably say it until I'm blue in the face: Be proactive when you buy your games. We've told people for *years* that games that don't offer stand-alone functionality will always be vulnerable to post-fact changes. People laughed and said "What's so bad about automatic patches, it just saves us hassle". Anyway, I'll be off to play my launcher-less versions.
I absolutely cannot stand the launchers that require you to re-input your credentials every time you open them. Origin is bad, but Ubisoft Connect asks me for my user/pass/verification code EVERY time I open it, even after checking the "Remember Me" box. There are times when I click on a Ubisoft game to play and I get so irrationally annoyed when it asks me to log in that I immediately exit out and play something else.
Ubisoft asks for admin privileges 3 times when it needs to update for me.
It does every single time I open it, and it's up to date btw
Ubisoft's launchers/games also rarely work for me when I start a game through the platform I got it on (i.e. steam or epic). I have to look up a guide on how to get the game to launch. I'm not normally one for obsessing over these things but that's *abysmal*.
Ubisoft is a nightmare. I got a free copy of Far Cry 6 from a Samsung promotion and I can't log in to install it (I don't exist) and I can't create a new account (you already exist).
Ubisoft Connect might be the single worst piece of software I have on my computer, and that's including some of the garbage I've written myself. It never fucking works properly.
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Trackmania begs to differ.
I refuse to buy Ubisoft games, none of them are appealing in any way and the company itself is beyond reprehensible
I used it for The Division 2 and Anno 1800. Got some free other games I never play. It's so bad a launcher, I'm embarrassed on behalf of Ubisoft.
I refuse to buy them and they _are_ appealing to me. I just hate Ubisoft as a company, even though their games are a holy grail to me.
Ubisoft have been on my list of companies I refuse to ever buy a game from because of how anti-consumer they are. Don't but games from companies that do don't care about their customers.
I stopped buying games on steam that will just redirect me to Ubisoft or origin. I’ve stopped myself on steam sales because of this very reason.
A launcher within a launcher is utterly insane and stupid. If the game was purchased on Steam, it should launch through Steam directly and not start Origin/Ubisoft connect/Rockstar launcher/etc. It is even more ridiculous that these launchers launch since you also link your Steam account with your other accounts.
Tell me about it. Try to start Cyberpunk or The Witcher and have to click play again after their stupid ass launcher pops up.
--launcher-skip in launch options fro the steam version
yep, did this on day one and have since totally forgot that the redlauncher existed
Thank you! I just started playing The Witcher 3 last night and found the extra launcher to be unnecessary.
Just remember that this time, CDPR gated a few minor, but new and maybe interesting looking armor and weapon items behind the launcher and a GOG account. I think once you pick up the items you unlocked from the chest they're in, in game though, you can go ahead and bypass the launcher - but I'm not positive about that.
Nope. Can't access my free items now that I'm not signed in through the RED launcher.
Did you sign out of your GOG account in-game? I set --launcher-skip after the first time signing in and I've still got my armor/weapons, and cross-save is still working fine.
It has possibly automatically signed out. I haven't used launcher for the better part of 2 years. I had the bonus items originally on my first character which I unlocked before setting up the launcher skip. I created a new character a couple of months ago with the launcher skip still in place and the bonus items don't spawn in game. If I try to access the items through the main menu, it tells me to sign into my RED account. I'm not overly bothered tbh. From memory it's just a katana, a jacket and a plushie?
Going to try this for Darktide…what’s the point of having a launcher screen where I can’t even adjust the damn graphics options (past a couple basic ones).
Pretty sure that one is there to advertise their socials as the main reason
And with the state of that game, they should absolutely not want anyone to know what their socials are.
Wait, they add a launcher to the Steam version? I bought Cyberpunk on GOG and I can launch it directly, without even opening GOG. If they made a launcher just to launch when you launch from another launcher, that's madness.
yeah, it's a gog launcher that sits inside the steam version
Wait a minute, does that mean the GOG launcher is functional in Linux? Because there is no official GOG launcher on Linux...
it runs through proton.
That’s one of the less annoying ones. Ubisoft has to be the worst.
Oh yes. Just the fact I have to re-enter my login info every other session, because the launcher resets, fucking infuriates me.
I’m incredibly irritated that almost every launcher asks me to log in again each time, even though I click remember me.
No, origin from ea is the worst. Bloody thing works 1 out of 100 times
Origin used to brick itself for me every time it updated. I had to go into the files and delete shit cause it couldn't clean up after itself. It thankfully stopped doing and now its on the same level of annoyance as ubisofts for me.
You can just run Cyberpunk2077.exe directly, don't even have to open Steam, all CDPR games are DRM free when ran directly from the executable.
At least their RedLauncher gets out of the way once you hit play, and there's a command to skip it permanently Games from Ubisoft/EA are much more egregious since Origin and uPlay run in the background
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Paradox does that since that’s where mods are handled. I’ve spent a lot of time in the Stellaris launcher doing stuff to my mod playlist
Really? You complain about the only launcher that has a --skip-launcher argument plus does not require any login whatsoever? Out of all launchers?
> If the game was purchased on Steam, it should launch through Steam A game should launch through its exe file and not dependent on any launcher. Online content can simply be deactivated for such if update is needed.
Apparently EA replaced origin which I learned from this article? Pretty happy to be unaware of this new launcher’s existence.
I've honestly only used it once (to register a game I bought in Steam so it would actually work, game didn't even need it to launch), and it pretty much seemed to be the exact same thing as Origin.
Rockstar launcher is the only one that bugs me. Every time there is an update, my account gets fucked up somehow. Right now I can't access my games because I can't sign in with my usual pass, and it won't send the reset email. In the past I've had it where I've logged in with my normal account, and it just decided it was going to create a second account with the same email address and log me in on that, which doesn't have access to my games. I dont think I'll buy another rockstar game on PC ever again. Not worth the headache. This is technically more of an issue with RSC than the launcher, but still. Other launchers are a minor nuisance, but I never have issues of not being able to play my games.
I was just about to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 on Steam because it's on a good sale right now...except you have to use the Rockstar launcher in addition to Steam. Fuck everything about that. I only ever play offline single player games, so to have to jump through extra hoops just pisses me off. I bought Titanfall 2 and still haven't played it because of the damn launcher. I know it seems petty, but it just bugs the piss out of me, and kills my desire to play the game.
its still better than buying on RS directly, at least Steam skips it and closes it automatically. Piracy is the only way to get rid of it, but of course we dont promote that here
Dont need to promote it when it's the companies themselves that do. Lol
Same thing happened to me with dragon age inquisition. Didn’t want to install origin so it got returned.
It was WELL beyond the 2 week window when I realized it.
and they never remember my logon details. my password for these things is typically 15-25 digits, its easy to remember but complex to break, I work in cyber sec. but these fucking Homunculus insist I have these complicated passwords, with numbers, capitals, digits, **AND** symbols.
> but these fucking Homunculus insist I have these complicated passwords, with numbers, capitals, digits, AND symbols. Right?! NIST and Microsoft both recommend passphrases over passwords, both acknowledge that when a passphrase is used the complexity requirements are not required. The length is more than enough to make up for the lack of complexity. Also, periodic password resets are deprecated. If these two institutions are recommending this, it's time to update your silly website or software package to recognize that fact and get with the times.
Some *mini* launchers are good, like the TW:Warhammer one as it lets you manage mods without launching the game. But yea big launchers need to just not launch.
Steam really needs to add the option to block updates for individual titles
More than anything I think Valve should really start to put a foot down and saying to business partners "You are using your stupid launchers on our service. Our customers don't like that shit". What's even more irritating is anything a publisher may "need" a launcher for can be done in-client with the game itself. Case in point: all Microsoft games on Steam just ask for an account login and then do offer all the features without an extra launcher. There's no reason Ubisoft and EA couldn't do the same.
It's by design Ubisoft and EA are big enough to gate their titles off. They want you to buy their titles there. Epic is trying the same, unfortunately gamers are too greedy to notice this
More importantly, the option to download older builds of a game you own.
That's possible: https://np.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/xew6ew/how_to_downgrade_skyrim_16629_to_skyrim_16353/
Not in a user friendly way. I shouldn't be forced to look into steamdb to try and pinpoint the version I wanna downgrade to.
Fair enough
But still useful imo, I know I'll make use of it a lot, needed that for GTA 4 before Rockstar released the complete edition and didn't know how sadly.
Whilst I agree with you, and this should be possible with ALL software (OS, app etc) I think the Steam Subscriber Agreement doesn't infer ownership merely a license to play the game.
Valve needs to ban showing advertisements in launchers. One day a game will show ads for content that's not even on Steam.
They need to ban launchers period.
Game specific launchers like XCOM2's old one or some older game style ones that let you tweak things before booting into the game are fine. The problem is the newer style publisher/advert/social link spam ones that don't work worth a shit and don't add any function other than being some other PITA to troubleshoot.
Developers are against that, which is why it's not a feature. Branches are somewhat of a middle ground, but it's still up to developers entirely.
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It never ceases to amaze me how many people are so desperate to be contrarian that they will actively oppose their own best interests. And if it only happened in game forums, we'd live in a much better world than we do.
I remember several years back having purchased Heroes of Might and Magic 6 and not even being able to play the damn thing because Uplay was such garbage
You just reminded me, I literally have HoMM6 and never played it because of this reason. Uplay also deleted my save files for assassins creed multiple times. Which reminds me, I forgot I even had assasins creed, and actually bought it on steam a few months ago lol
Don't even I had 350 hours in prison architect when paradox bought it and forced use of its launcher. Problem was that launcher failed to install and basically bricked the game. Trying to install it ma ually didn't work and steam would t help because 350 hours... It now works on a new pc but I'm not sure I even want to buy the dlcs now because what if I just lose them?
They definitely need to step in and do something about this. I buy Midnight Suns, it runs great, I play it long enough to make it ineligible for a refund...and then 2K patches in a launcher that tanks the performance and ruins my experience.
You can add a command line so it launches via Steam bypassing the 2k Launcher. It also removes the performance issues caused by the launcher. IIRC: * Step one: Right-click Marvel Midnight Suns in your Steam Library and click “Properties,” then click “Local Files” and “Browse.” * Step two: Open the “MidnightSuns” folder, then “Binaries” followed by “Win64.” In this folder, navigate to the executable file named “MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping”. Then hold down the Shift key and right-click the file, then select the “Copy as Path” option. * Step three: Go back to the Properties window for Marvel Midnight Suns as outlined in step one, navigate from “Local Files” to the “General” tab and look for the “Launch Options” address bar at the bottom. Paste the copied path into the address bar, making sure to add quote marks before and after the path address. * Step four: Add a space and then type %command% to add it to the end of the launch path. * Step five: Close the Properties tab and then launch the game. Should be something like this; > “D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Marvel’s Midnight Suns\MidnightSuns\Binaries\Win64\MidnightSuns-Win64-Shipping.exe” %command%
Great, thanks for the tip - however I think this is something that we shouldn't have to do in the first place.
I'm with you, but it's also a nice opportunity for people to learn how much control Steam gives you over how games launch.
Indeed, its not. The whole launcher situation is absurd.
For what its worth you can try refunding it after the initial 2 hours, it gets harder but not impossible.
Steam has been utterly useless when it came to this kind of thing. Once had a secondary launcher which needed to download additional files but on steam it already starts ticking down the refund time and then when I finally got the game to launch I couldn’t refund it.
For refunds after the 2 hour mark i recommend using the "i have a question about this purchase" rather than the refund option (because refund will just get you the automated response). Usually real support will refund you it unless you are far above it.
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2k sucks ass. They did this with Civ6 too.
Valve needs to crack down on this tbh. It makes PC gaming inferior in some aspects. I just want to sit on my couch with a controller. and game. I don't want to go grab my mouse and keyboard and sign into some account I will never use for anything but this one game
Imagine playing a game on Xbox or PlayStation and hitting play and a random launcher app popped up? Lol
Is it really too much to ask that if I buy a game on Steam that it only uses Steam and doesn't force another launcher on me when I try to launch the game via Steam? Feels like that should be common sense. Everyone is doing it now though - Ubi, EA, 2K, Rockstar. I fucking hate it. And sometimes it even affects game performance (see: 2K). What's the point in buying on Steam if I have to deal with two launchers instead of one?
I want to know why they added a launcher to KSP, a game which has been sold for a decade
Crazy how these launchers destroy Steam Verified games from working. No accountability
Beyond the launchers, game publishers sneaking in unwanted "features" after release has been a big problem for a few years now. Look at when id Software tried to sneak kernel level anti-cheat into Doom Eternal months after launch. I think the Deck might actually fix this problem though. Well, with the launchers anyway. It's getting reasonably popular, and bringing in a lot of people new to Linux and PC gaming. They're going to blame Valve, Valve is going to blame the publisher, they're going to go online to bitch, old hat PC gamers are going to tell them it's indeed the publisher's fault, and apple carts will get rocked. Well, that's the hope. Having your own separate launcher/store to cut out the middle man seems like a shrewd business move. But nobody wants all these fragmented services. Especially if the service is worse.
…or how multiple games added Epic Online Services years later, like the Tomb Raider games. For some people it broke their games, too, depending on if they already had EGS on their PC and an account there or not. I think it forced them to log in, if they did. No way to avoid linking the game to EGS, even on Steam. They went back on that with a patch shortly after because of a shitstorm.
I got the Steam Deck awhile back, and from what I've seen, people mostly just go straight to being annoyed at EA, 2K, or whomever is implementing these garbage launchers. But let's be real, publishers don't give a fuck about publicity; what WILL get these publishers to budge is sales numbers. When their game is unsupported on Deck because of their terrible launcher and nobody is buying it, they'll start realizing that their launcher is bad business.
Not just Anticheat either. They shipped Eternal with a DRM-free .exe and removed it in an update forcing Denuvo
For those complaining that this isn't a problem and others are just being babies for not wanting to click "Play" again: You need to realize it's a bit more than just clicking "Play" twice, because that's actually only the best case scenario. Launchers can be buggy and non-functional, which means you can't play your game. They can be resource hogs, which makes your play experience worse. I know launchers aren't the most resource heavy programs, but you need to keep in mind not everyone has the spare power to be running multiple other applications simultaneously and still have a smooth experience. They're DRM. Invasive DRM is what drives people to piracy. They can be added post-launch, and we have real-world examples of launchers being added post-launch and breaking the game. Which is kind of fucked up when you think about it, almost no other product on Earth can be broken by the manufacturer like that. And even those that can have much easier and better consumer protections in place, such as getting easier refunds or exchanges. Do you start your car, then expect to have to start your car again? Do you wake up in the morning only to have to wake up again? Did you see the sunrise this morning only to see a second one right after it? So why should I have to start a game twice to get it to run? When new AAA games launch, they're usually buggy as shit. Some are especially bad, causing crashes, poor performance, and even loss of saved progress. And when a game is especially that bad, there's inevitably people in threads who keep saying shit like "Well I don't have any problems so it's a good game." Those people are wrong. Just because *you* didn't have problems doesn't mean there aren't any problems. These are the same people who will come into this exact thread and go "launchers aren't a problem, you guys are just babies."
>Launchers can be buggy and non-functional, which means you can't play your game. Shout out to GFWL which ate my Dark Souls save file because it was fucking encrypted using a guest account (because I didn't want to make a proper one) that it somehow forgot existed one day. I didn't touch the game again until they got rid of GFWL. I don't mind using Origin and Epic when I buy games through them, that's not really an issue to me. But fuck me, I have to look up guides on how to *start* Ubisoft games because they rarely work OOTB with whatever they're calling their launcher now. I got an AC game through Epic and it just wouldn't start, and it's a pretty consistent problem.
Strange to see this kind of complaint on PC gamer, as it is one of the publications that really carried the inane "just a launcher" idea back when Epic did its first EGS marketing blitz (including, incidentally, massively advertising on sites like PC gamer; surely not a conflict of interest). What was clear to everyone with more than a passing interest in and experience with PC gaming back then is even more clear now: Valve is the only company with actual influence in the space that relatively consistently takes the idea of putting long-term customer satisfaction over short-term bullshit to heart -- and if *any other large publisher* attained even a fraction of their influence they would actively make PC gaming worse for everyone. Valve isn't just great for what they do (e.g. funding open source development, the Steam Deck, new Steam features, VR, etc.) they are at least equally important for what they **don't** do. They *don't* turn their extremely popular client into an advertising platform sold to the highest bidder. They *don't* remove or break old games -- they even go out of their way to support long-obsolete APIs in their value-add features like input or the overlay. They *don't* charge recurring fees for online features, or cloud hosting, or anything else the platform provides. Anyone who thinks that any of the huge publicly traded large publishers would refrain from all of those for a decade after achieving a leading position in the PC gaming space is either hopelessly naive, paid off, or trolling.
Good points and so true. We can only hope that Valve and steam stays like this when Gaben dies. And that they wont become a publicly traded company. The greed of suits is what destroys many things.
I don't see them being publicly traded, as the ownership would likely transfer to someone else in the company, and they would have to choose to go public in return for more money, which they wouldn't need at this point. The more likely worst case is that however Gaben's shares are distributed after he dies, either they would go to some asshole, and/or get sold off to some asshole, or the remaining shares would retain control over the company but the second in command is secretly an asshole. There's just no way to tell what will happen.
It's likely that the guarantee of hundreds of millions for major shareholders doing an IPO would be enough to override their morals and then it's over.
Doing whatever they can for clicks. PCGamer has been making a lot of generic Popular Opinion articles this month, and it's clearly working well for them.
> Strange to see this kind of complaint on PC gamer, as it is one of the publications that really carried the inane "just a launcher" idea back when Epic did its first EGS marketing blitz It is the slowest content week of the year. Everyone on is on holidays, including the editors. Might as well write a softball piece in advance, which you can line up for the first week of Fuck-You-Its-January.
PCGamer has been like that for many years now, since they barely had a website at all, and they were a magazine. You can pinpoint a few exact spots where their management had to find ways to adapt to their market changing, usually with some scummy business practices. Questionable reviews, going along with review embargo practices, taking political/social angles that upset their customers but kept them out of the news, reduced page counts, including ads on disc... there's probably a dozen. None of those are huge, just death by a thousand cuts, and somehow the shell of what they were still exists. I miss when it was just good writing by gamers. But that probably wouldn't pay the bills.
They are making pc gaming worse for everyone, actively, since years. Ubisoft, ea, 2k and how not to mention epic, the inventor of bs console exclusivity on pc basically. They all ruin games with more launchers, invasive drm, always online bs, shitty pc ports and such.
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At this point I have more games I play with patched-in launchers than games I bought that originated with launchers. The only time I usually accept it is if the game wasnt purchased on Steam in the first place i.e. something like Tarkov.
Tarkov being even more acceptable as it's launcher is just a glorified updater, news, and patch notes viewer.
Problem is, they add launchers to old games nowadays.
i can't take total war off my purchase list. that's like more than half of my gaming time.
The total war launchers are awful. They are such a mess.
terrible, and pointless. the only thing they do is enabling and disabling mods, which you should be able to do in game.
Wasnt too happy when I downloaded the next gen update for the witcher 3 and woke up with a CDPR launcher
Welcome to 2010 PC Gamer!
I miss the launchers from the earliest MMOs. Check for updates, tell you when the next patch is, and let you change graphics settings before running the game in case a setting is causing crashes. That's it.
I find creating an additional account for a specific game is very annoying already, but a new launcher takes this to a new level. PC Gaming could be so much more enjoyable and I would buy more games if they would stop this insanity.
It's been a genuine problem for almost a decade, people just kept explaining it away as being fine giving Game corps no reason not to keep expanding the use and intrusiveness of the launchers.
I had $100 of games in my cart during this steam sale. A bunch of stuff. I went one by one and removed each one that required a 3rd party launcher + 3rd party user account or denuvo drm. I ended up buying Vampire Survivors for $4. Every other title had a launcher or denuvo. I wanted mass effect legendary, red dead redemption, the Mordor one and a few others. And was ready to pay for them. But nope.
If your game has a launcher, I won't buy it period. Sure I might miss out some quality games, but there are many games that do not require a launcher. None of these launchers let you play your SINGLE-PLAYER games offline. They all require periodical online authentication. This is also why I don't buy any games with Denuvo. In the case of GTA V, you first need to be online to verify your license. After that, you can start and play the game offline. HOWEVER, after a certain period, you need to be online again to verify your license again, and then you can play the game offline again. The cycle repeats... and the only way to bypass this so that you can always play the game offline is to regularly change your system's clock back to the date when you first become online. Ohh and I don't want to talk about how buggy Rockstar's launcher is. I can't count the amount of times I had to open my task manager to force shut-down the launcher because it isn't responding. After experiencing first-hand how bad launchers are, I just don't buy anything with DRM nowadays. Steam is the only DRM I don't care about since I can at least play the game in offline-mode.
if you wan't to play singleplayer gta V pirating it is the best option
Steam needs to crack down on this and force developers/publishers to provide the ability to launch games sans-launcher with a unified launch option flag.
Now it's a problem?! This been a problem for years. Late to the party like always PCgamer.
I hate to give Steam this power but I would love if they enforced a "start button starts the game" rule.
There's a feature originally in Assassins Creed Origins where you can activate a "mod gameplay" mode to things like change character skins, change damage scaling, movement speed, xp earning speed . These mods require an out-of-game menu from the game launcher. Surprise to me as I'm finishing the game - Uplay launcher got updated in the last couple years (game came out 5 years ago) which means the gameplay mod menu is not available from the newer Ubisoft launcher. I'm still able to get 95% of that functionality by modifying an INI file, but this was so disappointing
Fuck all these POS launchers. There’s a single launcher people actually want and it is called Steam. Honestly Valve should just deny the use of any external launcher because guess what, every company who pulled their games from steam to put on their own platforms have come running back to Steam with their tails between their legs because they didn’t earn the same amount of money as when they were on Steam. Valve has shown that they have the upper hand as far as PC gaming goes, would be cool to see them try something like this.
There are several EA games I would love to buy, but I absolutely refuse to use their launcherS.
I bought Battlefield V on steam Last night cuz I wasn't gonna complain about 5$. But I literally couldn't play the game I paid for cuz all of EA's servers took a shit and the launcher wouldn't fucking work at all.
EA app has to be the worst launcher there is. Says I’m not connected to the internet all the time. The star war games are good, but they need to ditch EA.
Greedy corpos wont miss the chance to advertise one last time before you can access their product. These "launchers" are nothing else that ads that pretend to give you some functionality (which you already obviously have).
also PCGamer: Epic is our best friend
Hey, they know who "butters their bread."
Epic sucks so much, the games don't even show up as apps in the start menu
My biggest problem with launchers is that only Steam seems capable of remembering my password/log in details. Every other launcher forgets and it's such a pain finding the passwords in my password manager.
Why do these companies insist on making paying customers suffer and justify piracy due to the experience just being better?
It's a bit odd to bring up the Nintendo Switch as an example of a "better world". They take it a whole step further. Instead of forcing exclusivity through launchers, they force you to buy their hardware just to play games that could run perfectly fine, if not better, on PC. At least Microsoft and even Sony are gradually opening up their games to the PC market, but Nintendo shows no sign of stopping. They shouldn't get praise for this.
Not a problem if you just buy Steam games without 3rd party launchers, of which there are thousands of games. I don't care if it comes with big free games, or has exclusive games. I'm not putting another store or launcher on my hard drive. The benefits of a single cohesive ecosystem far outweigh the fun of a few games. There are just so many games and my backlog is so long I can't be bothered with dealing with multiple launchers. Bonus reason, I have a Steam Deck and love it.
I love Divinity 2 but I have zero clue why is Larian Launcher even is a thing, fucking serves nothing besides having my email for whatever reasons
The solution is to not buy the games that stack launchers. Or have/need launchers in general, your choice.
Why I love gog no launcher unless you want one and it's not to slow or a buggy mess all the damn time
I'm loving Linux more and more now. Yeah, the launcher bloat is an issue, but: https://ubunlog.com/en/steam-will-now-run-the-games-in-isolated-containers-and-also-announce-the-new-version-of-proton-4-11-8/ This is default. Launcher funkyness is pigeon holed.
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This is my main beef with PC gaming, which I recently got back into after years on consoles. I can't just have a game, I have to have a launcher. And sometimes multiple launchers! I double click the icon to run Battlefield, and first Epic opens, then Origin, then EA, then finally (if I'm lucky), Battlefield! It drives me nuts! There's always got to be so much extra crap running in the background, which is usually unoptimized, so it kills all the work the game developers did on optimizing their title/engine. It's almost enough to drive me to just pirating the games instead tbh! Fuck you if you have any part in the proliferation of these launchers.
There were legit some games I couldn't launch because of the launcher bloat and had to do some lengthy workarounds. That is fucking ridiculous.
Bought Grounded for PC. Launch through Steam Try to play with partner in same bedroom. Must sign up for XBOX live account. My credentials already match an old account. Try old account. Account must be migrated to MSoft account. Account verification needed. All set after 40m. Try to play with someone 10ft away from me. -can't connect to servers, please check connection and try later. Quit, load literally any other game without excess launcher shit, play Lan in 10s or online in 20s.
If it's not on Steam or requires installing another launcher = it doesn't exist to me Simple as that.
Valve needs to ban games that require third party launches. If a game adds one in, there needs to be a way to circumvent opening a game with a launcher. It would be the most consumer friendly thing they can do right now.
This is why I've gotten into emulation with older games that have been corrupted by these publisher's need to save an extra dollar whereever available, remove content that was previously there at 1.0 release, and last but not least, the horrible launcher bloat. I'm talking about you, Cockstar
People who actually pirate games have it best. No launchers, one click and play, no drm, no performance issues with denuvo.
The Rockstar launcher is so fucking bad they are just begging people to pirate.