Wonder if there is one worse then Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

Launch game on steam
It opens EA Origin
It then opens the Mass Effect LE launcher
Now you get to pick which Mass Effect game you want to play.

The only launcher (if it is?) I will allow is Steam. Other wise just won’t play the game or 🏴‍☠️.

the steam page warns you of third party launches before you buy the game doesn't it?

so at least if it does happen it shouldn't be a surprise

One game i can sort of excuse it is stellaris, where you can configure your modlist in the launcher. That does save a ton of loading time when you tinker with your shit and need to restart a couple times.

First thing I look for and any for any game that has one I hit the ignore button.

I wish Steam offered the ability to blanket ignore anything that required a third party launcher.

Yes, because i mostly see steam as a store. Games should start without needing a launcher in the first place.

Yeah, I forgive XCOM for the same reason. Launchers are helpful for mod-heavy games.

Nope. The mod bundle known as Rimworld does this just fine without launcher trash, and Paradox is not one of the good ones.

Kindly fuck off with your asterisk letter bullshit.

Frankly, I despise all launchers, Steam included. The only reason it gets a pass is because it's one of the two somewhat reasonable ones, and the only one that makes gaming on Linux simple and convenient.

It's still slow, ugly as hell, and entirely unnecessary. Makes me want to pirate more, but then I'd have to set the games up from scratch.

The only use case for launchers is console gaming. It makes perfect sense on a Deck, Switch or a PS5. But absolutely no sense whatsoever on a desktop PC.

Again - Steam has features that make it tolerable (achievements, screenshot sharing, workshop, etc.), but I'd still prefer to just play my games without anything in the middle.

The correct take.

Even worse on Linux, their stupid EA app breaks all the time. It took me 20 minutes fucking around to finally get it to work yesterday.

Did you really think that response would win you any points? Fucking loser.

I think some games on steam you can just launch from the executable file. I rarely have, because my process is usually "open steam.. stare at list of games.. pick one", so steam is already open.

But yeah, at least it adds some value (proton magic, recording and screenshots, the overlay used to be real useful when i only had one monitor...)

I wanted to try this "GTAV" game all the kids were talking about. It was on sale, so I spent four days downloading it over my miserable rural DSL connection only to find out that it wouldn't work without rockstar demanding my information.

So I refunded it. Im sure there was a work around but I didn't need to play it that bad.

Battlefield 3 on Steam:

1. Steam launches EA App
2. EA App launches Battlelog in your web browser, and a background service
3. After choosing a mode/server, web browser sends data to EA App
4. EA App launches bf3.exe

The only other laucher i dont have a problem with is warthunders launcher

Mostly because its what its needed any nothing more, games loading? Launcher automaticlly shutsoff (less then 1 megabyte)
It doesnt need a login for the launcher itself

If its downloaded through steam you may never actualy know it even has a launcher

Rimworld has no native mod manager, and TBH editing it in game is slow and clunky. You can edit the XML file, but this is true of many games.

Of course one can use RimSort, but that’s a 3rd party fan project. It’s not really fair to expect every game to have a good one.

It’s annoying, I hate it. They’re useless bloat.

But it’s never risen to the level of “I literally will not buy/play the game over this.”

I don’t get people who say this at all. You buy this cool game you love, you’ll spend hours playing it, but you won’t enter a fake email and wait another 30 seconds at launch to play it?

Even at the peak of Origin’s woes, I never got close to that.

Then another 10 minutes setting up graphics settings and your out 1/2 hour of your refundable time. On top of that sometimes you have to make an account so thats another 15-20 minutes. Then there are possible proton problems so you might have to test different protons. I play on laptop and deck so I might not have internet all the time, I have to test if the game can play without internet. Might waste most of your trial period on getting the game to run.

You can block some of the worst offenders by blocking the publisher.

The point is that even Rimworld, an extremely mod heavy game, handles this just fine without forcing a publisher’s launcher on its players.

Holy fucking turbochud, Batman.

It's yet another program you didn't choose collecting whatever data from your computer, and yet another - very intentional - obstacle to the gaming experience. Honestly, it's less about time and more about artificial obstructions and privacy invasion everywhere.

It is particularly egregious when studios who normally side with the gamers, like CDPR, do the same thing with their games.

True, but even the worst offenders have exceptions and older games that didn’t yet require it.

That said, thanks for that because I didn’t know you could block a publisher outright.

EA. More like hEll nAah

Fucking Rockstar.

It took me fucking AGES to get Red Dead 2 running on CachyOS because of that bastard launcher.

I was glad to see with Cyberpunk that I could skip login with their launcher. Later when I decided to try RDR2 it didn't let me skip login, so I refunded that shit with 0 minutes played.

Nah, make a stop at the steam refund button on your way there

I just stopped buying games from studios that do this.

A launcher is still unnecessary here. The menu of the game is as much a launcher as game assets and mods do not need to be loaded at the menu, and the menu can be designed to serve this function with immersive design instead of hostile design.

Most launchers exist to inject web content so they can advertise to you without needing you to update the launcher.

You go on a sub called ‘gaming’ and throw a sperg tantrum about gamers. What the actual fuck is wrong with you

You’re fucking nuts buddy.

The only game I preordered in years was the new Bond game and that was before they disclosed they infested it with Denuvo. I refunded that shit before preloaded was even done.

And the launcher looks like a flash website from 2002

This only kinda works and only for some publishers. It's getting better, but it's still spotty.

It's a troll account.

I tried to play GTA 4 through Steam

The launcher kept failing. Old Rockstar accounts, New ones, didn't matter. Refunded. I May pirate it at some point, I'll enjoy the nostalgia of it probably.

I tolerate both steam and heroic.
I can see how a launcher is useful for centralized library management (updates and reinstallation), but I also see how it is a lot of concentrated attention and potential adspace / datamining tool.

I tolerate steam because they have good features & an okay track record, and heroic because I want to receive the free epic games but do not want to give them real estate on my pc.

I have replaced game binaries with their pirated version for this sole reason

Yep, launchers have always been a scam. Your launcher should be your operating system

I'd say the many games that died when Games for Windows Live went down. Many of them got patches to make them work again (officially), but many games just became permanently unplayable (officially).

Yep, same. If I buy a game and that's the first thing I'm hit with, it's an immediate refund. They can all go fuck off with their bs launchers.

and the only one that makes gaming on Linux simple and convenient.

It's not though, there are a handful of game launchers for Linux. Faugus Launcher is a good lightweight one. I believe you can export the game as an icon as well so you don't even need to open the launcher first if you don't want to (haven't personally done this, but pretty due can).

I'll only use Steam for my non-Steam games if I need controller support since Steam Input is pretty awesome.

How does you typing a word "sully" you? That makes no sense.

It's definitely embarrassing to be a gamer these days, but that doesn't justify dehumanizing people.