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

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

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.

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

EA. More like hEll nAah

And the launcher looks like a flash website from 2002

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.

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.

Fucking Rockstar.

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

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...)

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

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.

The correct take.

I like Steam as a launcher because I can organize my games

for games I know I want to play, pretty sure I've often just launched them directly. I don't remember, as I haven't played much on Steam lately, if it would then launch steam before launching the game.

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

Know what works flawlessly? My Xbox 360 DISC.

Modern games are a joke.

I pirated the game and it doesn't do this

I bought ME:LE and I still refuse to play it uncracked. The EA app bullshit has caused me more than enough grief, actively preventing me from playing the game I paid for unless it's cracked.

Exactly the same for me. I played ME 1&2 years ago when they launched through steam, then when I finally got 3 it made me go through the EA launcher. I endured it just long enough to do the game once and then uninstalled it, and now I'm more vigilant about checking the reqs to see if games need 3rd party software.

ME 2 was better anyway

I love Mass Effect, but I haven't played the 3rd because of this

Thanks for telling me I'm just gonna pirate that shit now

This and .desktop files. Don't forget your OS is already a launcher.

The EA launcher is bundled with Steam purchases of Mass Effect, for instance

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

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

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.

My setup has been pretty good at handling those, though thankfully I often don’t need to.

On Moonlight, I can hold the start button to briefly enable mouse mode, then click whatever I need to. Don’t think Steam remote play has something similar.

It messes so much up when I'm streaming from one PC to another too. I usually have to go back and forth to the other room to use the launcher, and sometimes again to make sure it focuses on the right application window.

Hold the "home" button (Xbox button, PS button; whatever the center one that opens the console menu is for your controller) and then use the right stick to move the cursor and R1 for left click.

Also good to know: Home and the left face button (X for xbox, Square for PS, Y for Nintendo) to open the on screen keyboard if it doesn't open automatically when selecting an input field (like naming your dude or something).

The only thing that sucks about Steam's special button combos is they all use the Home button; which also turns off most controllers when held long enough. 😬

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.

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.