The only launcher (if it is?) I will allow is Steam. Other wise just won’t play the game or 🏴☠️.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2026
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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.
Not really a thing on Linux AFAIK, but that would be an instant refund for me if it happened.
It's absolutely a thing when running Windows games on Linux. Though sometimes you can skip it with a launch option, thank god for protondb.
Oh duh that's right, sometimes I forget that I proactively swore off games like that around the time I ditched Windows, rather than they just stopped being a thing.
Boycott app launchers and kernel-level anticheat, kids!
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.
Nope. The mod bundle known as Rimworld does this just fine without launcher trash, and Paradox is not one of the good ones.
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.
The point is that even Rimworld, an extremely mod heavy game, handles this just fine without forcing a publisher’s launcher on its players.
Well, because it was originally sold as a DRM free game.
handles this just fine
But I would dispute this. I'm working out a modlist right now, and I'd be pulling my hair out if I had to do it in game, or manually with the XML file + mod IDs.
Yeah, I forgive XCOM for the same reason. Launchers are helpful for mod-heavy games.
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.
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.
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.
But it’s never risen to the level of “I literally will not buy/play the game over this.”
I couldn't play Mirrors Edge once, because the fucking launcher (what was it, EA?) triggered the opened-files-limit of Linux. 3D games ran fine before that.
opened-files-limit of Linux
It has one? How much stuff did it open 😭
/etc/security/limits.conf. I think default is usually in the 1000s? Of simultanously opened files.