The was erstwhile a aureate property of PC gaming wherever you could unfastened up Steam (or adjacent conscionable motorboat an executable yourself!), footwear up a crippled and the adjacent happening you would spot would beryllium the crippled itself. For galore large (and small) releases those days are present agelong gone, replaced by an epoch of launchers that are, astatine best, a nuisance.

If you privation to play a Rockstar crippled connected PC you request to instal the company’s ain launcher, which boots earlier you play the crippled you clicked to play, past makes you click another play fastener truthful you tin yet play it. And that’s however it works erstwhile it’s working; when it’s not you simply can’t play immoderate Rockstar games that you own, sorry!

Want to play a Total War game? You get a launcher. Paradox game? A launcher. Blizzard game? Battle.net. Fortnite? Epic Games Store. An EA game? Origin. Ubisoft? Hey, conjecture what, you gotta motorboat Ubisoft Connect, a launcher. Even Kalypso has a launcher.

Note that determination are immoderate agleam spots here; Bethesda killed its ain launcher disconnected earlier this twelvemonth and conscionable fto Steam grip everything, and immoderate launchers person applicable benefits similar letting you negociate your mods (Paradox) oregon leap consecutive into a prevention crippled (Creative Assembly).

While publishers person wide reasons to dump these things connected america (from DRM to $$$), these launchers are wildly unpopular among players, successful portion due to the fact that of the connectivity hassles (see Rockstar’s illustration above), but mostly due to the fact that they’re conscionable a symptom successful the ass, a velocity bump connected your mode to the spot you really privation to go.

Things person deed a caller level of absurdity this week, though, with quality that Kerbal Space Program—yes, the 1 with the small aliens gathering rockets—now has its ain launcher for the Steam mentation of the game, announced arsenic “a assets for quality and updates astir KSP & KSP 2 Early Access”.

Given the illustration of the game, the information it’s already launching done Steam and its estimation arsenic a weird small indie sandbox, instrumentality absorption has been understandably negative; folks are venting connected Steam, portion connected the game’s Reddit workarounds person already been recovered to disable the launcher entirely.

Publishers, please, we’re begging you. This sucks. As the champion remark successful that Steam treatment says, “GAMES ON STEAM DO NOT NEED A LAUNCHER. STEAM IS THE LAUNCHER”.