@gamingonlinux proprietary "anticheat", I can see myself making one in tandem with a game but for Linux, I would have the launcher optional and merge the separate cheater's servers with their windows counterparts.
@gamingonlinux@dotterian maybe userful case when you restart game to apply settings, but you want not quit game(because you use some specific software like cloud gaming platform that close you session when you quit game)
@gamingonlinux used to find this so frustrating at Feral, but am very glad we pushed hard on the ability to always disable it. It's pretty cool there though for the screen/reso picker and the mod management stuff!
@gamingonlinux older games or games that (originally) went without external launcher have this probably simply still with, which I can understand on the one hand ... on the other hand also often annoying (in my case with Warframe xD)
@gamingonlinux A launcher. Also a whole new account on a special platform. BTW we're gonna send you notifications while you play. And even though this game is single player only you can't play unless you log in to our network first. Also a bunch of what we promised in this game will actually come out in some DLC you'll have to pay for later. You don't mind if we collect all possible data about you, right? Here spit in this cup.
@gamingonlinux Likely because every company wants their on walled garden store front keep in their games. And no telling what information these launchers are exfiltrating to the Overlords to be used against us for “monetization”.
There’s probably also DRM considerations involved somewhere. And necessary always online requirements and on and on… :blobcatpensive:
@gamingonlinux Darktide specifically is half a game that they released incomplete as a shameless cash grab as well, so the worthless launcher just makes a bad look even worse.
@gamingonlinux There are a couple of driving motivations I can think of, some technical and some business.
Business is for marketing and publisher/distributor links.
Technical is that it can serve as a “boot loader” stage to check integrity of game files (which may also be done by platforms like steam, but you may also distribute on other channels besides steam). The decoupling of the launcher binary from the actual game binary is probably an overall win for reliability.
@gamingonlinux I'm pretty certain game launchers are there to force people to stop playing games for a bit, when they inevitably get updated and stop working for a day or two, until Proton Experimental catches up.
It's the PC equivalent to Nintendo's old "why not take a break?" screens, but on a different timescale.
Most of the time, it's: "Stop playing Assassin's Creed and visit the real world." (It's usually Ubisoft breaking their launchers weekly, right?)
@gamingonlinux ah, those are there so they can lever in their own network/marketing channel in the future. It's nasty and obvious if you add a launcher just to add ads for your next game or DLC or etc, but if you have a blank there, OOPS SORRY we're just patching it you know.
I kinda wonder if they're required by the publisher at his point, since they're functionally the publisher's marketing channel, not the developer's.
@glassbottommeg@gamingonlinux That still doesn't need an extra launcher though. Astragon, our publisher, asked us to add a news channel to Bus Simulator, and we put it directly in the game's main menu, behind a button which gets highlighted if there are any news.
This has the additional advantage that it is acceptable on platforms that don't allow separate launchers.
I could imagine that publishers want launchers, if they want to modify the launcher code without touching the game.
@freakrho@soulsource@gamingonlinux ah. Those are a bit different. F2P / live service games will be drawing down a LOT of updates, and there's an argument for building your own pipe for those. Not every platform is remotely built for efficient delta patching, and once you've built a custom updater for one platform, it makes sense to do it for others. Often you might be forced to by a platform's bandwidth costs you'd otherwise incur for doing frequent updates.
Not really a factor with typical stand alone or AAA games though, and F2P games are seldom distributed through stores like Steam anyways, so the two are kinda unrelated things.
@richlv@freakrho@soulsource@gamingonlinux well, for Warframe for instance, because they do their own patching and do so often, you more or less need to run the patcher every time. Otherwise they'd get rafts of support complaints about the game not working, because of all the people skipping updates
@glassbottommeg@gamingonlinux See, for instance, the years long enshittification of the WoW Launcher to the Blizzard Launcher, which in its latest iteration does not show you the last played/only favourited game, but defaults to an ad page. BUT you can still start your game with one click from there.
@gamingonlinux Historically it's to allow a user to set graphics options before launching the game proper just in case the default options wedge. Also in some cases it allows the launched game to be set with dev related options (e.g. turn on debug mode). Nowadays it seems like a place to put things like account logins, a DLC store, etc. This one? Looks like a placeholder for the other stuff.
@gamingonlinux Only launchers I could understand is minecraft "modern" launcher where you can pick a version/profile, which is useful to connect to a bunch of different servers (might as well have the server-list in the launcher tbh).
And I think the era of old games where you could have the need to change some settings prior to launching the game is more or less outdated now.
@gamingonlinux I understand some instances, like Minecraft with active playerbase on older versions and a strong modding community, but most games (especially multiplayer games that require you to be on the latest version) I can't find any good reasons.
Game needs to be updated? Use Steam or GOG or anything, you don't have to reinvent the wheel but worse.
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