I just love collecting them all!

Remember times when there were no launcher? Just double click and you're running the game. Good times indeed.

That's why I use Playnite

I made an Epic account years ago for the freebies. I'm not sure, but I'd bet I never played a single one.

Dont buy games from AAA publishers and you mostly have steam or GOG.

Better yet. Buy them from Itch.io directly, since indies are better anyway.

This is a rare console W over PC. All your games are just there. No additional launchers or log ins, no waiting 30 minutes for the game to update because you havnt opened that launcher in months.

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I don't even like steam

--skip-launcher

thank you for the reminder to fetch my freebie for the week from epic. not that i actually play them (have a whole one title installed). i just collect those, too.

So called free market socialists when steam offers almost all the games in one launcher (monopoly)

Now how about we get an Office launcher

The clear solution is a single centralized launcher for all these launchers.

Here is the solution: https://apps.gnome.org/Cartridges/

Vote with your wallet then. Stop buying games from terrible companies. Oh right, you prefer to just rant and literally change nothing in how you live life.

Can someone do this for game launchers?

I will say that I'll take the lesser evil of having an unintrusive launcher for a game that pops up after I select play in Steam (Creative Assembly, Larian, etc.) which can then be closed after the game starts than go back to when everyone wanted you to install a bloated distribution platform to play their specific game (Looking at you Stardock, Uplay, etc.).

But in the shadows of Playnite, one more launcher was made.

One launcher to bind them.

This is why I buy most of my games from GOG.

The launcher (GOG Galaxy) is entirelly optional, so I don't use it at all and just download the installers for my games (and keep local copies in an external HD in my NAS).

Don’t forget minetest and gamehub

But honestly, what would be better?

No launchers at all? They do help to organize the game library, synchronize saves across devices, enable achievements and friend lists, make it possible to share game libraries, install all your games from a single place, have a shop to discover new games. Steam even provides basic APIs for games to enable multiplayer. Many of these things could be baked into the game, though that would be extra work some devs might not do.

One centralised launcher? Such a monopoly might lead to problems such as higher prices / less money for game devs (especially the good indie studios that don't have negotiation power), less innovation around that launcher and less effort towards a good experience with few bugs etc.

Quite a pain. I mostly buy anything on steam or choose steam keys x this reason.

I've been using Playnite for the last weeks and I'm pretty happy with the results! You should try it ^^

See, you guys don't know what you want. First it's not okay for you that you have to use steam to play only three games and now it's not okay that there are games you don't have to use steam for... wtf!

You guys don't use shortcuts?

It has been ages since I played something on PC (I don't have a gaming one) but that is crazy to me lol.

Is it not possible to just put the .exe files into the desktop (not shortcuts).

Basically yeah, every game should have its own launcher