this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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Why do you need a launcher? (asking older gamers actually) (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago by PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/games@lemmy.world
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I know lots of you have grown with it so that's just the way it has always been for you and you are used to it, but older gamers, why do you need a launcher?

I've started PC gaming in the mid to late 90s but only when visiting cousins and friends. Got my first PC in 2001. I have some original games but I'm like 99% pirate, especially for "newer stuff" (read: anything that came out in the last 20 years lol). Modus was always the same: run the installer, click the shortcut, play.

I created a Steam account sometime in the late 2010s, I remember I did because I saw they were giving Metro games for free and I wanted to play them, and I started collecting free games that looked cool, but it really really bothered me that I needed to open their store to install and play the games. Even if I made desktop shortcuts their program would run in the background, and usually complain if I was offline... I just found everything so useless... run software to run the software I want to run, why not skip the middleman? Also I have always been on shitty hardware and I didn't like that extra RAM consumption going on in the background.

Eventually I stopped using Steam, deleted my account, and went back to piracy, but with the loss of some trusted trackers and stuff, and me starting running banking and other important shit on the same PC, I decided to start buying games, and then I found GOG, and what a godsend store! When I buy the game I get the installer so I can do whatever I want with it, and I don't need any third party application to install or run them.

I see a lot of people saying they don't buy games from other stores because their launchers are shit... but what do you even need a launcher for? Not having a launcher is my requirement to buy a game lol

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[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 2 points 11 hours ago

I don't. I was still buying physical releases and renting games from my local video stores until both things died out against my will.

Steam is convienent for the services they provide.

Since the USA is turning to shit, I try to buy from stores outside USA now so GOG is increasingly seeing more of my money. Let's say Valve falls off or goes to shit after Gabe dies: I'm a skilled pirate so whatever.

Mostly I'm Ambivalent but kinda apathetic about launchers because I can just go and find whatever I potentially lose again elsewhere. A self educated privilege combined with grey morality I suppose. Or a resignation to an ever worsening reality I was born into without my say.