Good news: PC games are increasingly doing away with annoying launchers

After a recent update Civilization VI on Steam, the 2K Games Launcher is no longer required to play. And the upcoming sequel, Civilization 7also doesn’t force players to use a third-party launcher on Steam. It’s just the latest example of a new and positive trend.

Steam has long been the dominant and most popular digital platform for PC gaming. Most titles on the platform use Valve’s popular app for DRM, updates, and all that other stuff. However, some publishers, like EA, have long forced players who buy their games on Steam to separate

PC Launcher.

In the last three years More and more publishers are following EA’s playbook from Lock Steam games behind third-party apps. It’s annoying, often results in a terrible experience, and can even block access to a game you own just because EA or someone else’s launcher isn’t working properly. However, it seems that publishers are starting to abandon all these silly launchers, and that’s wonderful news.

As already mentioned, on August 15 2K and Firaxis have announced that the Civilization VI and the upcoming sequel will not require a third-party launcher on Steam. In July Kerbal Space Program silently receive an update that removed his controversial throwerwhich was added to the rocket building simulation a few years after its Early Access debut.

In the meantime, EA announced in May The It takes twoan award-winning cooperative platformer, also foregoes the EA Games Launcher. This made it easier to play on the Steam Deck. But EA also confirmed in July The October Dragon Age: The Veilguard Players also don’t need to download and install any third-party app. This is all good news.

I have no problem with companies competing with Steam and creating their own digital stores on PC. I love it.

While Steam is great, I think competition from Epic has caused Valve to update and improve Steam more than usual. And if EA or Ubisoft want to have their own stores and apps where they sell games a little cheaper or offer exclusive DLC or whatever, that’s fine.

The problem is when these publishers force you to download these other stores and launchers even if you buy the game on Steam, that’s when it becomes frustrating.

So this current trend of publishers abandoning launchers for Steam games is good news in a year that’s been full of bad gaming news. Hopefully these games sell well and convince other publishers to abandon all those annoying launchers as well. We can dream, right?

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