Two other publishers could follow suit, as Electronic Arts and Ubisoft are making it annoying to run their games on the PC.
Who remembers the 2K Launcher? Rockstar Games isn’t the only one pushing the launcher (if it’s a Take-Two subsidiary, as 2K is…). BioShock Remastered, XCOM 2, Mafia, Sid Meier’s Civilization 6… all had this annoying extra that made some games unplayable en bloc or just degraded performance thanks to this hump. Forget all that, Take-Two (2K… same thing, really) announced in a blog post that they have removed the 2K Launcher from the Epic Games Store and Steam for all affected games!
The first phase happened on November 18th, the second on November 25th, and they even removed the 2K Launcher beta from Sid Meier’s Civilization V, which was a “better and more advanced version”. So they’ve completely removed it from games, which can be useful for Steam Deck, for example, because it’s these launchers that can limit support, so you might be able to run games on Valve’s portable PC that you couldn’t before.
But it’s a long-standing problem: what used to be Uplay or Origin is now Ubisoft Connect or EA App, and it can still be annoying to have to launch them in addition to Steam to play them. XCOM 2 was one of the titles where 2K Launcher really had functionality, as you could run mods through it. Instead, when you launch the game on Steam, you’re given the option to launch the original or the new modlauncher version, but you can also run the “barefoot title” itself without mods.
2K claims that modlaunchers can be made to work on Steam Ceiling, but one thing is for sure: the easier it is to launch a game, the more useful the “less is more” principle is for the player.
Source: PCGamer
