Baldur’s Gate 3 may prove to be an excellent fantasy RPG, but Larian Studios has decided to follow an annoying PC gaming trend that could have been avoided…

Baldur’s Gate 3 has finally left early access and hasn’t disappointed RPG fans. Gamers everywhere are calling it one of the best RPGs ever made. They will probably spend years in its fantasy world. It is very impressive what Larian Studios has been able to do, and hopefully, this is just the beginning of what is to come. While all of this sounds fantastic, BG3 has also embraced a worrying PC gaming trend.

There’s a huge push these days for gamers to buy all their games digitally, and PC games have been primarily digital exclusive for years.

With digital games come game launchers; for some reason, every game nowadays needs a launcher. Although these launchers do not do much harm to the games, they can be pretty annoying for gamers.

Launchers are everywhere!

Valve’s Steam should have been the primary game launcher that everyone uses on their PC. This way, many games would end up launching exclusively on the store and integrating with all its community features. This seamless connection helped Steam become the behemoth it is today. It made it an essential part of every gamer’s library. It will probably be the primary store for PC gamers for years to come. But a few games in recent years have made it a little less seamless.

While digital stores like Steam and Battle.net have been around for a long time, it seems that almost every major studio is looking to take a slice of this market.

Ubisoft has launched Ubisoft Connect. EA has created the EA app. Microsoft has focused on the Xbox app. Epic wanted to take the Steam crown with the Epic Game Store. Even studios like Paradox want their own launcher. Most of these launchers will never compare to Steam. But their very existence makes launching Steam games a bit annoying at times.

Steam users who play games from studios like Ubisoft have to launch two different launchers before they can play the game. Clicking play on Steam will only launch Ubisoft Connect. The latter will then launch the game. To do this, they need to install two different launchers and two different accounts. So they have to wait a little longer before they can dive into the game.

Is there any benefit to the Baldur’s Gate 3 launcher?

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a fantastic RPG, but the fact that Larian Studios chose this launcher model makes the PC experience anything but seamless. When players click play, Larian Studios’ new launcher boots up. Only then can you dive into the game. This new launcher includes Larian Studios’ biggest titles, news, updates, links to forums and feedback pages, and even a merch store.

Players will also need to create a new account for that launcher if they want to use features like Cross-Save.

The point of Steam was to stop players from having to navigate through hundreds of launchers just to play their games. However, that now looks set to change. While these launchers are primarily harmless, they can often be a little annoying. In fact, they have no reason to exist. There is nothing in BG3 that requires a launcher. Its existence is a strange sensation. Although it is relatively easy to disable via Steam (see link below), there was really no reason for its existence. At most, it could function as an advertisement for the developer and publisher…

Source: PC Gamer