this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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Idk if this is “a reason” but leaving the launcher running without actually playing the game does count as playtime for steam, which may result in folks not being able to refund it if they don’t like it, and increases overall hours played.
Whether that’s part of why these games have useless launchers, or whether those things actually pan out that way, who knows.
Launchers also generally act as advertisements for the publisher's other games.
I don't think that's part of why they do it. I'm an avid civ 6 fan, and I can say that the launcher is pretty unobstructive. Between launching from steam and launching from the 2k launcher, it takes about a minute. It's likely to collect data, but honestly the only useful data they'd get is the pc hardware, the length of play, and common mods. 2k probably saw that they weren't getting sellable data and decided to scrap the idea, honestly it's probably the only decent thing the company has done in years.
The data collection can just as easily be done by the game itself, the launcher doesn't have any special privileges
There was a period of time (probably about 3-6 months) when the launcher would cause the game to crash on launch. I had to mod it out.
Are you sure that they don’t look at every folder in your system for imagens etc?
That's just a by-product of how Steam works. Playtime is counted as long as the Play button says "Stop".
For games without DRM (e.g. KSP), you can launch it from the Steam install folder without Steam running. Everything works perfectly but your playtime won't be counted for the same reason.
Coincidentally, ksp also uses the 2k launcher as it was published* by a take two label, private division (rip)
*after they bought the ip
It does but only because of the default Steam executable. It can be run directly without the launcher.
Maybe, but for Civ 6 specifically the launcher came out a few years into the game's lifespan, so I'm not sure they were doing it for whatever marginal revenue benefit that would be. I imagine selling DLC without Steam or whatever storefront getting a cut might be a motivating factor.