It's just another launcher!

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/co…z6&sh=d8b700e3

We also need an app that allows us to know which games we have and in which launcher so we don't need to open 6 launchers and browse through all of them.

I'm already having that problem sometimes. "oh, it's not on Steam? I'm pretty sure i bought it..? Let me check on GOG. No.. Ah, then it's probably that other launcher.. UBI-something-launcher, or was it Origin.."

Good times.

I'm more concern by what the launcher or how it operates than the number of bytes. I'm getting tired of launches that sniff my computer for generated ads or similar.

Why would anyone keep launchers for multiple games in memory? How many games do you play at a time?

It's like people don't know how much unnecessary space is taken up by Windows by default.

Is it annoying? Sure - a little. But in the grand scheme of things, and in the worst possible scenario in life - all you have to do is click "quit launcher" and "start another launcher" when you want to play another game.

On the upside of that, we get a bunch of big boys competing to get our attention - which is probably not that horrible for us.

Meaning, I'm not good at taking this sort of thing seriously.

I keep it simple….two game launching platforms, and that's it. If I cannot get a product via physical means, great old games, or steam, I simply do without. If a company makes it more difficult for me to obtain their product, ie, having to install a new platform, they obviously don't want or need me as a customer. Don't erect walls between you and your customers!!

Originally Posted by Darth Tagnan
Why would anyone keep launchers for multiple games in memory?

Pick one or all of these:
- To make and share screenshots like the one above
- To have a reason for whining about launchers on forums
- To blame win10 for everything as both winxp and win7 were better
- To justify being scammed into purchase of i9 and 64 Gb of RAM for a gaming machine

"keep in memory?" if i want to install something i'd hate to go through perhaps 5 or more launchers before i find the game i want to install. i tend to jump between games a lot..

Originally Posted by vurt
"keep in memory?" if i want to install something i'd hate to go through perhaps 5 or more launchers before i find the game i want to install. i tend to jump between games a lot..

Why do you need to go through launchers? Why not just launch the correct one? I have at least 6 launchers installed - and I don't think I've ever launched the wrong launcher for a game I wanted to play.

Even if that was an actual issue, you simply launch the game from its shortcut, and the correct launcher is automatically started first.

As I said, the only possible issue involved with multiple launchers - is that you need to quit them when you're done to save a little memory.

Maybe it's because I'm a battle-hardened Vietnam veteran, but I don't particularly struggle with clicking my right mouse button on an icon and picking "Quit".

But I can certainly see it as a peak reason for suicide among the general populace.

Originally Posted by Darth Tagnan
Why do you need to go through launchers?

Because i don't exactly memorize where i bought something, if i bought something 5 or even 10+ years ago i'm not very likely to remember the exact moment when i pushed "purchase" - if it was on GOG, Steam or somewhere else.

I also don't have shortcuts for games i don't have installed (98% of the games i own). I have 300+ games on Steam, several on Origin, around 40 on GOG, and then there's ubi or u-play whatever where i have a few. In a few years i'm likely to have at least 2 more launchers i will have to go through.

Originally Posted by vurt
We also need an app that allows us to know which games we have and in which launcher so we don't need to open 6 launchers and browse through all of them.

I'm already having that problem sometimes. "oh, it's not on Steam? I'm pretty sure i bought it..? Let me check on GOG. No.. Ah, then it's probably that other launcher.. UBI-something-launcher, or was it Origin.."

Good times.

Precisely why I only buy on Steam now that I have all "older" titles covered via GoG.

And that's really a big deal?

You obviously have the vast majority of your games on Steam. In the unlikely event that the game you're looking for isn't in your steam account, the worst case scenario is that you have to spend a minute to check your other platforms. The horror!

Originally Posted by JDR13
And that's really a big deal?

You obviously have the vast majority of your games on Steam. In the unlikely event that the game you're looking for isn't in your steam account, the worst case scenario is that you have to spend a minute to check your other platforms. The horror!

just really inconvenient.. the ones i have turned off (obviously i don't want 4 launchers in memory) i have to launch and sometimes log into (guess it depends on how long they've been unused). so both launch, look for username/password, look for game.

No one has said its the end of the world. I can probably use windows 3.11 or even DOS for a lot of stuff that i do on my computer, that doesn't mean i'd find it fun or preferable etc.

Originally Posted by vurt
Because i don't exactly memorize where i bought something, if i bought something 5 or even 10+ years ago i'm not very likely to remember the exact moment when i pushed "purchase" - if it was on GOG, Steam or somewhere else.

I also don't have shortcuts for games i don't have installed (98% of the games i own). I have 300+ games on Steam, several on Origin, around 40 on GOG, and then there's ubi or u-play whatever where i have a few. In a few years i'm likely to have at least 2 more launchers i will have to go through.

It sounds like your life will soon be over. I can't imagine the nightmare of spending 30 seconds trying to locate a game to play, when you need to wait at least 10 minutes to download and actually install it anyway

But ok, whatever.

I guess this is one of those issues I will never understand - and that's quite alright.

My ability to create problems where none exist is obviously lacking.

See my previous post. But if you're gonna read into something no one has said then i guess it useless to even discuss. It also takes far more than 10 seconds to go through perhaps 4 (perhaps 6-7 in a few years) launchers. There's enough bullshit already to go through - you mentioned installing, which is one of them, i just feel i don't need more
But again, it won't make me quit gaming and my life is not over because of it.

I've seen people boycotting games for FAR less things (and i'm not going to..), e.g DRM's which is absolutely nonsensical.

Originally Posted by Darth Tagnan

My ability to create problems where none exist is obviously lacking.

You don't see a problem in stumbling around, reinstalling redundant "services" you haven't used in years in an effort to try and locate a game you wish to play? Or, more likely, forgetting you own it altogether?

And that is assuming new services stick around and don't die off as soon as a publisher goes belly-up. Steam has a distinct advantage in this regard - its existence is independent from publishers' fates.

Originally Posted by vurt
See my previous post. But if you're gonna read into something no one has said then i guess it useless to even discuss. It also takes far more than 10 seconds to go through perhaps 4 (perhaps 6-7 in a few years) launchers. There's enough bullshit already to go through - you mentioned installing, which is one of them, i just feel i don't need more
But again, it won't make me quit gaming and my life is not over because of it.

Don't you consider 30 seconds far more than 10 seconds, though?

I have a very similar amount of games on the various platforms, and - as I said - I don't think I've ever clicked on the wrong launcher for a game. I tend to be pretty good at remembering that sort of thing.

Even so, if I'm ever in doubt about where my games are - there's absolutely no way I would need to go through all 6 of them to be certain. Maybe two or three - if I'm drunk on several bottles of Vodka.

Launching three launchers doesn't take much more than a few seconds, and the rest is for looking at your libraries.

Ok, so maybe it's one extra minute at the very most - for those rare cases where you don't remember exactly where the game is - for the initial install, after which you can't forget because that's when you have a shortcut.

So, what we're talking about here is a rare case of one extra minute looking for a game - on top of waiting for it to install, which can be anything from 10 minutes to several hours - depending on your connection and the size of the game.

It's with that realization - coupled with the rather massive advantage of being spoiled consumers when so many big suits are trying to win us over with cheaper prices and sales - with the ADDITIONAL fact that there's absolutely no alternative available as a publisher, unless you want to be a slave to another company's monopoly - that I think anyone seriously complaining about this has a gigantic problem with proportion and what constitutes an actual issue.

I don't know what to take from your statements - but it sounds like it's a major pain for you.

However, if you're only slightly annoyed - like myself - then we are in agreement.

This is a nonissue for me. I apparently scammed myself and built a PC with plenty of headroom to run anything i need. If your gaming on a PC that cant run launchers and a game maybe its time to invest in a console.

I let all the launchers load at startup. Use fences to organize all my shortcuts so i just click on it and the game runs no matter what launcher it uses.

As for forgetting I’ve never had that issue. For me its pretty easy, old games are GOG, exclusives are ubi or origins and everything else is steam. Maybe when i have to add Bethesda, epic and discord it will become an issue but not so far.

the games i've played a few times or recently purchased i do tend do remember where i have. it's just another annoyance, nothing else needs to be read into it.

Originally Posted by Drithius
You don't see a problem in stumbling around, reinstalling redundant "services" you haven't used in years in an effort to try and locate a game you haven't played in years? Or, more likely, forgetting you have it altogether?

Why would you stumble around clicking shortcuts? I don't know how you do it - but I use my mouse. I have relevant launchers installed at all times.

In the rare cases where I need to dig up something obscure and I need to spend a few seconds downloading it and logging on to it - I remember how the world works today, and how it used to work.

In the past when I wanted to play an old game, I had to dig around for several minutes or even hours to find a CD/DVD - and then I would hope it wasn't scratched and still readable. Then I would have to hope my operating system was ok with the ancient setup executable, and I would be lucky if it didn't prompt me for the entire install path that I had to enter manually.

After that, I would have to go online and I would have search for the correct patch, taking great care to pick the EU version and not the US version. Then I would hope it was the only patch, and not one of those cases where you needed 5 separate patches before the game worked.

I could go on.

In that very same way, I don't particularly enjoy going shopping - but I still vastly prefer it to spending half my day out in the cold, hunting for food so that I can survive. I also really enjoy not having to prepare the meat and skin animals to get something to sustain me throughout the day.

And that is assuming new services stick around and don't die off as soon as a publisher goes belly-up. Steam has a distinct advantage in this regard - its existence is independent from publishers' fates.

I'm not a paranoid sort of person and I don't latch on to those one-in-a-thousand cases because I enjoy every opportunity to overlook how convenient my hobby has become, and how many great games are available through amazingly cheap deals all over the place.

I guess you could say I never understood the mentality of focusing on negative minutiae when there are so many improvements involved.

In this case, we have multiple publishers trying to break a monopoly - and you'd have to be insanely unreasonable and selfish not to appreciate why they would want to do that.

Beyond that, given the massive advantages we're going to experience when big companies are competing for the most consumer-friendly and attractive platform - and the fact that there's no alternative viable solution to several launchers - I'd have to say a big NO to having a problem with how this works.

Originally Posted by vurt
the games i've played a few times or recently purchased i do tend do remember where i have. it's just another annoyance, nothing else needs to be read into it.

I'm already having that problem sometimes. "oh, it's not on Steam? I'm pretty sure i bought it..? Let me check on GOG. No.. Ah, then it's probably that other launcher.. UBI-something-launcher, or was it Origin.."

Good times.

if i want to install something i'd hate to go through perhaps 5 or more launchers before i find the game i want to install.

just really inconvenient..

Fair enough - I will try to remember how vurt articulates just another annoyance