I just bought Far Cry 3 on steam, because it was on sale, but launching it requires me to sign into the uplay launcher. I now had multiple occurrences of the game not starting, because uplay couldn’t verify that I own the game. I then decided to open Far Cry from the uplay launcher directly which still opened steam. I guess jokes on me for not pirating the game.

I particularly appreciate the fact that it's EAs launcher in the meme, undoubtedly one of if not the worst offender for this shit.

That's actually good, you wasted no time from your 2 hour refund period and can pirate it then.

Haven't bought a Ubisoft game for more than a decade because all of their new stuff requires Uplay.

My favorite is that I bought a game on Epic and it has to use the Ubisoft Launcher.

Ubisoft accounts dont connect to Epic directly. Neither party - Ubisoft or Epic - would help me get it working so I cant play it.

Cool.

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.

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.

I just stopped buying games from studios that do this.

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

Refund time

I've made it a point to avoid games that require the used of a 3rd party launcher.

The last time I tolerated a 3rd party launcher was when I was playing through the mass effect trilogy, as the 3rd game needed EA's launcher, I think.

It was so much of a pain, I just swore them off completely. Now if a game needs a 3rd party launcher, I either just don't play it, or... Yarr, if it's good enough to warrant it.

I just check the steam description. If it requires an account, uses a 3rd party launcher or/and has DRM, I pirate the game.

• Diablo II: had a -skiptobnet command line option.
• Diablo II Resurrected: Load Battle.Net first, click through ads for other stuff, click again to start the game, press buttons to skip the animations, and press another key to really log in, for real this time.

So I just made a button that launches a script that does all those clicks for me while I retrieve a beverage. The only reason I didn't just pirate was so I could play online with an old friend.

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

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.

It’s annoying, I hate it. They’re useless bloat.

But it’s never risen to the level of “I literally will not buy/play the game over this.”

I don’t get people who say this at all. You buy this cool game you love, you’ll spend hours playing it, but you won’t enter a fake email and wait another 30 seconds at launch to play it?

Even at the peak of Origin’s woes, I never got close to that.