Enough with the game launchers! It’s dragging PC gaming down

Where do I launch my games these days? Try, EA, Steam, Blizzard, Epic, Xbox app, Ubisoft Connect… I’m getting dizzy just listing them off. In fact, my desktop is so cluttered with icons it looks like it has a bad case of computer measles.

But worse than that is the fact that I only have a vague idea of where some of my games are. Not the classics of course. I’d never misplace the Skyrims or Diablo IVs. But it’s anyone’s guess where I’d find the Max Payne 3s and Battle Brothers — do y’all know?

The dilemma I’m putting my finger on here is the fact there are just too many launchers in PC gaming and it’s time something be done about it!

The worst thing about too many launchers

Okay, so the two inconveniences I just mentioned above aren’t the most annoying thing about it all. That award goes to when the launchers get in the way of me actually gaming.

Short of having a PhD in game executables, I’ve realized I need to understand too many aspects of each launcher to ever have a truly smooth experience. Multiply that by the number of launchers I need to access — seven or so — and the mind boggles.

While it’s completely understandable for developers and publishers to know what will work, how it should work, and why it should work with things like launching games, game lobbies, game socials, game libraries, game shops, short-cuts, audio profiles, and more — they can’t possibly expect the same from us gamers.

What’s more, even if I get across all of that, some launchers are still buggy, complicated, or just don’t work. In fact, anything short of a push-button double-click launch in 2025, is, in my view, just not kosher.

Further reading: The best gaming laptops

To illustrate my point, I had a 40-minute tussle installing and uninstalling Dead Space 3 when the game insisted on downloading EA’s launcher, made me uninstall it from Steam, and reinstall it on EA before it finally kicked off. That’s time I’m never going to get back.

Then there’s the jankiness of the Xbox app on my PC. It’ll frequently not register my games. Or else I’ll get logged out every time an update drops.

In co-op game menus I sometimes just won’t show up in the lobbies even though I can see myself in there. “Can you see me?” and “Should I restart?” are two of my most frequently parroted phrases while simultaneously using slow-breathing exercises to control my rising cortisol levels.

That’s if I can remember which specific shortcuts to use in each app and when to bring up the social tabs in the first place.

Chris Hoffman / IDG

But the most unforgivable type of launcher, the one that really gets my goat? It’s the kind that won’t work unless there are multiple launchers loaded, or else the launcher needs to authenticate something outside of itself before it will run.

I can just see the grins on the developers’ faces as they fool another few hapless victims into doing something very specific on their PCs to play the latest Call of Duty game.

So how did it get to this?

A walk down memory lane, and I remember logging into Battle.net in 1997 to play the fledgling Diablo and savoring the build-up of excitement as I waited for it to load me into the starting town of Tristram.

Yes, I was still using a launcher here, but it wasn’t a bad experience. Why? Those were the days before the conglomeration of games into central platforms, at least on PC, and things were simpler.

The excitement came from how personalized it all was. These launchers were game-centric, made for the one or two hero titles you had loaded up on your PC. As such, they felt like a kind of extension of the game itself, with atmospheric music and imagery that would build suspense as you waited. The software wasn’t flawless, but because it was made specifically for those titles, it mainly worked.

Then the game industry changed and became a multimillion-dollar global behemoth. The number of games increased 100-fold, as did the number we had to own in order to have a decent co-op session with friends.

Internet bandwidths hit breakneck speeds, and keeping tabs on your games and all that went with them for co-op matches (like the passwords to login) became more like bookkeeping than merely gaming (more complicated even than having to deal with multiple launchers is now).

The need for a central hub to collate games and achievements, like the consoles used, became an obvious necessity at the time, so we got Steam.

Valve stepped forward and launched Steam in 2003, which undeniably made life a lot easier. Today, I’m very glad for it, even if it is less specific to my games and more of a central railway station where they all meet. On the whole, I find it a smooth experience too, a testament to it being well-built, managed, and curated.

What came after Steam, however, really started the downward trajectory.

Continuing on the timeline, soon enough every big-name publisher decided that they could skirt around having to pay Valve royalties to post their games on Steam, by simply having their own game launchers and hubs. That’s despite some of them only having a single game worth playing.

The motivation here was all wrong — the new hubs and launchers weren’t driven by gamer demand but by a commercial one, and sadly many still are.

On that last point, I’m not advocating for them to disappear altogether or to sell out to Valve, but perhaps there needs to be more collaboration to make games easier to access and launch across game hubs and without the hangups we see today.

It’s a sobering thought that our headaches with launchers come down to it simply being better business for some. Let’s hope there’s one day a shift back to what will work best for the average gamer.