It takes two. Fucking incredible game. Hasn’t give me headaches during startup while playing on Linux. But God dang, why does it have to be paired with origin in windows and why do I have to login to it just run the game? Fucking eh…
Refund time
Not really a thing on Linux AFAIK, but that would be an instant refund for me if it happened.
I’ve made it a point to avoid games that require the used of a 3rd party launcher.
The only launchers i can bear are Steam (because it is useful after all, it has proton, the workshop, etc etc) and launchers for Minecraft
This and .desktop files. Don’t forget your OS is already a launcher.
Negative review. Every time. No matter how good the game.
I also don’t buy them any more but I have a load in my library.
I just stopped buying games from studios that do this.
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.
I tried to play GTA 4 through Steam
The launcher kept failing. Old Rockstar accounts, New ones, didn’t matter. Refunded. I May pirate it at some point, I’ll enjoy the nostalgia of it probably.
Know what works flawlessly? My Xbox 360 DISC.
Modern games are a joke.
I was glad to see with Cyberpunk that I could skip login with their launcher. Later when I decided to try RDR2 it didn’t let me skip login, so I refunded that shit with 0 minutes played.
Thanks for telling me I’m just gonna pirate that shit now

Nah, make a stop at the steam refund button on your way there
The only game I preordered in years was the new Bond game and that was before they disclosed they infested it with Denuvo. I refunded that shit before preloaded was even done.
What a bummer, I love bond games. Thankfully plenty of them on good systems like ps2.
I’m a fan of that one on '360. Felt like GoldenEye but with Daniel Craig and cover mechanics.
do that after you start downloading/installing
I have replaced game binaries with their pirated version for this sole reason
These publishers don’t even deserve the relevancy of high pirate rates. Just find an indie game to play.
I wanted to try this “GTAV” game all the kids were talking about. It was on sale, so I spent four days downloading it over my miserable rural DSL connection only to find out that it wouldn’t work without rockstar demanding my information.
So I refunded it. Im sure there was a work around but I didn’t need to play it that bad.
Fucking Rockstar.
It took me fucking AGES to get Red Dead 2 running on CachyOS because of that bastard launcher.
Frankly, I despise all launchers, Steam included. The only reason it gets a pass is because it’s one of the two somewhat reasonable ones, and the only one that makes gaming on Linux simple and convenient.
It’s still slow, ugly as hell, and entirely unnecessary. Makes me want to pirate more, but then I’d have to set the games up from scratch.
The only use case for launchers is console gaming. It makes perfect sense on a Deck, Switch or a PS5. But absolutely no sense whatsoever on a desktop PC.
Again - Steam has features that make it tolerable (achievements, screenshot sharing, workshop, etc.), but I’d still prefer to just play my games without anything in the middle.
Yep, launchers have always been a scam. Your launcher should be your operating system
My operating system can’t filter by specifics like “local co-op” or “anime titties” though.
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.
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…)
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 correct take.
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
Wonder if there is one worse then Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
Launch game on steam
It opens EA Origin
It then opens the Mass Effect LE launcher
Now you get to pick which Mass Effect game you want to play.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).
And the launcher looks like a flash website from 2002
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.
Then another 10 minutes setting up graphics settings and your out 1/2 hour of your refundable time. On top of that sometimes you have to make an account so thats another 15-20 minutes. Then there are possible proton problems so you might have to test different protons. I play on laptop and deck so I might not have internet all the time, I have to test if the game can play without internet. Might waste most of your trial period on getting the game to run.
Battlefield 3 on Steam:
- Steam launches EA App
- EA App launches Battlelog in your web browser, and a background service
- After choosing a mode/server, web browser sends data to EA App
- EA App launches bf3.exe
EA. More like hEll nAah
the steam page warns you of third party launches before you buy the game doesn’t it?
so at least if it does happen it shouldn’t be a surprise
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.
You can block some of the worst offenders by blocking the publisher.
This only kinda works and only for some publishers. It’s getting better, but it’s still spotty.
True, but even the worst offenders have exceptions and older games that didn’t yet require it.
That said, thanks for that because I didn’t know you could block a publisher outright.
The only launcher (if it is?) I will allow is Steam. Other wise just won’t play the game or 🏴☠️.
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.













